If Elon hadn’t worked with Orange Man Bad, then the Left would still be in love with him for his massive former donations to the Democrat political machine, and his work against climate change.
The whole “he’s a nazi” accusation is banal, and people are seeing through it now. That’s why we’ve moved on.
Like the whole pizza parlor pedo basement thing, people will death grip stupid stuff because they are so desperate to manifest the worst possible image of those unaligned with them.
The problem is that it blows up in their face and just makes them look unreliable, dumb, and lost.
Musk has done so many objectively bad things that there is no need for people to dilute their reputation on fringe theories and interpretations. Pushing the nazi thing just gives Musk ammo that his detractors are so desperate that they need freeze frames and hidden context to make him look bad.
If you want him to get the benefit of the doubt about his "hand gesture" then it would help if he wasn't promoting far-right parties all over Europe.