Does an authentic image show Taylor Swift giving a right-handed salute similar to the gesture used by Nazis? No, that's not true: The image has been horizontally flipped to make it look like Swift had performed a right-handed salute, a defining characteristic of the Nazi "Sieg Heil" gesture. Archived video shows Swift, wearing the same outfit with the same hairstyle, raising her left arm -- not her right -- as she blew a kiss to a crowd during a 2014 appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" program.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on January 21, 2025. It said:
My god. Not her too
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Jan 22 20:41:28 2025 UTC)
The post's caption -- "Not her too" -- was an apparent reference to controversy surrounding a gesture by Elon Musk during a speech on January 20, 2025, with some observers likening the gesture to a Nazi salute.
The image of Swift in the post on X was altered to make it look like Swift performed a right-handed salute, when she was in reality blowing a kiss with her left arm. That image dates back to October 30, 2014, when Swift performed on "Good Morning America."
The man who can be seen behind a keyboard next to drums in the blurred background at the bottom left in the post's altered image was, in fact, on the right of the stage in the original footage of Swift's performance. Other photo and video angles from the event are consistent with this, such as on Gettyimages.ca and Pinterest. This is also noticeable from Swift's horizontally flipped hairstyle when comparing it to her hairstyle in the original footage of the event.
A reverse image search using Google produced results with other versions of photos from her performance. This is what the search looked like:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Wed Jan 22 23:24:41 2025 UTC)
From the images in the search, it is possible to determine that the photo in the post on X was horizontally flipped to make it seem as if Swift extended her right arm, when in reality, she was holding the microphone with her right hand and arm at that moment. That is seen in the original footage of her performance for "GMA," archived by the Internet Archive. By using those fuller images found with Google, Lead Stories found even fuller images by then running those through Bing (archived here).
Although Lead Stories could not locate the original of the specific image used in the claim, the Internet Archive's save of Swift's performance of "Welcome to New York" shows her at the 28-second mark blowing a kiss to the crowd with her left hand, not with her right hand raised as the flipped image shows.
Here is a composite image made by Lead Stories comparing the post's altered image after it is flipped back (right) and the archived footage (left) at roughly the same moment; with her pose, clothes, facial expression and hair movement matching, and her left arm raised:
(Source: archive.org and X screenshots taken on Wed Jan 22 2025)
Flipping the fullest image horizontally back to what it should be and putting it through a reverse image search did not provide results on the origin of the image by using Google and Bing (archived here). This is what the Google search returned for "Exact matches":
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Wed Jan 22 2025)
Controversial past photo
In 2009, Swift was photographed at a party standing beside a man wearing a shirt with a swastika on it, as reported by Snopes, NBC Los Angeles and Vanity Fair.
Swift's representative told TMZ at the time that "Taylor took pictures with about 100 people that night ... she doesn't know who this guy is and she didn't realize what was on his shirt."
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Lead Stories previously debunked a claim that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave a Nazi salute when she was actually reaching out to another member of Congress. That article is here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Taylor Swift can be found here; on Nazi salutes, here.
At the time this was written, Snopes had reviewed the same claim.
