Why Protest? | TeslaTakedown Devon

Why Protest Elon Musk and Tesla?

Some people might ask, why protest Musk? Aren’t electric cars a good thing?

Isn’t he a good guy, who funds green energy research and will take us all to Mars? Sure he’s said and done some weird things but aren’t there worse people in the world we could protest?

These are very good questions! I will answer them below. It’s very long, so please sit down and make a cup of tea.

Musk’s extremist politics

Fascist salute

The one thing everyone knows about Musk is the fascist salute he performed, twice, at Trump’s inauguration. A lot of people who have only seen the still image say “He’s not the only politician in the world to have given a stiff-arm wave that can be taken out of context to look like a fascist salute.” If that’s you, watch this short video of the incident. It’s a firm, deliberate, almost violent movement, and he does it twice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw

If you aren’t familiar with the history of Musk’s flirtation with fascism, then this might have been confusing, or seem to come out of nowhere. But if you have been on the internet as long as I have, you are familiar with the alt right and their coy, almost ironic adoption of fascist signifiers in order to send a message that they are part of the “group”. If called out, they toy with their accusers, trying to make them angry and cast critics as the crazy ones, seeing signs and signals where none exist. This is what Musk was doing here. He was sending a message to the alt right that he is one of them.

He has never denied that this was a fascist salute, nor apologized.

The Alt-Right

The alt-right are a group that if you are “extremely online” you will be very familiar with. They are neo-Fascists that meet and coordinate on the internet.

The origins of the alt right, are bizarrely, tied to video game fandom. In the early 2000s there was a feminist movement to make video games more appealing to women. Feminist game creators and critics took advantage of the early internet to get discussion going about whether standard video game elements, such as scantily clad helpless women victims, or all human protagonists being white men, were necessary. They sought to influence game developers to add more female protagonists, like the early video game icon Lara Croft, and to reduce the abuse hurled at female players in online multiplayer games.

This provoked a male video game fan backlash. They felt personally attacked, and a lot of them had issues with women that they had not fully worked out, and video games were a refuge from this. This backlash was called “GamerGate.” They used their online numbers to bully female game developers and critics off the internet and out of the games industry. To this day, women game developers are nervous about having any online presence due to the potential for hundreds of trolls to suddenly take exception to you and contact you or your employer, making wild accusations or death threats.

But this did not stop at video games. These young men formed a political movement, and this movement is called the “alt-right.” Unlike traditional conservatism, this movement is not focused on family, the home and religion. These were alienated young men, who found it hard to form relationships, and were often atheists. They were attracted to simple, cathartic explanations for how they found life hard, unable to get the jobs they wanted or the girlfriends they desired. They sought scapegoats, and feminists, LGBTQ people, and racial minorities were their targets.

You may have noticed that many of Trump and Musk’s most effective aides and helpers are white men in their 20s and 30s. This movement was effective at recruiting able young men into politics on the side of the right, and revitalizing the conservative movement with youthful enthusiasm and energy. As they age, they may not be so angry about video games anymore, but the resentment against women, minorities, and LGBTQ people burns just as fiercely.

Musk has signalled again and again that he is a part of this group and welcomes their loyalty. He knows that these men will be power-brokers their whole lives, as they age out of their awkward youths and become the politicians and CEOs of tomorrow. If you wonder why he tries to portray himself as a huge fan of video games, despite having very little time to play and consequently being very bad at them, this is why: he wants to show the alt-right that he is one of them, that he was once a nerdy and socially inept young white man just like they are.

Eugenics

Eugenics is usually associated with death camps and sterilization for “undesirables” these days, but there was always a movement for “positive eugenics” in which people with “good genes” are encouraged to have large families and outbreed “lesser races” or people with disabilities, criminal records, or low IQ. Musk is very much a follower of this brand of eugenics.

You have surely noticed that he has a very large family despite not being much of a family man. His first marriage was traditional and unexceptional. But after his divorce, he seems to have become obsessed with spreading his genetics as widely as possible. Many of the mothers of his children have no romantic involvement with him at all, and their children were created by artificial insemination (IVF.) He currently has 14 acknowledged children, and rumours of more, but only seems to have a close relationship with one, 5-year-old X Æ A-Xii (X for short), who often accompanies him to events.

He does not describe himself as a eugenicist but has made references to the concepts. He often refers negatively to the lower birth rate in richer nations. He has said

““If there is not at least a birth rate which is keeping population constant, then people will disappear” and “wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of a low birth rate” and “If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad,” said Musk

This is obviously ridiculous: world population has doubled in the time I have been alive, and this trend would have to continue for hundreds of years to have any possibility of people “disappearing”. And breeding people specifically for “smartness” is eugenics, pure and simple.

