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Did Elon Musk wear a MAGA hat with ‘Nazi font’ at a Trump rally?
The owner of Tesla was wearing a customised MAGA hat in a font that looked by Nazi typography
On October 28, business tycoon Elon Musk was spotted at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat whose font has incited debate on whether it is Nazi symbolism, reported FastCompany Magazine.
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The controversial hat had the MAGA message associated with Donald Trump, written in jagged, gothic-looking letters. However, on a closer look, people on social media flagged it as a type of “blackletter” or Nazi font.
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Many on the internet speculated that the font was Fraktur - which was used by Nazi's in Germany and was part of a sub-set of “black letter” fonts tied to German folk styles of calligraphy.
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The Fraktur font can be seen used in Nazi propaganda material and even Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. According to Florian Hardwig, managing editor of Fonts In Use typography archive, the Nazi's later disavowed this font after it was rumoured to have been created by a Jewish person.
Though it fell out of style, it is known as a very evocative marker of Nazi ideology to the layman. It is no wonder that it immediately incited shock among many user.
While some calligraphy and font experts disagree that Musk's hat used the Fraktur font, the similarity to the blackletter is enough to create virtually the same effect on most people.
People have questioned Musk's intentions for wearing such a blatantly offensive hat while others have chalked it up to yet another antic by the owner of X to invite reactions.
Hardwig noted, “Choosing such a style for an application outside specific fields such as newspaper mastheads or beer logos is typically done for the sake of provocation.”
Parallels with Nazi's did not stop there for the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, where a rally was held in 1939, by the pro-Hitler organization German American Bund.
