Exterior shot of Salem, Oregon’s Tesla Showroom on 2755 Mission Road. Four variations of Tesla Vehicles remain outside the showroom. Photo via Stephanie Romeo, ’25.
Beginning the Uprise Against Musk
From peaceful protests in the streets to attacks on showrooms, consumers are revolting against the Tesla brand because of owner Elon Musk’s involvement with the Trump Administration.
Many Americans are upset at Elon Musk and his political actions. They are showing their discontent by acting against his largest company, Tesla. This outrage is now to the point where the movement is worldwide.
Where, and More Importantly, How?
In February, an insurrectionist threw a Molotov cocktail into a Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colorado, damaging a vehicle. Since this incident, additional Tesla dealerships are running into similar situations, occurring in cities like Tigard and Salem, Oregon, Las Vegas, Nevada and Rome, Italy. Each revolter at these Tesla dealerships are using Molotov cocktails to burn and inflict vehicular damage. Some of these attacks also included gunfire as a protesting method.
In March, protesters shot the windows of both the Tigard and Salem dealerships. The Tigard location, specifically, had two instances of gunfire within the same week with the second occurrence damaging vehicles and already boarded up windows.
Fascism Begins to Lurk in America
Besides burning and destroying vehicles, anti-Elon fanatics are affecting the Tesla brand in other facets. At the first reported attack in Loveland rioters painted the words Nazi Cars on the windows of the dealership. This is likely in reference to Elon Musk’s “Salute” that he performed during a rally, held by the Trump Administration.
“My heart goes out to you,” Elon Musk said following his salute on January 20, 2025.
Elon Musk is facing extreme backlash because the salute he performed resembles the Nazi salute. Musk responded to the accusations that he is a Nazi in multiple different posts on his app, X. In one post he made multiple jokes about the situation by referencing prominent Nazi figures.
“Do not say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Goring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did Nazi that coming[crying laughing emoji],” Musk said in a X post.
A Battle of Politics on X
This post drew heavy criticism from many people and companies. The Anti-Defamation-League, (ADL), deems these puns as attempts to underplay the Holocaust.
“Making inappropriate and highly offensive jokes that trivialize the Holocaust only serve to minimize the evil and inhumanity of Nazi crimes, denigrate the suffering of both victims and survivors and insult the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah,” the ADL said in a post on X on January 23.
While not in direct response to the ADL, Musk did defend himself on X, standing firm behind his actions.
“It was astonishing how insanely hard legacy media tried to cancel me for saying ‘my heart goes out to you’ and moving my hand from my heart to the audience. In the end, this deception will just be another nail in the coffin of legacy media.” Musk said in an X post.
To further illustrate their displeasure, people created cutouts of the gesture Musk made and placed them onto Tesla chargers outside a dealership in London, England. An activism group named “Overthrow Musk” posted these cutouts on Instagram, captioning them “Giving a wave to anyone considering buying a Tesla in Tottenham today.”
Action against Musk has come from a peaceful protest movement called “TeslaTakedown.” This movement urges Tesla owners to sell their vehicles in order to stop Elon Musk.
“Sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines. Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk. Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy. The stakes could not be higher. No one is coming to save us—not politicians, not the media,” the movement leaders said on their website.
Musk’s Implementation Into American Government
The movement is as a large-scale “solution” to the actions that Musk is making since becoming a “special government employee,” dubbed by President Trump. Since assuming his position, Musk has created large amounts of controversy with what he has done as the head of DOGE (Department Of Government Efficiency.) Trump created this department on January 20, 2025 through discussions between him and Elon. Its purpose is to cut federal spending as they characterized it as waste, fraud, and abuse.
In this time, Musk has overstepped his authority multiple times in attempts to make government decisions based on what his department’s goals are. The primary action that Musk is held accountable for that has stirred up controversy is the mass amounts of job cuts. As an attempt to eliminate what he views as taxpayers’ money being wasted, he has worked as the head of DOGE to cut approximately 280,000 jobs across 27 government agencies. These job cuts have led to millions of citizens being upset at how many people are now out of jobs. This displeasure has led to many organized protests across the world in order to stop Musk.
As organized by TeslaTakedown, protests took place at every single Tesla dealership in the United States, as well as in over 10 different international countries. This set a goal of approximately 500 protests worldwide. While these goals were very ambitious, the protesters far exceeded. There were reportedly protests in 250 different cities and 13 different countries. Some of these protests even drew over 100,000 attendees. This led to about 1,300 total protests worldwide in order to stand up against Tesla and Elon Musk.
Potential Impacts
The ultimate goal of the movement was to damage the social and economic capital of Elon Musk in order to remove him from his role in the government. Further on, activists used more than one method to accomplish this goal. TeslaTakedown also asked that nobody purchase anything from Tesla, whether that be a vehicle, solar roof or Tesla-branded t-shirt. Additionally, they urged anyone who may have invested in Tesla stock to sell all of their shares. This has potential to become the largest impact on Musk, all due to the fact that over $100 billion of his net worth is in Tesla shares. If enough people sell their stock in the Tesla company, Elon’s net worth could plummet drastically.
If these things were to work effectively, Musk would lose virtually all of his political power for multiple key reasons. Primarily, his wealth has been the largest factor in his political influence. As a result of everything he has accomplished with his fortune, it gives people with political power an enticement to get involved with him in some way. He also has lots of power tied to his wealth because of his large companies tied to infrastructure such as Tesla and SpaceX. With him owning these companies along with X, he has a wide-scale platform to push his political policies that align with his views.
Finally, this may aggressively impact Musk’s government role is because it could completely alter his public image. If his wealth crashes due to boycotts and protests, it could give the impression that he has lost control and is bad for business to the point where it would be smarter for him to be let go from his government position than to keep him and face more backlash from the controversy he could cause.
Despite Effort, Musk Remains in Power
Despite all of these efforts from the TeslaTakedown movement as well as the protesters following their instructions, the effect on Musk has not yet been great enough to accomplish the goal of getting him out of the government. Even though Tesla stock went down 40% over the span of a week, it is currently rising back to the spot that it was previously at before the movement.
It is likely that more action will be taken in order to find a way to take down Musk but it is currently difficult to tell what long-term effects this will have on him. As the situation continues to evolve, Musk will have to face much more criticism and acts against him and his companies. It is unknown whether this may effect Musk’s leadership in the future. What is clear, however, is that the general public will keep holding Musk accountable for all of his actions and he will likely have to stay resilient in order to keep himself in the position that he is currently in.
