Make Tesla Toxic
And other ways to beat fascists
This week’s newsletter is written by Evan Sutton.
On Saturday, February 15, I was standing outside a Tesla dealership in the heart of Seattle with a sign that said “BigBalls can lick Deez Nuts” and a photo of DOGE dipshit Edward “BigBalls” Coristine.
As about 80 of us stood on the street chanting and yelling, an older couple stopped to compliment my sign.
They were out for a walk after their breakfast and wondered what the fuss was about. I told them if they wanted to join us, they could hold my sign. To my surprise, they grabbed the sign and spent the next hour happily waving it at passing cars.
The key to effective resistance is to make your opponent pay a price for their overreach—or at least instill fear that there might be a price to pay.
Clearly, everyone involved in Trump 2.0 believes they can fuck around and will never have to find out. It’s up to us to change that.
But how do regular people with limited resources extract a price from a rising fascist movement?
The first answer is everything we can think of. No one who’s lived their whole life in the United States has ever faced something like this, and none of us knows for sure what’s going to derail the march toward fascism. In times like these, we should foster creative actions, not wag our fingers or tut-tut ideas.
But there is a very specific target that deserves special focus—Tesla Motors.
Tesla is the basis of Elon Musk’s mystique and his wealth. His stake in the company is worth around $145 billion at today’s valuation—more than a third of his total net worth.
Elon clearly isn’t scared about the legal consequences of his actions. Why should he be? The courts have never held him accountable in any meaningful way before, and now he’s protected by an increasingly authoritarian regime.
But legal consequences aren’t the only cost an effective resistance can make opponents pay.
The first thing you need to know is that Tesla Motors is a house of cards.
As I write this, Tesla’s market cap stands at $1.12 trillion—about $400 billion more than Toyota, Honda, Ferrari, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volkswagen, Ford, GM, Stellantis and Hyundai COMBINED.
Tesla’s stock has been on a hype-fueled rocket ride since the start of the pandemic. But Wall Street investors hate uncertainty, and in the end, hype is no match for quarterly profits.
Most of Tesla’s extreme valuation is based on the cockamamie idea that the company can continue growing at the rate it achieved early in the pandemic—and the mistaken belief that Tesla is a tech company, rather than a car company.
But Tesla’s market dominance and opportunities for growth weren’t built to last. Only one in three Americans are open to buying EVs today, and there’s much more competition in the market than there was even 5 years ago. Chinese EV companies are eating Elon’s lunch. And far from the game changer Elon promised, the Cybertruck is looking more like an anchor around Tesla’s neck. Tesla sales are already tanking in Europe because of Musk’s tumbling reputation.
For the first time in a decade, Tesla reported fewer sales in 2024 than in 2023.
Now, buyers in the U.S. are starting to price-in Elon’s ties to Trump and far-right movements around the world—and the potential social consequences of driving a car so closely associated with Musk’s personal brand. If that spreads, it could pop the hype bubble. Tesla insiders know it, and so do big Wall Street research firms.
That’s where you and I come in.
On Saturday, February 15, protests sprang up at Tesla stores all over the U.S. My friend Robert and I didn’t put a ton of organizing into our protest in Seattle. We set up a Facebook event and an event on the #TeslaTakedown page. We invited a few friends. We emailed local media.
Over 100 people showed up, including the couple who joined us so they could hold a sign that said, “BigBalls can lick Deez Nuts.”
The most energetic the crowd got was any time a Tesla stopped at the red light, and then we’d burst into chants of “Sell your car! Sell your car! Sell your car!”
Later that evening, I headed out for one of my few non-political activities of the week—playing poker (a game Elon Musk fundamentally misunderstands) at a local card room.
About an hour after I sat down, one of the regulars started telling a story that caught my attention. He had been at the grocery store earlier when he was accosted by a woman who wanted to know “how can you drive that thing.”
