Elon Musk Has Brought 'The R-Word' Back — And It's Part Of A Disturbing New Trend
HuffPost
It fits in with a "politics of cruelty" that's been running rampant in the White House.
If, culturally, you thought we left “the R-word” back in the late ’90s, you’d unfortunately be wrong.
Elon Musk, President Donald Trump’s buddy-in-chief and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is among those who uses the slur regularly: In the past year, Musk, has used “retarded” as an insult at least a dozen times on X, the social media platform he owns and obsessively posts on.
Musk ― who’s always been something of a shit poster, even at 53 ― has directed the word at famed Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, actor Ben Stiller, and most recently, Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor and authoritarianism expert who got under Musk’s skin by criticizing the Trump administration.
“I’m tempted to call this guy a retard but I won’t because I’ve used that word too many times,” Musk tweeted to his almost 200 million followers on Feb. 22 in response to commentary from Snyder.
You can’t lay the blame for the R-word’s comeback all at Musk’s feet ― it’s true that 4-Chan posters and wannabe edge lord comedians never stopped using the word ― but it’s undeniable that Musk’s voice has an impact. A recent study out of Montclair State University found that the use of the slur triples on X when the tech CEO tweets the word himself.
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