A Phil Hall Op-Ed: This coming Thursday, an army of nincompoops will descend on 277 Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) dealerships across the US and another 223 in countries elsewhere for a “Global Day of Action.”
According to a post on the left-wing social media site BlueSky by this event’s organizers, Thursday’s happening is being stirred up with this language: “Let’s send these techno-fascists, broligarchs and old fashioned Nazis a message loud and clear. NO WAY.”
I am deeply sympathetic to the commercial property owners who are leasing retail space to Tesla dealerships. The attack on the commercial properties where Tesla dealerships are tenants has nothing to do with Telsa as a corporate entity or the quality of its output. Instead, it is all about the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, and his role within the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The “Global Day of Action” organizers insist their trespassing and harassment will be non-violent – but considering how previous assaults on the dealership involved gunfire and arson and how those aligned with this malicious movement have been vandalizing Teslas in parking lots around the country, I have a sneaky suspicion that Thursday’s lunacy will not be (in the words of some media outlets back during the George Floyd-fueled riots of 2020) “mostly peaceful protests.”
What is truly disturbing about these tactics is the viciousness in bringing wreckage and ruin to Tesla’s corporate health – and, by extension, the institutional and individual investors that hold stock in the company. Micah Lee, a software programmer who was banned from X for trying to dox Musk by posting data on his private jet locations, told The Verge that the attacks on the dealerships are designed to drive Musk into financial ruin.
“If we kill the Tesla brand, if we drive down the stock price low enough, we can force him to sell his stock to pay back the billions of dollars of debt that he took on to buy Twitter,” Lee said. “This will drive Tesla’s stock into a death spiral.”
Several high-profile characters share Lee’s mania for destroying Musk. Failed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz claimed he received pleasure from tracking the decline in Tesla stock, while talent-challenged late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recited lines from a TelePrompTer that facetiously approved the destruction of Tesla dealerships and vehicles owned by private citizens who have nothing to do with Trump policies.
If the “Global Day of Action” organizers and their stooges have concerns with how the federal government is being run, there is no shortage of intelligent, responsible and mature ways to steer the political winds in their favor. Disrupting and destroying commercial property is not one of them.
It is ironic that the “Global Day of Action” is using the intimidation and property destroying tactics of Nazi Germany when trying to use violent intimidation to ruin Musk, yet they call him a “Nazi.” Perhaps the comic Lou Perez said it best: Those who don’t know history are doomed to compare everything to Hitler.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at phil@wrenews.com.
Screenshot of a Las Vegas Tesla dealership set on fire, via KTNV
