Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s one-word response to a viral post about British rule in India has sparked outrage.

Elon Musk’s recent comment on X (formerly Twitter) — actually a one-word reply — has stirred significant controversy online.

X user Freedomain (Stefan Molyneux, MA) posted a statement saying:

“If Indians set foot in England and become English, then the English who set foot in India became Indian. Therefore, the English did not rule India...”

The post, which has garnered over 22.6 million views, drew a response from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who replied with a thinking face emoji (🤔). His reaction quickly went viral, sparking backlash from users who criticized the flawed logic and distortion of historical facts.

Musk’s brief reply has already attracted nearly 10 million views, with many users — particularly from India — reminding him that colonization and immigration are not the same thing.

Musk Gets Schooled on Anti-India Post

One user wrote,

“If you want to defend the indefensible, at least have the spine to admit you agree with the racist bigotry behind colonization. The way the British Empire depicted India in their political cartoons shows exactly how ‘Indian’ the British were.”

Another user added,

“What the Brits did to India cannot be compared to the legal immigration of Indians to the UK.”

Another user lashed out at Musk, saying,

“You’ve already tweaked your algorithm to spread hate against Indians. You and your dumb logic. The real Q.E.D. will be when Indians in the UK loot trillions of pounds of British wealth and send it to India, take over power in the UK, enslave the population, and starve millions to death — just like Churchill did.”

A fourth user remarked,

“There’s a huge difference between someone legally joining Tesla with proper documentation and someone invading, overthrowing you, and declaring that they’ll run the company.”

Questioning the logic behind the viral post, another user wrote,

“What kind of reasoning is this? Even if, for a moment, we accept the argument that the English who set foot in India became Indian — were those Englishmen in India making laws for India, or was it the British Parliament, elected by English people in England, that was making those laws?”