A neuroscientist and former close friend has launched a scathing attack on Elon Musk, claiming that the tech billionaire’s “two Nazi salutes” at a recent Donald Trump rally were calculated moves of a megalomaniac.

Dr Philip Low, who has known Musk for over 14 years, said Tesla and SpaceX founder Musk is “not a Nazi per se”, but he did those two sieg heils for five reasons.

Musk had invested in NeuroVigil, the brain-monitoring company Low founded, in 2009.

Here’s what Low wrote on his LinkedIn page:

“I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company.

“Elon is not a Nazi, per se.

“He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it.

“Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else.

“Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he believes he has all the solutions.

“All his talk about getting to Mars to “maintain the light of consciousness” or about “free speech absolutism” is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla. His lust for power is also why he did xAI and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAI and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV.

“Elon did two Nazi salutes.

“He did them for five main reasons:

“1. He was concerned that the “Nazi wing” of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate also did not pick his first choice;

“2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his “power” just like when he told advertisers to “go f**k yourself”. This has nothing to do with Asperger’s;

“3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them;

“4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing;

“5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen.

“Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable,” Low wrote.

Here’s what his LinkedIn bio says: “Dr. Low made his first scientific discovery at Harvard Medical School — as a teenager. While inventing new brain monitoring techniques at the University of Chicago, he was referred to the Salk Institute by Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate of DNA fame, where he authored a 1 page PhD thesis on dynamic brain activity mapping, which led to his creation of NeuroVigil, the neurotechnology company responsible for iBrain, a portable brain activity monitor, with 1st and 2nd round valuations two and two-and-a-half times Google’s and Facebook’s combined, respectively, as well as to the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, the first formal document signed by Neuroscientists to recognize consciousness in non-humans.”