Over the weekend, a certain part of the internet was awash with some eerie footage. At a rally in Ohio for Republican Senate nominee JD Vance, former US president (and future presidential hopeful) Donald Trump spoke to dramatic background music while his supporters raised their hands in a straight-armed, one-fingered salute.
Comparisons were immediately drawn between it and the Nazi salute (or, less ominously, the three-fingered salute from The Hunger Games) but it’s still unclear what it means or why it started.
What does the new salute mean?
One of the leading theories about the Trump supporters’ gesture is that it’s a QAnon salute (QAnon being the global political conspiracy that originated in the American far-right political sphere and has a strong focus on Trump).
As Will Sommer, political reporter at The Daily Beast and author of a coming book on QAnon, pointed out on Twitter, the single finger could be related to the common QAnon rallying cry: “Where we go one, we go all.”
Indeed, the dramatic music playing as the former president talks about increased COVID-19 deaths, war in Ukraine and “fake news” is a QAnon song titled “WWG1WGA” — an acronym for the phrase.
It’s not the first time Trump has used this music. He’s used it at previous rallies and has also used it as a backing track to campaign videos. In fact, it’s been noted by many that compared with 2020 when the then president claimed he didn’t know much about the conspiracy theory, he is now embracing QAnon by using its common phrases and even posting an image of himself wearing a Q pin.
The one-fingered salute: ‘America First’?
Another theory is that the salute signalled “America First”, a popular slogan used by Trump for his Make America Great Again (MAGA) campaign. The one finger would obviously be signifying “first” in this instance, or even “number one”.
What is clear is that nobody actually knows.
As Ben Collins, an NBC News reporter on what he calls the “dystopia beat”, pointed out on Twitter, there was dispute about what the signal means, even in pro-Trump forums.
Strange things happen in crowds and it’s highly likely the signal isn’t a point to early 20th century fascism and the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute or a far-right conspiracy theory gesture but rather a spontaneous outburst of collective emotion at an event designed to elicit exactly this kind of feeling.
However, as The Q Origins Project writes on Twitter, just because it didn’t begin as a QAnon gesture it won’t stop the far-right movement from adopting it. It’s fairly likely you’ll see it repeated at rallies and discussed at length in columns as Trump ramps up his campaign to become the 47th president of the United States.
With articles like this keeping Trump in the news, despite the absence of any significant news, it’s difficult to imagine public discourse reaching the heights of relevance and insight on issues such as climate, equality, education, sustainability, or diversity.
And this isn’t even America. It’s Australia.
Yes, we now have the finger conspirators.
Next thing we know that the middle index finger erected reverse and upright with a cry of “Up yours!” has a conspiratorial meaning.
The qanon phrase “Where we go one, we go all” has some similarities with an earlier version “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!” which came with a similar salute and also had a demented leader.
Thanks for that insight, well made. While its relationship to the sieg heil may be obscure its effects will be similar in terms of crowd psychology, joyous surrendering of the will to the leader. Satires to undermine it will be useful, one thinks of the uses of Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy”…
As Peter Cook noted in 1961 when he founded the Establishment Club “a satirical venue modelled on “those wonderful Berlin cabarets … which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War”.
What’s that old Stan Cross cartoon (1933) from a by-gone Australia still in midDepression – “For gorsake, stop laughing – this is serious!”?
What I don’t get is that Trump’s monotone is soooo boring – the most vapid and monotonous voice that is the antithesis of Hitlers. It’s hilarious when he spouts about no free press, yet he is swimming in it.
Trump seems to substitute hand gestures and applause for his lack of intelligent rhetoric when confronting his followers. Why are we giving him the oxygen or continuing to publicise this doofus?
It’s easier and quicker than investigative journalism, and it gets more clicks.
Ain’t that the truth!
Cheaper too.
Yes, but you find yourself lulled by it and not really listening but letting the feel wash over you. I’ve read first hand accounts of people who attended Hitler rallies saying they couldn’t remember much of what he said but only how it made them feel. Notice how he emphasises certain words and phrases. That’s what people will remember and that he made them feel part of something. Not quite sure where he came across this as a method of communication but it’s quite effective.
Exactly.
Herr Schicklegruber has the oratorical advantage of German having the verbs at sentence end which can be in reverse order to give added oomph to the preceding words if couched in provisional or future tense.
Fortunately Trump is unaware of nuance.
It’s a minor niggle in an interesting article, but wouldn’t Trump return to being the 45th president? How does this work?
It appears that Kevin Rudd is regarded as Australia’s 26th PM despite holding office on two separate occasions – Gillard is 27th, Abbott is 28th despite Rudd being briefly in office in between. Possibly the same in the US although their political system is less logical.
Personally I think this makes more sense but it appears the US counts them differently.
Grover Cleveland is conventionally counted as the 22nd and 24th President – so far the only non-consecutive multi-term president.
(So Obama (#44) was wrong in his first inaugural address to say “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath” – only 42 individuals had done so before him, not 43.)
Thank you all for the fact checking.
Let’s posit they are pointing at Trump’s bizarre appearance, ‘lookee there!’
Trump has every intention to resume power. Mass control of a population by whatever means necessary has a long history. America is under threat on multiple fronts