At the end of his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday evening, MAGA activist Steve Bannon shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and straightened his right arm swiftly, holding it at an elevated, roughly 45-degree angle, and then quickly pulled it back down again. After his arm returned to his side, he yelled “Amen.” Any person with the faintest knowledge of Western history would recognize the gesture as a Nazi salute.
Bannon has denied it was supposed to be a Nazi salute. In an interview with NBC News at the conference Thursday, Bannon said, “I do that all the time. I wave to my crowd, because it’s all about them.” But if you watch the video, no reasonable person would describe the gesture as a wave.
Bannon lacks the plausible deniability about accidental gestures that Musk had at his disposal.
Some media outlets suggested Bannon’s gesture mimicked that of megabillionaire Elon Musk, who carried out what many say resembled a Nazi salute at an inauguration event for President Donald Trump in January. Musk’s gesture triggered a debate about his true intentions. After the forceful extension of his arm — executed with an audible grunt — he did it once more and then said, “My heart goes out to you,” leading some people to believe that it may have been an unintentionally unfortunate-looking attempt to engage the crowd. Musk later deemed the accusations as “dirty tricks” in a post on X. But notably, he also made several Nazi-related puns on his social media platform, leaving some to wonder if perhaps he meant to provoke a polarizing response. “When I see the troll emoji, it’s like looking in the mirror,” he wrote a few days later.
Bannon lacks the plausible deniability about accidental gestures that Musk had at his disposal. Bannon, an influential podcast host and the former chief strategist for Trump during his first term, is a savvy communicator and extremely plugged in to the news cycle. It is safe to assume he knows about what Musk did, which is why some media outlets described Bannon as imitating him. That this happened after Musk’s gesture was widely criticized by many as a Nazi salute feeds the theory that it was a conscious provocation. Moreover, Bannon made no comment akin to “My heart goes out to you” as Musk did, which might have confounded efforts to pin down Bannon’s meaning.
Jordan Bardella, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, canceled his appearance at CPAC after Bannon’s speech, citing his condemnation of a speaker who “as a provocation” made “a gesture referring to Nazi ideology.” Bannon told the French newspaper Le Point, “If he canceled [the speech] over what the mainstream media said about the speech, he didn’t listen to the speech. … He’s a boy, not a man.” The Holocaust-denying white supremacist Nick Fuentes said in response to the speech: “It was a straight-up Roman salute. It’s getting a little uncomfortable even for me.”
So what is Bannon doing? His gesture serves as a signaling device to attract the most noxious, militant and overtly fascistic elements of the American far right to support the president. In his speech, Bannon addressed his audience as “the tip of the tip of the spear of the populist nationalist movement,” celebrated the release of Jan. 6 prisoners and said, “We want Trump in ’28.” Put it all together and Bannon is inviting extremists to mobilize on behalf of Trump’s authoritarian project on a level previously unseen. Even if we were to understand Bannon’s gesture as “trolling,” it is still an insidious strategy that carnivalizes Nazism. Even as a winking reference to Musk’s odd, disturbing gesture (whose darkest implications Musk refused to fully repudiate), it still radiates an ease and playfulness toward Nazi iconography. Why choose this specific gesture, a clear reference to the most universally acknowledged symbol of Nazism other than the swastika, as a “joke” to “troll the media” or “own the libs”? It still has the effect of making fascism and white supremacy look less ominous and less taboo, and maybe for some on the right, a little more intriguing than before. Even as a “joke,” it acts as a path to mainstreaming some of the most heinous ideas that humanity has ever conceived of. It chips away at the cultural and political guardrails our society has developed against autocracy, vigilante racial domination, hatred of “the other.” And this all comes as Trump develops closer ties with Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany, some of whose members have used Nazi slogans. Bannon’s gesture doesn’t mean he is a Nazi nor does it signify a wholesale defense of Nazi ideals. But it does mean he is willing to play around with the aura and symbology of Nazism to achieve his political goals. At any level of interpretation, Bannon’s gesture is abhorrent, and it speaks volumes about his political movement if he retains power within it.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
