A below-the-belt counterpunch

‘‘. . . it is hard to picture a more striking example of an ad hominem attack – one directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.’’

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but there’s hardly a word more damaging than ‘‘pedo’’. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has levelled the charge – without a scintilla of supportive evidence or context – against a British diver who scorned his proffered ‘‘mini-sub’’ solution for the Thailand flooded cave rescue.

Challenged online to provide any basis for the incendiary tweet to his 22 million followers, Musk replied: ‘‘Bet you a signed dollar it’s true’’. Madness.

Musk may be feeling that his target, British diver Vern Unsworth, started the combat by witheringly describing his mini-sub offer as a publicity stunt of no actual help for the rescuers.

And Unsworth was hardly gentle in his own criticisms, going so far as to tell CNN Musk could ‘‘stick his submarine where it hurts’’.

Nevertheless it is hard to picture a more striking example of an ad hominem attack – one directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

He didn’t even make it the face-value message of his tweet, which was essentially that he would make a video to prove the mini-sub could have made it to Cave 5 ‘‘no problemo’’. The damage was done in the signoff comment, ‘‘Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.’’

Pedo is not a description to be used loosely or metaphorically. It’s a word that carries a distinct meaning to as far as the public is concerned and that’s as a contraction of paedophile. Perhaps we should acknowledge that it can also mean ‘‘relating to soil’’. But it’s hard to find a context for that in the depths of a cave. And it’s not something that Musk has been quick to proclaim by way of clarification. He has, however, deleted the two tweets. And now he is on a journey, in a mini-sub of his own making, into the darkest depths of defamatory danger.

If he cannot support something that without support can be seen only as the most reckless of accusations, then he may find himself signing away far, far more than a single dollar.

His problems will now come not only from the potential direction of Unsworth himself.

This tweet tells the public, and just as pointedly, his funders, nothing good about Musk’s selfdiscipline or ability to make responsible – even sane – calls under pressure. Or, in this case, even a sense of aggrieved provocation.

Such warning bells won’t be lost on all but his most starstruck shareholders.

And it’s not as though Musk hasn’t been getting the message for a while now that he needs to improve his self-control on Twitter, after drawing widespread criticism for the aggressive nature of his tweets at critics and journalists.

He even tweeted, mere days before this latest incident.

‘‘I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. That is my mistake. I will correct it.’’

Instead he may just have challenged the President of the United States as the most factually reckless tweeter of recent times.