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Elon Musk recently replied to a Finnish student accusing him of spreading disinformation on X with an expletive-laden response. The X owner fired back at PhD student and activist Joni Askola for his post, calling him a "retard" (a slur referring to people with mental disabilities).
His tweet came days after the billionaire took to the social media platform to advocate for "more positive, beautiful or informative" content. On January 5, 2024, Joni Askola urged the EU to take action against Musk, claiming he was the "largest spreader of disinformation in human history."
Elon Musk replied to the post with “F u retard.” Askola's original tweet received 4.1 million views, while Musk's response had 2.4 million views at the time of writing this article.
“Elon Musk is rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history, hijacking political debates in the process. The EU must take action!” Askola tweeted.
When did Elon Musk tweet about sharing "more positive, beautiful or informative" content?
Elon Musk's expletive tweet targeting the Finnish student came days after the billionaire engaged in a war of words with MAGA supporters on X, advocating for leniency in the H-1B visa process to hire highly skilled foreign labor to the US workforce.
Musk claimed that the US lacked "talented and motivated" engineers, a sentiment met with intense backlash from several Americans.
On December 29, 2024, Musk asked people to share "more positive, beautiful or informative" content to combat the negativity. Several pointed out the hypocrisy in his post, with Shark Tank mentor Mark Cuban urging him to start the positivity by posting, "You first."
According to a Daily Beast report, Elon Musk's use of the slur "retard" has exponentially increased over the past few weeks. The tech billionaire reportedly used the word or a variation in over 15 instances since December 20, 2024.
Elon Musk also endorsed a post that referred to American workers as "retarded" during his recent online debate regarding the H-1B visa. The original post explained the core difference between "right right" and "tech right" in the post uploaded to X on December 26, 2024.
The original tweet claimed that the "right right" wanted to keep America for Americans, while the "tech right" wanted to strengthen America's workforce by hiring skilled foreign workers because Americans were "retarded," writing:
"So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and the tech right is like "hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs," and the right right was like "no you need to hire americans," and the tech right is like "but you guys are retarded," and the right right is like "well you don't train us," and the tech right is like "you can't outtrain being retarded," and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don't like Indians."
The H-1B visa debate on X, which began during Christmas, saw the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy band against vocal right-wing supporters to endorse leniency in the visa process to open doors for skilled foreign labor from countries like India. Musk posted that he was willing to "go to war on this issue" in a post at the time.
President-elect Donald Trump also backed Musk on the issue. In an exclusive interview with The New York Post on December 28, Trump said he had "always been in favor of the visas."