If you look at birth rates by country you will notice that birth rates are high in one sort of country in particular: African countries. If you count African countries, the world is well above replacement rate for fertility.

Musk never comes out and says that he is prejudiced against black people, but his actions are troubling. He was behind the recent stir about “white genocide” in South Africa, even feeding the line to his pet AI Grok, and bringing over some white South Africans as “refugees” even as Trump clamps down on all other refugee programs. South Africa has no white genocide, but there is still bad feeling among some South African white people (Musk is from South Africa) about the end of Apartheid and the rise in crime there (which affects South Africans of every race).

The Dark Enlightenment

The Dark Enlightenment is an alt-right political movement led by the writer Curtis Yarvin and the businessman (Trump donor and friend of Musk) Peter Thiel, but the Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk are also linked to the philosophy. Musk often retweets thinkers in the Dark Enlightenment school of thought. The Dark Enlightenment is sometimes called “technofascism” as it is very popular among CEOs and high-fliers in Silicon Valley.

The basic premise is that the ideas that the Enlightenment came up with - democracy, the equality of man, science and religious tolerance - were toxic to progress and humanity and we should roll them back. Followers of the Dark Enlightenment believe first and foremost that democracy should be abolished and the President should be replaced by a dictator, who they call a monarch. Their idea of a monarch bears no resemblance to the hereditary monarchies that we see in the world today - their monarch needs to have absolute power, rather like Putin in Russia. They see the CEOs of Silicon Valley like Musk as a model for this “monarch” as they generate vast wealth at the helms of companies over which they have complete control.

Musk consulted Curtis Yarvin on his concept of a new political party for America , so it seems reasonable that he might be imagining himself as the CEO-King of America someday. Let us hope it never comes to pass. As a foreign-born citizen Musk is not eligible to run for President, but if democracy was overthrown or radically changed, that might not be an impediment.

Why this should scare you

I hope I have painted a picture of a man who should by no means be allowed near the reins of power of any democratic country. Musk flirts with fascism, and its modern equivalent, technofascism or the “Dark Enlightenment.” He does not believe all men are equal - he favors the rich and those with high IQs - and he thinks of women primarily as the bearers of the next generation, rather than people with their own ambitions and desires. He has troubling attitudes towards Africans and by extension, African-Americans as part of his campaign against DEI.

He is currently only in his 50s and both his parents are alive and in excellent health - he can expect a long and healthy life as long as he keeps his taste for drugs in check. We cannot assume that the “natural born citizen” rule will keep him in a kingmaker role. He wants power, as much of it as he can get. A lot can change in politics over the next 30 years or so, and we must keep Musk and men like him out of power for the sake of our country and our children.

Musk in elections

Funding Trump’s campaign

It’s hard to say exactly how much Elon Musk gave to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, since he might have donated more via dark means such as foreign-run social media manipulation campaigns, but the amount he openly donated was at least $290 million: making him the biggest donor to Trump’s campaign by far, and light-years ahead of the biggest Democratic donor, Michael Bloomberg at $64 billion.

Musk will likely remain the biggest donor in Republican politics for the rest of his life, given that he is likely to become the world’s first trillionaire and his political ambitions are unlikely to subside.

Impact of feud on campaign donations

Despite Musk’s public feud with Trump over the repeal of electric vehicle tax credits and the Epstein affair, it doesn’t seem to have had much impact on his donations to the Republican party ahead of the midterms: he’s already (in mid-2025) donated $15 million towards the midterms, and put $45 million dollars into his personal Superpac. Expect that number to go up - a lot - by the end of 2026.

A lot of people are surprised to find out that Musk’s current feud with Trump isn’t the first time their friendship hit the rocks. They also feuded in 2022, culminating in Trump sneering that Musk would “drop to his knees and beg” if he asked it. They are quite capable of putting aside their personal differences in pursuit of their common goal of oligarchy and extreme right-wing politics.

In Pennsylvania

Musk’s big-money interference is personal to Pennsylvanians. In 2024 he correctly deduced that the Republican ground game in PA was lackluster, and the state was critical to Republican victory. To that end, he decided to make it personal, and focused the full force of his fortune and personal charisma to bring Trump victory in PA.

It worked.

Musk spent a lot of money on bussing in paid canvassers to rural areas where both Republican and Democrat volunteers found it hard to penetrate, and personally did a series of showy stunts, where he offered $100 and an entry to a $1 million lottery to PA voters who signed his petition, with the aim of encouraging conservative young people to register to vote. Of course he could not control who they voted for after taking his bribe: but anyone with a basic understanding of human psychology can assume they predominantly voted Trump. Stats bear this out: most last-minute voter registrations were Republican.

