The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Friday morning cancelled a scheduled speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed a fascist-style salute there hours before.

Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016 and is now a popular rightwing podcast show host, finished his CPAC speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed and palm down – a sign that echoed the Nazi salute and a controversial gesture made by the tech billionaire Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.

Bardella, of the far-right National Rally party in France, pulled out of CPAC citing Bannon’s allusion to “Nazi ideology”.

The salute during Bannon’s speech brought cheers from the audience at the US gathering.

Bardella, who was in Washington ahead of his appearance and had said he intended to talk about relations between the US and France, issued a statement saying: “Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers, out of provocation, allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”

The National Rally party was bested in France’s snap election last summer by a leftwing alliance.

Bannon on Thursday night fired up the CPAC crowd, where he spoke directly after Musk, the man who has eclipsed him in Trump’s circle and with whom Bannon is not on good terms.

“The only way that they win is if we retreat, and we are not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we are not going to quit – we’re going to fight, fight, fight,” Bannon said of opponents, echoing Trump’s exhortation to supporters following the assassination attempt on him.

Bannon then flung out his right arm at an angle with his palm pointing down. The Nazi salute is perhaps more familiar, especially from historical footage of Adolf Hitler, with the arm pointing straight forward – but the fascist overtone of Bannon and Musk’s signals has been unmistakable.

The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down”.

“Steve Bannon’s long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists is well known and well documented by ADL and others,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote on X in response, adding: “We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”

Bannon, speaking to a French journalist from Le Point news magazine on Friday, said the gesture was not a Nazi salute but was “a wave like I did all the time”.

“I do it at the end of all of my speeches to thank the crowd,” Bannon said.

However, from video, when he shoots his arm in the brief, straight-arm gesture, then nods sharply with a smile, to audience cheers, and says “amen”, it looks distinctly different from the very end of his address, when Bannon walked about the stage saluting the audience, throwing first his right arm out, then his left arm out, in a looser gesture that looked much more like conventional post-speech acknowledgment of a crowd.

Online, some far-right users suggested Bannon had made the gesture purposely to “trigger” liberals and the media. Others distanced themselves.

Nick Fuentes, a far-right influencer and Trump ally who uses his platform to share his antisemitic views, said in a livestream that Bannon’s salute was “getting a little uncomfortable even for me”.

Bannon’s gesture, like Musk’s, has been characterized by some as a “Roman salute” – though some historians argue that is a distinction without a difference. Some rightwing supporters have argued, without evidence, that the Roman salute originated in ancient Rome. Historians have found, instead, that it was adopted by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, and then Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany.

However the ADL concluded that in that group’s view Musk had “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute”.

The Bannon speech showcased CPAC’s evolution from a traditional conservative conference to an all-out Trump-centric rally. Bannon also spoke about the forthcoming election in 2028, prompting cheers of “We want Trump,” and saying himself: “We want Trump in 28.”

The statement echoed those of Trump himself, who on Wednesday asked a crowd if he should run again, was met with calls of “four more years”, and called himself a “KING” in a post on social media. US presidents are limited to two terms.

Meanwhile, Musk on Thursday brandished a chainsaw at CPAC, gloating over the slashing of federal jobs he is overseeing across multiple departments, in the face of legal challenges and protests. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy”.

It was handed to him on stage by Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei.

• Steve Bannon
• Far right (US)
• The far right
• Maryland
• Donald Trump
• Trump administration
• Elon Musk
• news