He’s a proud Model Y owner. I’ve seen him in Tesla hats at the table. I stayed out of the conversation because I wanted to see where it would go. The most telling moment was when one of the players said, “There’s a crazy deal on Model 3 leases right now, but I wouldn’t get one because I don’t really want people flipping me off all the time.”
We can—and should—continue to make it toxic to drive a Tesla. We can make liberal buyers queasy about Musk’s politics. We can make disengaged voters uncomfortable with the idea that their car could be a flashpoint. And MAGA voters have been so polarized to hate EVs that they’re not going to rush into buoy sinking sales and save Elon.
Musk isn’t scared of the law, but his net worth matters to him. And Tesla’s valuation matters to a lot of people. The board. Major institutional investors. Pension funds. Retail investors. And none of them will be too pleased if Tesla’s brand (and sales) start to meaningfully suffer.
Elon is not a stable man. He’s an overgrown baby used to bullying people to get his way. If we can start to chip away at his wealth and his mystique, he’ll start making mistakes. And there’s only so long even his board of sycophants will be able to hold back the tide if Tesla stock price starts tumbling while Elon is off wrecking our democracy.
So what can you do?
If you own Tesla stock, dump it
If you have a pension through your union, demand that your trustees dump any investment in Tesla
If you’re a university student, alumnus/alumna, or donor, call the school’s endowment manager and demand they divest from Tesla.
Call your city, county, state, and federal elected officials and demand they cut off any contracts with or subsidies for Elon Musk’s business empire—not just Tesla, but the billions he gets in subsidies and contracts for his data centers, solar farms, and rocket ships
Organize a protest at a Tesla showroom in your community. It doesn’t take much. Pick a time, set up a Facebook event, invite your friends, reach out to local activist groups, and show up with signs for a few hours
This one might be the hardest, but it’s important. When you see people driving Teslas, give them a thumbs down so that people start feeling a personal cost for being associated with Elon Musk. It will lead to conversations at poker tables and office water coolers, and that’s where real damage starts. (I personally prefer to show a little grace to most Tesla buyers, but I aggressively flip off Cybertrucks)
The fact of the matter is that every Tesla sale helps fund fascists. It’s up to us to make sure regular people start to feel every bit as uncomfortable being associated with a Tesla as they would feel marching in a neo-Nazi parade.
Evan Sutton is the founder of Firekit Campaigns, a communications and digital firm that works with labor unions, Democratic candidates, and mission-aligned organizations. You can find more rants on his Bluesky.
Coda
Thanks so much to Evan for stepping in this week, and thanks to our paid subscribers and patrons whose financial support allows me to produce more content and work with guest writers like Evan. The newsletter will always be free to read as I’m passionate about making my content available to as wide of an audience as possible. But your contributions allow me to create more and devote more time to the newsletter each week. And I am so grateful for that continued support.
I’ll be back next week. See you again on Sunday!
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I'm an ardent Musk hater. I call my Senators and MOC regularly demanding action. I participate in protest at state capitols. I share information on how to stand up to his illegal role in government, something I know about as a former career federal employee.
But before all this craziness started, and out of a commitment to reduce our carbon emissions, we bought a model Y. Frankly, I love the car. Yet, my feeling about it has changed from one of virtue, to one of embarrassment -- about the symbol of Musk, not the EV. And, while I suppose we could toss away tens of thousands of dollars to trade it in, that's a hard step to take. I would not buy one today, but we are stuck with what is and try to address it through other actions and "anti Elon" magnets on the car. I feel like we need to make room for situations like this in our civil interactions with others -- all while standing up to Musk.
Bear in mind that lots of people bought Teslas because they were committed to reducing emissions and because for a long time Teslas were the only viable EV. And it might not be possible, financially, for them to simply get rid of the car right now, especially if they don't want to support gas and oil interests. Focus your anger at the dealership level, discourage new purchases, but don't target individual drivers, otherwise we're just fighting amongst ourselves again.