WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Billionaire Elon Musk's hand gesture while he spoke during a celebration of President Donald Trump's inauguration drew online comparisons to a Nazi salute on Monday, but a leading tracker of antisemitism said it appeared to represent a moment of enthusiasm instead.

Musk took the Capital One Arena stage in Washington to huge cheers, pumping his arms and shouting, "Yesssss."

During a speech at Capitol One Arena Monday following Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk appeared to deliver a Roman salute not once, but twice.

The gesture is associated with Nazi Germany, and Musk was speaking triumphantly about Trump’s election victory when he made the salute.

CNN anchors on Monday implied Tesla CEO Elon Musk had done a Nazi salute while speaking before a crowd of Trump supporters during the day’s inaugural events.

An excited Musk took the stage at Capital One Arena on Monday and told attendees, “This is what victory feels like.”

Watching the small parade of elderly men and women—many in wheelchairs, some wearing military insignia—receive the gratitude of the President of the United States and the leaders of the Western world on the 80th anniversary of D-Day was profoundly moving. So, too, were the vistas of row upon row of white marble grave markers of those who gave their lives on June 6, 1944 and in the days and weeks and months that followed.

According to weirdos, Donald Trump’s likely return to the White House will usher in an age of fascism unprecedented in American history, which is odd since a Trump presidency was recently precedent in American history, and that interregnum of constitutional governance brought us our only respite from nascent fascism – as defined by people who know what fascism is – in the last fifteen years or so. We heard this in 2016, too, and in 2020 as well.

After canvassing, phone-banking and holding public meetings, Columbiana County, Ohio, organizers with River Valley Organizing (RVO) released a set of demands from residents of East Palestine and surrounding areas in the wake of Norfolk Southern’s train derailment disaster that led to a controlled burn of toxic chemicals and mandatory evacuations of residents within one mile of the crash site last month.

Italy is providing the latest example that lipstick and a feminine touch can help sanitize and mainstream fascism.

Giorgia Meloni, the 45-year-old leader and co-founder of the Brothers of Italy Party, is set to become the country’s prime minister a month before the 100th anniversary of the infamous March on Rome that led to Mussolini’s fascist rule.

But unlike the jackbooted Il Duce, Meloni’s rise to power offers no bombastic displays of machismo.

The Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Italy’s national election, has its roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement.

Keeping the movement’s most potent symbol, the tricolor flame, Giorgia Meloni has taken Brothers of Italy from a fringe far-right group to Italy’s biggest party.

A century after Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, which brought the fascist dictator to power, Meloni is poised to lead Italy’s first far-right-led government since World War II and Italy’s first woman premier.

As President Joe Biden excoriates millions of Americans as "MAGA Republicans" "extremists," "semi-fascists" and threats to democracy -- something he's likely to do again tonight in his so-called "soul of the nation" speech -- former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Biden's sneering insults stem from "terror."

Gingrich, speaking to Fox News Wednesday night, noted that more than 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in the last election.

The Russia-Ukraine crisis has revived the charge that the new Ukraine, far from being an embattled pro-Western seeker of liberal democracy, is a haven for fascists and Nazis.