1488: The Hidden Nazi Symbolism of Elon Musk

Decoding the White Supremacist Dog Whistle of the World's Most Powerful Man

Let’s just rip the bandaid off and address the elephant in the room: Elon Musk is a racist Nazi sympathizer.

Ah! Didn’t that feel good to get it out?

First, let’s dispense with the whole, “It wasn’t really a Nazi salute—he just got caught up in the moment!” BS. It was a Nazi salute. End of debate. The most shocking part of the gesture was that it wasn’t even that surprising if you’ve been paying attention to his entire career.

It’s a freaking Nazi salute, folks.

It’s worth noting that immediately after Elon finalized the purchased of Twitter, use of the N-word shot up by nearly 500% on the platform within the first 12 hours, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute.

Anti-semitic slurs followed, with users chirping their approval at Elon’s new laissez-faire approach to hate speech, with one user writing, “Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K---S AND N-----S."

"I can freely express how much I hate n-----s … now, thank you elon," added another

"I can freely express how much I hate n-----s … now, thank you elon."

But this isn’t the essay to list all the ways Elon morphed Twitter, almost overnight, into an alt-right, White supremacist cesspool. Instead, we’re going to examine the name of the platform, or rather the renaming of it. Because “X” is more than just an eccentric billionaire’s quirky-as-hell alphabetic fixation; it carries a whole lot of Nazi hidden meaning.

But before we dive into all the fun and interesting Nazi-Da-Vinci-Code numerology and whatnot, we gotta back up and do a brief history on a sorry POS human by the name of David Eden Lane.

Hi, I’m David, and I’m a POS.

Lane was a real peach of a person. He was a domestic terrorist, white separatist, neo-Nazi, and convicted felon. He was a member of the terrorist organization The Order (a.k.a. the Silent Brotherhood), a radical faction that broke off from the Aryan Nations in 1983. The group was inspired by the 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, and declared war on the federal government, which they referred to as the "Zionist occupied government.” Their stated objective was to start a white supremacist revolution against the United States, after which blacks, Jews, "race mixers," and other perceived enemies would be exterminated.

The Order came up with a hit list of names they felt needed to exterminated, and decided to start with radio host Alan Berg, who was gunned down in front of his home on June 18, 1984 with David Lane acting as the gettaway driver. Lane was caught, convicted, and sentenced to 190 years in prison for racketeering, conspiracy, and the violation of Berg’s civil rights. He died in prison in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2007.

But before he died, Lane authored a prolific number of manifestos and publications that would become must-read material for white separatists and neo-Nazis across the globe, along with books and articles on gematria. With the help of his wife and a friend, Lane launched 14 Word Press in Idaho to disseminate his writings.

Now that you know Lane, we can finally move on to the neat-o number stuff since that’s what everyone came to see. And as you may have guessed from the name of Lane’s publishing company, the first number we’re going to look at is…14.

David Eden Lane is probably best know for his “The Fourteen Words,” a reference to two slogans he came up that became the rallying cry for militant white nationals all over the world, and whose inspiration, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is straight out of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The primary slogan in The Fourteen Words is:

We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children

Those 14 words were frequently all the slogan that was needed. However, should the neighborhood neo-Nazis find themselves feeling particularly verbose that night, there was a secondary slogan—also 14 words—that tacked onto the first one:

Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth

While Lane coined The Fourteen Words before he was sentenced, it was only after his imprisonment that it exploded in popularity and went on to become the most popular slogan for white supremacy in the world.

Remember that. The number “14” is shorthand for “The Fourteen Words.”

The other number we need to look at is 88.

After his “Fourteen Words,” Lane’s next best-known work is his 88 Precepts, a treatise on race, politicis, and philosphy. One of its key ideas is that white people are threatened by a lack of exclusive territorial hegemony and "forced racial mixing” (which served as the basis for the alt-right’s “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and is why we now have to listen to wid-eyed ravings about “George Soros funding migrant caravans” every time more than 5 people in Central America form a group and start hiking north).

But the point here is less about the content of the 88 Precepts and more about the number 88 itself. Why 88? Why not 87…or 89… or 63? (Poor 63 can never seem to catch a break. Not even from Nazis.)

The significance of 88 is a gematria-related nod to Nazism. The 8th letter of the alphabet is H, so 88 equals HH, which is shorthand for “Heil Hitler.”

Wow, in hindsight, I think I made this sound way more intriguing than it actually is. We got to the bottom of it without any Louvres murder-mysteries or exploding helicopters. 14 and 88 are just secret handshakes for closet racists. My bad for bring up Da Vinci Code.

“Shh. It’s a secret!”

Worst. School. Spirit. Mural. Ever.

Oh, there is another other moderately-well-known way to represent 88 without coming right out and saying it: computer code.

Specifically, American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a character encoding standard for electronic communication that represents text in computers, telecommunication equipment, and other devices. Come to think of it, it’s pretty nerdy. The only people who would get the coded reference—or even think to use ASCII in the first place—are computer programmers.

Any guesses what the ASCII code for 88 is?

You guessed it. It’s “X.”

If you want to signal a “Heil Hitler” without the average person catching on to what you’re signaling, 88 (HH) is your wink-and-nod symbol.

And if you want to go one layer deeper for the savvy folk who are onto your sneaky 88, it’s X.

Now, if I free-associate, oh, I dunno…the words “super nerdy computer programmer with questionable procilivity for Nazi/white supremacist content and also an inexpliccable fixation with the letter X,” does anyone’s name pop into your head. Anyone at all? (Those were just randomly-selected words from the dictionary, so shame on you if you’re picturing anyone specific.)

I’m joking, it’s Elon Musk.

Dude named his first business X. Then he rebranded his alt-right White-supremacist social media platform X. He even named his kid X. Well, he named him X Æ A-12, but since nobody can pronounce that (without summoning Cthulu from the depths), the kid goes by X.

If you follow Elon’s Heil Hitler account, which I do…because I’m a sadist…you’'ll notice that he likes to dog whistle the number 14 when he can. Here, I’ll show you an example:

Elon retweeted Trump’s Napoleon quote at 2:14 Eastern Time (I’m in Central Time, hence the 1:14 time stamp). On 24-hr time, that would be 14:14. And for some odd reason, retweeting a notorious would-be emperor who abolished the free press, ended elected representative government, and exhiled and jailed critics needed to be heralded with 14 American flags. Of all the times and all the numbers, why 14:14/14…on the 88- I mean X platform. Could it be–

Nah, who am I kidding. I’m way overthinking this.

I’m sure it’s probably just a coincidence.