Playful posters have started to appear everywhere in London in the past two months.
On the side of a bus stop in eastern London, one of them shows Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, emerging from a Tesla roof with his hand pointing up in a hi -up. “Go from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” said the announcement. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”
Another simulated announcement shows Mr. Musk and President Trump in front of a Red Tesla with the words: “Now with a powerful white direction”. In northern London, a false film display panel stimulates: “The Fast and the Führer”, with a photo of M. Musk greeting next to a Tesla with a Doge license plate, a reference to the federal budgetary washing agency which he currently leads to the name of Mr. Trump.
“Parental guidance”, warns the display panel, set up by a group called everyone hates Elon. “Tesla’s CEO is an extreme right activist. Do not give it your money.”
In the British capital and in several European cities, Mr. Musk’s signature activities have become the target of the same type of political anger that fueled Vandalism of Tesla cars in the United States and sometimes violent demonstrations in its dealerships.
There were instances unruly protests and vandalism in Europe. But a large part of the anti-MUSC feeling has taken the form of a political satire, of the genre that has prospered in Great Britain for at least The 18th century.
Just outside Berlin, a group called the Center for Political Beauty used high power lights to project the word “Heil” on the side of a Tesla factory so that it read “Heil Tesla”, as well as an image of M. Musk greeting during a speech in Washington. In Italy, street art represents Elon Musk who takes off a mask to show Adolf Hitler’s face below. The words “Elon Mask” appear above the image.
“There has never been a target exactly like this,” said John Gorenfeld, a software engineer who helped start a group based in London called “Takedown Tesla”. The group has organized demonstrations of several dozen people in recent weeks. They hold posters along the highways that say “Klaxon if you hate Elon”. And they printed stickers for bumpers for the owners of Tesla with sentences like “do not make the same mistake” and “model before 2020”.
“No one who is also rich and powerful has behaved scandalously,” said Gorenfeld. “There is something campy and ridiculous in the toxicity brand of Musk. And that opens up a real space to ridiculous. “
In Europe, Mr. Musk is not only a distant example of American wealth and power. In the past year, he has become a frequent political mediat, often weighing on behalf of the far right causes on X, his social media platform, where he has 218 million followers.
In Great Britain, Mr. Musk is known to share a disinformation on a rape scandal for children and call Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be imprisoned. He called for the release of Tommy Robinson, an extreme right and anti-immigrant agitator who is in prison for the court. And he criticized the sentence of seven years of a neonazi that prompted and participated in anti-immigrant riots last summer.
The small anti-MUSC groups that arose in Europe have the same basic objective: the share of the actions and sales of Tank Tesla as a means of sending a message to Mr. Musk and other super-rich people who plan to promote a far-right policy in the world. Some groups have refused to be interviewed about their actions, invoking concerns about becoming a target of Mr. Musk’s anger on social networks. But others were more open to their goals.
“The goal is to show Musk and other billionaires that they are vulnerable and cannot act with impunity,” said Ben Stewart, founder of a group of British satirical activists called Donkeys, who worked with the Center for political Beauty to project the image of Mr. Musk on the Berlin factory. “We must exploit global public opinion to repel.”
The organizers think it works. Tesla’s course of action almost halved since its summit in December, almost at the same time as Mr. Musk began his leading role to supervise the dismissal of civil servants and reduce budgets of federal agencies. This week, Tesla declared a drop in sales of 13% compared to a year ago.
“What they are trying to do is put on massive pressure, and Tesla, I suppose, I know, I don’t know, stop doing this”, Mr. Musk said last week in Wisconsin where he campaigned for a candidate from the Supreme Court of the State.
And yet, he added with an uptop of shoulders, “in the long term, I think Tesla Stock is fine, so maybe this is a buying opportunity.”
The demonstrators who talked about their objectives declared that they wanted to challenge the influence of Mr. Musk without resorting to vandalism that The billionaire called In the United States, such as “coordinated violence against a peaceful company”.
Theodora Sutcliffe, a resident of London who helped organize Tesla Takedown, said that none of the people with whom she was working in violence. Instead, they sought to find other ways to capture public attention.
During one of their demonstrations, a 20 -foot corrugated man who vaguely looked like Mr. Musk greeted in the air. At other times, Ms. Sutcliffe and her demonstrators have left leaflets on the windshields of Tesla cars.
“Once upon a time, Teslas was cool,” said a leaflet. “Now, unfortunately, this is not the case. Driving a Tesla and using Tesla Chargers means that you support Elon Musk, a man who promotes climatic negators and fossil fuel drugs.”
“If you want to become viral in the United Kingdom, you have to be smart, I think,” said Sutcliffe. “This is our sense of humor normally.”
The anti-MUSC efforts in Berlin were led by Philipp Ruch, the artistic director of the Center for Political Beauty, a group of German activists. In an interview, he said that a large part of the anger against Mr. Musk in Germany stems from the billionaire to the country’s far right party, the alternative for Germany.
“The first day the administration arrives, he is the salute of Hitler,” said Ruch. “This is something that we could not tolerate, politically and artistically.”
Mr. Ruch performs many of his protests by “crushing” an image with another. At the Tesla dealership, he used lights to superimpose his words and images from M. Musk to create a new artistic creation. (He said the police are now investigating his efforts, which were visible for about an hour.) Photos of the building were widely distributed on social networks.
Other efforts have also become viral.
There are simulations of car air refreshments called “Musk-B-Gone” which promise to cover “the stench of fascism”. And the cardboard cutouts of Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump, thanking Tesla’s owners for their support when they enhance their cars with the company’s compressor lots.
“There are people who come to Musk as if he were a kind of Trump’s passive agent and that really, it’s just another way to go to Trump,” said Sutcliffe. “There are other people who perceive musk like someone who is a single type of threat that we have never seen before in terms of economic control and information space control.”
