‘Don’t buy Nazi cars!’: taking on Tesla from the showrooms to the plants

Last Saturday was a cold, blustery but sunny day in Chicago, when 25 of us picketed Tesla’s showroom at 900 N. Rush Street. Located just west of Chicago’s famed “Magnificent Mile” shopping district, the streets on the weekends are crowded with the wealthy who live in the area and tourists from around the globe. But, plenty of people work in the many retail shops or are out window shopping. It’s a perfect location for a Tesla showroom whose pricey cars are for the rich or those who want to appear to be rich.

It was the second weekend of protests targeting Tesla, whose notorious CEO is Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and best-known Nazi. Sitting at the right hand of Donald Trump, Musk has been the president’s hatchet man, destroying the United States’ already ragged welfare state, savaging the federal workforce, paralysing agencies designated to protect unions and the environment, and the list keeps expanding daily. The wide variety of federal workers across the country and their unions face the brunt of the offensive, but resistance has been building.

Protests and rallies by federal workers have taken place, and a new rank-and-file federal workers’ network has emerged; it will take some time for workplace struggle to meet the challenge thrown at them, which is historically unprecedented. When President Ronald Reagan fired striking federal air traffic controllers in 1981 (represented by PATCO, which endorsed Reagan for president the previous year), it was seen as historically unprecedented and the signal for a rollback of the US trade union movement for two decades that followed.

The Trump administration’s blitzkrieg attack has caught many off guard, despite plenty of forewarning of what would come if he won the election. However, Trump’s policies have not proved popular, while the conspicuous role of the super-billionaire Musk has added to their unpopularity. Republican congressional representatives who have held “town hall meetings” have faced the wrath of their constituents, and the milquetoast Democrats are catching hell from theirs as well. Meanwhile, Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance’s interventions in European politics bolstering far-right and straight-up Nazi parties, like the Alternative for Germany, have also shocked many people.

Tesla takedown

Musk derives much of his wealth from his stock ownership of Tesla and Space X, along with his faux reputation as a “genius inventor” and innovative “clean energy” businessman. Despite his swagger and arrogance, Musk has weak spots that we should be punching as hard as we can right now. Tesla is the prime target. Tesla’s sales have plummeted in Europe and one of the major reasons is Musk’s promotion of the far right. According to the New York Times:

“In Germany, home to Tesla’s only factory in Europe, only 1,277 new Tesla vehicles were registered in the month, the German Federal Motor Transport Authority reported on Wednesday. German consumers turned instead to domestic and Chinese automakers for electric cars, which recorded a 54 percent increase in demand in January.

“Tesla’s sales plummeted 63 percent in France in January from a year earlier, and 12 percent in Britain, where Mr. Musk riled Prime Minister Keir Starmer through inflammatory social media posts. Sweden, where a mechanics’ strike against Tesla is now in its second year, saw demand for its cars slide 44 percent last month, while sales in Norway dropped 38 percent.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Times reported:

“The decline is also noticeable in the United States, although not as steep. In California, the largest U.S. market for electric cars, Tesla’s sales have been declining for months. Registration of new Tesla vehicles fell 11.6 percent there in 2024 even as overall sales of electric cars and trucks climbed 1.2 percent, according to the California New Car Dealers Association.”

We can do better here in the United States. Musk must be made into a pariah and buying his cars and pickups made socially unacceptable. Inspired by actor, director, and documentary filmmaker Alex Winter, protests have taken place at Tesla showrooms all over the United States. Largely organised through social media, especially at Bluesky’s #takedowntesla, many have drawn a handful to many dozens of people. Winter explained in Rolling Stone how the call against Tesla happened:

“On Monday, Feb. 10, the fearless and brilliant sociologist Joan Donovan made a simple post on Bluesky: ‘Come out and participate in an international picket #TeslaTakeover locally. Stand up and be counted!’ I’d met Donovan when I was touring for my documentary about the role of YouTube in the rise of the far right, and I like the idea of Tesla store protests, so I sent her a direct message asking if I could do some organizing to help drive turnout.

“She said yes, and I immediately cleared time from my day and got busy. First, I reached out to organizers and allies I’ve met in the 15 years that I’ve been trying to raise the alarm about the rising power of Silicon Valley oligarchs. Next, I made a quick database and sign-up form using online tools. Then I posted it all to Bluesky. And that was it. What I assumed would be a relatively small, one day event.”

The burst of activism is refreshing and exciting. Winter calculated:

“There have now been protests outside of Tesla locations in over 100 cities, and the movement is picking up speed and going global. Our website has thousands of visitors a day, signing on for protests, creating their own and downloading our resources. Just as many people are showing up in front of Tesla real estate through entirely separate organizations, like Indivisible and a new formation of rank and file federal workers called the Federal Unionists Network. Another massive day of action is planned this weekend. There are reports that Tesla’s shareholders are already souring on the company’s CEO and chairperson. The stock is dipping.”

Global war against unions

Targeting Musk and Tesla is an important development in the struggle against the second Trump administration and fascism in the United States. Yet, for the movement to become sustainable it has to move beyond appeals to “Sell your Tesla. Dump your stock.” Most of us will never own a Tesla or own stock in the company. One of the most important lessons we can learn from the struggle against the last, infamous auto-magnet fascist Henry Ford is the importance of union organisation. Ford was the last of the Big Three auto companies to sign a contract with the young United Auto Workers union in 1941, ending a long, dark era for Ford workers.

Elon Musk is waging a global war against unions from Fremont, California, to Sweden to Berlin. His promotion of the far right is part of a plan to keep his plants unorganised and his workers under his thumb. The struggle against fascism and for organising the Tesla plants are one and the same struggle. Driving him from the White House would be a huge victory, while organising his plants could push him into oblivion.

First published at Joe Allen at Medium. Joe Allen is a socialist based in the United States. He is the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the US Lost.