Elon Musk is begging Americans to destroy Tesla

But don't let the awesomeness of the #TeslaTakedown fool you. Musk's persistence comes from the same evil machine that props up Trump.

Last week offered another in a series of heartbreaking reminders to all Americans who care about freedom, science, and each other: No one is coming to save us.

Not Senate Democrats. Not the courts. And certainly not the governor of our largest state, who has chosen fashy bro podcasting over opposing the current regime. Not anyone but ourselves. If America is to survive the next 1,400 or so days of the Trump presidency as something resembling a free and fair democracy, it’s all on us.

This is why we must do our best to take down what may be the sole reason we are in this mess: Tesla Motors.

Elon Musk's flagship operation's inflated and entirely suspect value must go down because he has left us no other choice. We are obligated by our history as Americans to do our very best to destroy his companies and him through them until he wisely decides to leave us the fuck alone. Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor depend on it.

No one elected Musk Emperor of America to threaten our Social Security, cancer research, and personal data. Given the strategically broken manner in which our government now operates, the people have no other recourse for checking a private citizen determined to act as our eternal overlord and, through him, the wannabe tyrant he installed.

And despite his purposely addled mind, Musk has to know we have no choice but to hurt him the only way we can. So one has to suspect that no one wants Musk’s demise more than Elon Musk himself.

Why the #TeslaTakedown rules

In just over a month, a movement that almost no one had heard about is now changing how this entire country feels about Elon Musk and the power of the people.

At TeslaTakedown.com, which just launched in early March, you’ll find everything you need to know about this peaceful protest movement that is encouraging everyone to:

• Sell Your Teslas
• Dump Your Stock
• Stop Musk Now

There have already been hundreds of protests at Tesla dealerships and showrooms. Thousands more are coming, and dozens are listed for pretty much any day of the week.

How can we measure the results of this unique movement, the one idea the people have devised that is as unprecedented in its own way as Musk’s hostile takeover of our government?

You could point to the nearly $150 billion losses Tesla’s stock has suffered. Honestly, Donald Trump and Elon Musk deserve the most credit for that. Trump’s ridiculous trade war and Musk’s reckless assault on the federal government—dangerously designed to destroy America’s power to innovate and care—probably deserve more credit for the slaughter of all the financial market gains that bubbled up after Trump’s victories.

If you doubt that the Takedown has taken Tesla’s already wounded brand and market value down, think of the clownish infomercial at the White House. Trump and Musk abjured all conflicts of interest to turn a jewel of our nation into a used car lot. The flop sweat flowed more smoothly than Potomac as the whiff of “desperation” settled across the land.

This was not so much an event to restore Tesla’s once prestigious image as an industry-leading maker of electric vehicles, but rather an attempt to retcon the company as the Trump of cars. And while that certainly added some quick blood sugar to Trump’s sales from pliable drones who would have been celebrating burning coal days ago, it’s likely to be a dead end for Tesla’s sales in the US, which had already been declining and will likely never recover.

In conclusion, any marketing event that ends with this guy becoming your brand ambassador has to be considered a disaster.

While we cannot hope to make Tesla as massively unpopular here as it is now in Germany—where they have an excellent Nazi sniffers—everyone has played any role in the #TeslaTakedown should take a well-earned bow.

But then again

Given the situation we’ve allowed ourselves and our nation to fall into, we must always check to see if we’re being consumed by the delusion we assume has swallowed our opponents.

Maybe Ted Cruz is a great brand ambassador! Maybe platforming and suckling fascists is the way to become the next Democratic nominee for president! Maybe people like what Elon Musk is doing to our government.

From my constant exposure to the work of Andrea Pitzer—who studied authoritarianism around the globe to write ONE LONG NIGHT, her global history of concentration camps—I am forcing myself never to forget the power of propaganda, which drowns out sense wherever there are wannabe strongmen and concetration camps.

If you ever ask yourselves, how are these clowns getting away with this shit? The answer is almost always “propaganda.” I’ve been writing extensively about how American authoritarians have created the most effective and slimiest Machine for Fascism, as Marcy Wheeler calls it, in the world.

This machine’s foundations are AM radio and Fox News. But on top of that is an endless series of digital lie manufacturing plants, with Musk’s X operating like a nuclear reactor to power them all. That site is essentially a Skinner Box that normalizes Nazism. Musk literally pays you to spread what would once been shamed as Nazi propaganda, as he spreads the same sick shit himself to his hundreds of millions of followers. And it would be comedic and merely annoying and not an existential threat if Musk didn’t inherit billions of mostly unsuspecting users, as the site still plays a pivotal role in how many, if not most, of the country’s leading thought-makers still get their news.

The incentives for spreading right-wing propaganda only get more attractive while the best are punished for having any conviction at all. The result is a massive shift toward the right in how America thinks about policy.

An early (yet suspect) poll from Harvard CAPS/Harris showed Trump with an extremely high approval rating, which has plummeted since, but massive numbers for the key policies of this administration: deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes (81%), eliminating fraud and waste in government expenditures (76%), and closing the border (76%).

These far-right reactionary policies have been effectively mainstreamed by the right-wing media, which has made them so popular that many Democrats feel the need to at least pay lip service to them, which means there’s almost no visible opposition or exposure to counter messages. So it should be no surprise that about 3 out of 4 Americans favor what Musk is pretending to do.

Of course, the damage he’s doing is so widespread and increasingly hard to ignore, and the lies he is using to justify his horrific actions are often so transparent that the public has fully turned on his efforts, at least according to a new Quinnipiac University National Poll:

Sixty percent of voters disapprove of the way Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, are dealing with workers employed by the federal government, while 36 percent approve.

That 36 percent number is probably the share of Americans who are entirely absorbed in the Machine for Fascism and impervious to facts. It’s probably even bigger because many of us only get news from loved ones.

So, of course:

There is a wide partisan divide.

Republicans (77 - 16 percent) approve, while Democrats (96 - 2 percent) and independents (68 - 28 percent) disapprove.

But we cannot hope to sway those who willingly reside in the Machine of Fascism. Independents, on the other hand, may have wandered out of boredom, confusion, or lack of a better option. We need to get them out.

This is why, as Andrea says in the most recent episode of Next Comes What above, Elon Musk is a perfect target of the #TeslaTakedown.

When in the course of human events

He is also, I repeat, a perfect target because this is the only way to get to him.

We’re not supposed to have an unelected fraud running around our government hacking us and decimating our ability to protect each other. Ideally, we’re not supposed to have an elected fraud doing that, either. But our Constitution, sawed to pieces by the Roberts Court, allowed Elon Musk to spend $45 billion to give us that.

We are effectively living in a monarchy with a Republican Congress, enabled by key Senate Democrats, entirely resigned to act as a help desk for tyranny.

In American history, elections have acted as a never-ending Declaration of Independence, allowing groups to free themselves from our shackles. Now, our country’s vices have shackled us to Elon Musk.

Our job is to teach him that we’re not stuck to him. He’s stuck to us.

And if we’re going down, he’s first.