WTF

I don't have a reason to read anything into it. Public speaking is a nervewracking activity, and everyone who's done it can recall one thing they did in the spotlight that they would never have done outside it - a certain turn of phrase, a verbal tic, a gesture, a tone. A man with a long track record of awkward public behaviour, and a bad public speaker at that, tells an audience his heart goes out to them, and then gestures emphatically to that effect. I know that calls for shit-flipping and general hysteria on Lemmy.World, but that's because LW is for all intents and purposes the 'Reddit instance', not because Musk's behaviour was inherently offensive.

It would have been so easy for the ADL to pile on and call it fascist, given its own backgound. Whether they are right or not isn't important, what matters is they were slow to judge. Perhaps there's some political calculus in that choice, perhaps not. We know who took the easy option though: Ocasio-Cortez, leading from behind (like all politicians do) by working out her constituency's bias, then airing that bias publicly.