Josh Shapiro, the PA governor, made some noises about this being possibly illegal, but since he did nothing and has done nothing since, we can expect to see similar stunts in the midterms. Musk tried the trick again with a local election in Wisconsin, where it flopped, so hopefully voters will see through this in the future, because our officials certainly seem too cowardly to bother to stop it.

Foreign elections

Musk has been outspoken in his support for the German Party, “Alternativ für Deutschland”, and the British party, “Reform”, both of which are at the extreme right of their countries’ political spectrums. AfD in particular has come worryingly close to “Nazism without the swastikas” which, given the history of Germany and Musk’s adoption of the Nazi salute at the inauguration, should cause every decent person to reject him and his politics utterly.

Germany does not allow non-citizens to donate but he has appeared onscreen at AfD events and there’s always the potential for non-monetary aid, such as pushing AfD supporters to prominence in the X algorithm for posters located in Germany.

Musk has pledged to donate to Reform, which is legal in the UK through his UK business interests, but the next British elections will not be until at least 2029.

Billionaire money in politics & Citizens United

Musk would not be able to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to SuperPacs without the Republican landmark legal decision “Citizens United” which legalized the creation of the SuperPac. Before this, individuals were limited to a maximum donation per year in the low thousands. This limit remains, but only applies to ordinary people like you or me.

The rich may set up “SuperPacs” which allow them to funnel virtually unlimited political donations, both openly, and in “dark money” which cannot be linked to their names. The $290 million that Musk openly donated may well be just the tip of the iceberg. Musk is known to donate to dark money SuperPacs, but there is no way to know which ones or how much.

Since Citizens United is a Supreme Court decision in the same manner as Roe vs Wade, it could potentially be repealed in the same way, and perhaps reduce the undemocratic level of influence the super-rich have on our elections. However, the Supreme Court is strongly Republican and likely to remain so for many decades.

X and influence on voters

Social media moguls are in a powerful position of being able to influence public discourse and thought by a few small alterations to the algorithm that decides which posts to show to users. It’s possible to categorize users by the party and causes that they support, and use that to control the frequency that posts appear in the feeds of people who might be interested. People use their feed as a way of gauging consensus opinion, causing them to alter their own opinions to fit in with the way they perceive the wind is blowing.

X isn’t the largest or most popular social media site, but it is the most influential. Politicians and business leaders need an X account to be taken seriously, and many of them use it frequently to communicate directly to voters or customers.

This gives Musk enormous power to set the political agenda and public opinion. By very slightly raising the incidence of right-wing content in all user’s feeds, Musk can give the impression that public opinion is swinging to the right. Liberal X users noted that this indeed did seem to be the case, serving right-wing influencers to people who had no interest in right-wing politics after Musk’s purchase of the platform.

There are more sinister possibilities than just a simple across-the-board boosting of right-wing thought. For instance, it is simple enough to algorithmically analyse a user’s body of posts to deduce that the user is a liberal who has one or two right-wing opinions and serve them a lot of material on the right-wing topics that they are persuaded by. And a right-wing poster with one or two left-wing opinions can be kept from ever seeing posts on those topics. Disillusioned Democrats can be served posts on the topic of “Don’t vote, it’s pointless” and disillusioned Republicans can be served the message “Your vote matters: go to the polls!”

The possibilities are endless and this is all my personal speculation with no proof. But X is a poor prospect from the point of view of profitability and there has to be some reason why Musk vastly overpaid for the platform. Influence seems the likely reason.

DOGE and Musk’s actions after the election

The reward Musk got for his vast donations was his own new government department, which he named DOGE, after the adorable Shiba Inu meme that inspired a bitcoin imitator, a reference which must have been baffling to anyone who isn’t constantly on social media. DOGE was a motley collection of mostly very young men, one even still in his teens, many of whom personally owe loyalty to Musk as ex-employees or associates.

The stated aim of DOGE was to cut waste and fraud in the government to save us money on taxes. They did indeed cut a lot of the government, but “your mileage may vary” about how much of it was waste, and none of it was fraud. Very little money was saved in comparison to the vast scale of government budgets and many useful departments were purged or closed, as well as hundreds of thousands of civil servants fired. The closure of USAID was particularly cruel: tens of millions of poor people in the Third World are expected to die as a result.

These days DOGE seems uninterested in cuts and much more interested in getting access to all government systems and databases. What they are doing with this data, we do not know. We do know that they are collaborating with Palantir, the data processing company owned by Musk’s friend and fellow South African right-wing extremist Peter Thiel, to compile data on every American based on the data held by the IRS and other government systems.

Palantir is named after the evil crystal ball network in “The Lord of the Rings” which allowed the villain Sauron to spy on the good people of the world as well as manipulate his enemies with distorted visions of the truth: the good-guy Denethor was sent mad by visions from the Palantir that persuaded him that there was no hope in resisting, and he committed suicide rather than face Sauron. Both Thiel and Musk are science-fiction nerds and this symbolism was intentional.

