The new Cybertruck has been released, and Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, has recently visited the Gigafactory Berlin for the production startup. He took a German tunnel-boring machine for a test drive and of course, the trip was filmed. Zorran Mamdani, Mayor of New York, happened to be in the German capital, and he and Huang casually performed the same action. Mamdani’s supporters and the mainstream media, and especially the ones who are into “wokeness” and the “New America,” have brought repeating his story down.
These two hand gestures that, according to some, carry political undertones, on the construction site of Monarch Road, one of the largest in doors testing tunnels under the Tesla-Machine-Subway-Tube. Huang faced this situation by saying he was not accustomed to the “new American” way of life. On the other hand, Mamdani didn’t need to say anything as the matter passed without being a thing.
Acting in completely different ways, all the fingers of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s right hand went up naturally. The video recording of Mamdani’s reaction performance was sent to the table for changing tens of times and was almost rejected by the editors. The source of the clip was kept, and even the journalist who submitted it was never mentioned as the one who had brought the issue up.
Musk’s initial move – a hand placed on the chest followed by a reaching out – caused a lot of criticism when it was first gotten online. It was said by some that it was more like a Nazi or fascist salute. However, Musk has been declining these allegations from the beginning, saying that they were made up by his political opponents, and not really what he had in mind.
The online the individuals’ vis-a-vis the incident happened immediately and strongly divided. In the persons supporting both the individuals, one party was offering their perspective and another party was offering rather the other but the absolute opposite. The media was hatefully spreading negativity against both the figures by giving the same kind of story to the listeners. They neither agreed with each other nor the other’s perspective. The latter, on the other hand, believed that the former was just too lenient or stupid to see what it was all about, and not capable of being objective.
Because they aren’t actually news organizations, they are legacy media propaganda pushers for the far left https://t.co/r6QpA4bulv
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2026
A digital assistant dwelling on X proposed that Mamdani’s action was a top-of-the head expression; the Nazi custom gesture usually a full arm straight down with the palm towards the ground.
This instalment adds up to bigger media bias and trust issues. When news sources are accused of covering certain incidents but turning blind eyes to others, people are inclined to perceive such news with a critical eye and as a result, they may have little trust in the regulating bodies that keep power in check. Consequently, news media have two sides to work on to avoid the dissemination of so-called hate graphics.
At the same time, media organisations must navigate how to report visuals that could be interpreted as extremist symbolism without codifying the misconceptions.
From a political perspective, this incident is seen as a source of a bigger battlefield for the participants. It is easier for the partisans to use the biased nature of any news coverage to their advantage, while people without strong affiliations may still want to have more specific and universally applicable criteria for defining appropriate reactions. The use of more distinct procedures and the putting up of the situation in a context that is as informative as possible – for instance, with remarking of symbolical and intentional meaning by specialists – could result in a decrease in automatic reactions.
The comparison between Musk and Mamdani is an illustration of how the combination of optics, media narratives, and digital amplification may work. If it is seen as a bias proof or the wrong reading of gestures, still the incident stresses even more the requirement of accurate and considerate reporting, and media literacy for the public to have measured responses at least at the level of bit-sized videos they watch and share.
