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Elon Musk Under Fire for Using Anti-Disability Slur on X
By Will Neal,
1 day ago
Not content with goading British rioters or trying to bait South American dictators into cage fights, a controversial tweet has yet again landed the world’s richest man in hot water.
After being directly confronted on the platform by activist and lawyer Seth Abramson over whether he had in fact supplied one of Putin’s closest allies with a Tesla vehicle, Musk tweeted : “Are you seriously so r-----ed that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general? That’s amazing.”
The anti-disability slur immediately sparked backlash in the comments section. One user posted “words like the r word are awful and insulting and should never be used in this day and age,” with another person adding “Do you actually use that word like that? What an a--hole.”
As someone who’s previously been candid about his experiences of growing up with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, Musk’s cruel choice of insult was all the more curious for it actually having been used against him at school.
Back in 2022, the Tesla CEO’s estranged father, Errol Musk, spoke in a YouTube interview about being called in for a meeting with one of Musk’s teachers when the future PayPal founder was only in the second grade. “We think Elon’s r-----ed,” he remembered being told. “We think he needs a special school.”
His seemingly abrupt transformation from one-time humanitarian to a darling among far-right conspiracy theorists has also raised widespread concerns over his mental health. Not least given he’s admitted to using ketamine in treating his depression , though he claimed earlier in March to be “ almost always sober ” during tweet sessions.
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