Palantir is used for many kinds of data mining, including the innocuous or beneficial, but what it excels at is collating data on individuals. No doubt Palantir knows a lot about you and me - things like protests we have been to, debts we owe, employment and health history, social media posts, that sort of thing. It could be extremely useful to anyone with access to it in an election campaign. Propaganda campaigns tailored to each individual based on computer analysis are completely possible using Palantir and similar tools.

Musk’s drug abuse and mental imbalance

In recent years, Musk’s mental health seems to have obviously degraded, causing speculation about how a man who seems to have been odd but essentially stable until his late 40’s could have changed so quickly. His mental health issues seem to have coincided with his sudden political change from centrism to right-wing extremism. Rumors abound in Silicon Valley about his legendary drug-fuelled parties. He claims to use Ketamine in a limited fashion as prescribed for his depression, but rumor suggests he uses it much more than that, as well as recreational drugs.

He has taken many bizarre actions. Public Nazi salutes. After being jeered by the crowd at a comedy show he locked himself in his office for so long his staff nearly called for a wellness check. He turned up to meetings with a black eye that he blamed on his little son. He behaved manically on stage with Trump and in interviews, bounding around or racing around with a fake chainsaw.

No matter the cause of his erratic behavior, a person who acts this way should not be given vast government contracts nor allowed unlimited power in government.

Musk’s feud with Trump

On June 6th, Musk tweeted "Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public." He deleted the tweet about a day later, but the damage had been done, and many people, both liberal and conservative, realized that Trump was much closer to Epstein than most people had been aware.

This appears to have been in response to the Big Beautiful Bill, which not only cut Electric Vehicle subsidies (damaging Tesla) but increased the deficit hugely, dwarfing DOGE’s cuts to the federal government bureaucracy and making Musk look foolish.

Trump and Musk have been feuding on-and-off ever since. Elon Musk threatened to start a rival conservative party, the America party, but seems to have dropped the idea and is contributing heavily to Trump and Republicans again.

What is going on behind the scenes would be very interesting to know, but it would naive to think that the breach between them is irreparable or that Musk is no longer a Republican. Trump and Musk feuded before in 2022 and had no problems in making up in time for the 2024 election.

Protest Aims

What can we do?

#1 Don’t buy a Tesla - even if it is the best EV for you. Buy another EV brand if you are in the market for a new car and can get an EV. EVs are the best type of car for the environment and should not be disregarded because of the association with Tesla.

#2 Sell your Tesla if you can reasonably afford to do so. Obviously, if this would be a hardship for you, do not. Put on a bumper sticker disparaging Musk if you can’t sell it.

#3 If friends and family are considering buying an EV, recommend that they do not buy Tesla. If they are liberal or left, give them a few facts about Musk’s toxic effect on the political system. If they are not, try singing the praises of an alternative brand of EV, especially if you own one.

#4 Attend Tesla Takedown Protests. Anyone can get a few friends together and add a Tesla Takedown protest to the map if you happen to live near a Tesla store. Here’s the link: it is completely free. https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown?source=website

#5 Cancel Starlink subscription if you have one and can find an alternative. This may be difficult: it is the only service available in some very rural areas.

#6 Cancel T-Mobile: they have partnered with Starlink to offer satellite service for an extra monthly fee. Be sure to call them to cancel rather than doing it on the website so that you can tell them why you are doing it. When I cancelled the guy on the phone seemed to know exactly what I was talking about, so I’m sure I’m not the only one he’s heard from.

#7 Do not use or subscribe to Grok, Musk’s AI.

#8 Do not use or subscribe to X.

#9 Pressure your elected officials to end Citizens United. Musk would not be able to donate such vast sums of money without it.

#10 If you have influence on a pension fund urge them to divest their investments from Tesla.

What results do we hope for?

Show billionaires that consumers are a force to be reckoned with, and complying with fascism has a cost to their pockets.

Make Elon Musk a name that the average person knows and dislikes. He’s going to be an influence on politics for many years, and he has an arrogant personality that alienates most people if they know much about him.

Show passers-by that fascism and support of fascism is not something we meekly tolerate in our communities. Tesla Takedown protests are not just in town squares and public areas of assembly like regular protests: they are in suburbs and strip malls and places that generally do not see any political activity.

Links for more information

Alt-right and Technofascism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/why-silicon-valley-is-bringing-eugenics

Financial Times on the Dark Enlightenment: https://www.ft.com/content/02217acf-ac64-49c2-acd5-ef4f107f014c

Ed Niedermeyer: Wrote a book on Tesla and its dubious practices: https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.online