From Fortune magazine, March 21:
Organizers behind ‘Tesla Takedown’ protests aren’t backing down despite pressure from Trump: ‘Our goal is to bankrupt Elon Musk’
- Early organizers of some of the “Tesla Takedown” protests say the organization’s goal is to hit Elon Musk where it hurts: his wealth. As protests surge and Tesla’s stock plummets, even loyal investors are turning against the CEO, blaming his political ties for the company’s decline.
Fred McKinney loved his Tesla. He bought his first car—a Tesla Model 3—in November 2018 and describes himself as a Tesla evangelist. Over the last few months, he’s come to regret it.
“It was a great car,” McKinney, co-founder of the economic consulting company BJM Solutions, told Fortune. “And I wasn’t just a casual Tesla owner, I was an evangelist for the vehicle and the company, and quite frankly, for Musk.”
“I have remorse now about that because he’s proven to be someone that doesn’t deserve my support.”
McKinney sold his Tesla in February, swapping it out for an alternative electric vehicle. He cites Musk’s role in the Trump administration, especially his connection to the cost-cutting team DOGE, as the reason. “It was a political decision but also a moral decision,” he said. “I see the damage that [DOGE] is doing to the fabric of our society.”
McKinney didn’t know he was part of a wider movement when he ditched the car.
“When I sold my car, the uprising that is now taking place around the world was probably in its infancy, and I didn’t know anything about it, but I was comforted to see that others felt the same way,” he said.
Over the last few months, protests against Tesla have erupted worldwide—some peaceful, while others have involved vandalism and arson. The efforts have caused the EV maker’s stock to plummet, tanked car sales, and angered investors.
Early organizers told Fortune the aim is to hit Musk where it hurts: his wealth.
Who are the ‘Tesla Takedown Movement’?
The action against Tesla has impacted Musk’s personal wealth, wiping around $175 billion off his December peak of $486 billion, per Bloomberg’s billionaire index.
One of the early coordinators of the “Tesla Takedown” movement, Edward Niedermeyer, told Fortune that this wealth drop is exactly the aim.
“The goal, I would say, is to bankrupt Elon Musk—bring down his empire,” he told Fortune.
Musk is still the richest person in the world despite his recent losses, but Tesla is paying the price for some of his unpopular activities outside of the company. “Hopefully it does spiral on Tesla stock,” Niedermeyer said. “If we don’t bankrupt him, but we exert enough financial pressure to materially change a political situation, that’s fine, too.”
Unlike McKinney, Niedermeyer is not new to his anti-Musk sentiment.
He has been a critic of Tesla and the company’s CEO for years, publishing a book in 2019 providing a highly skeptical view of the electric car company’s history. Musk has, in turn, publicly criticized Niedermeyer in the past. He puts the recent rise of organized objection to Musk and Tesla down to a “perfect storm” of “outrage about the political situation and the lack of other outlets.”
“It’s much harder to target Donald Trump’s financial wealth,” he said.
The protests and the violence associated with the movement have, however, prompted threats from Trump, who vowed to label vandalism and attacks against the carmaker as domestic terrorism.
But Niedermeyer is relatively unbothered by this, saying he also disapproves of the violent acts and vandalism.
“I don’t have a problem in theory of people being prosecuted for this,” he said. “The only thing that worries me about it is if there’s some effort to take what is clearly a peaceful movement—as the only organized part is peaceful—and deem something like Tesla Takedown a terrorist organization.”
“As far as I can tell, this has all been individuals acting alone … whereas protesters all show up in the daytime with our faces uncovered. So there’s a clear, a clear distinction there,” he said. “These people are not domestic terrorists in any sense.”....
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