‘0-1939 in 3 seconds’: because the anti-Elon Musk satire is flourishing in Great Britain

The naughty posters have started to appear throughout London in the last two months.

On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who emerges from a roof of Tesla with the hand that focuses upwards in a Driving arm greeting. “It goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” reads the announcement. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”

Another fake announcement shows Mr. Musk and President Trump in front of a red Tesla with the words: “Now with the white power steering”. North of London, a false film by Billboard Blares: “The Fast and the Führer”, with a photo of Mr. Musk jumping next to a Tesla with a plate of dogge, a reference to the federal agency that is washing the budget that currently leads on behalf of Mr. Trump.

“Parents’ guide”, warns the billboard, put by a group that defines himself all hate Elon. “The CEO of Tesla is a far -right activist. Don’t give him your money.”

Through the British capital and in different European cities, the signature of Mr. Musk has become the goal of the same type of political anger he fueled vandalism Tesla cars in the United States and sometimes violent protests in its dealers.

There have been some instances of unruly protests and vandalism in Europe. But much of the anti-muscle sentiment has taken the form of political satire, of the type that has flourished in Great Britain from at least The 18th century.

Just outside Berlin, a group called Center for Political Beauty used high power lights to project the word “heil” on the side of a Tesla factory so that “Heil Tesla” read, together with a photo of Mr. Musk Greetings during a speech in Washington. In Italy, the street art depicts Elon Musk by removing a mask to show the face of Adolf Hitler 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 to start a group based in London called “Takedown Tesla”. The group has organized protests of several tens of people in recent weeks. They keep poster along the highways that say “Honk se heard Elon”. And they printed stickers for bumpers for Tesla owners with phrases such as “do not make the same mistake” and “pre-2020” model.

“Nobody who is so rich and powerful has behaved so outrageous,” said Gorenfeld. “There is something of campy and ridiculous in Musk’s toxicity brand. And opens a real space to ridicule.”

In Europe, Mr. Musk is not just a distant example of wealth and American power. In the last year, it has become a frequent political Meddler, often weighing on behalf of far right causes On X, his social media platform, where he has 218 million followers.

In Great Britain, Mr. Musk is known for sharing disinformation on a scandal for child rape and Ask Prime Minister Keir Starmer will be imprisoned. He asked for the release of Tommy Robinson, a right extreme, anti-immigrant agitator Who is in prison for contempt for the court. And criticized the seven -year sentence of A neo -nazi who incited And he took part in anti-immigrant riots last summer.

The small anti-muscle groups that have sprung up in Europe have the same basic goal: the price of actions and sales of Tank Tesla as a way to send a message to Mr. Musk and other super rich people who are thinking of promoting far-right policy all over the world. Some groups refused to be interviewed on their actions, citing the concern of becoming a target of Mr. Musk’s wrath on social media. But others were more open on their goals.

“The point of this is to show Musk and other billionaires who are vulnerable and cannot act with impunity,” said Ben Stewart, founder of a group of British satirical activists called Led by Donkeys, who worked with the center for political beauty to project the image of Mr. Musk on the Berlin factory. “We have to exploit global public opinion to reject.”

The organizers think it works. The price of Tesla’s actions is almost halved by its maximum in December, in the same period in which Musk began his role of high profile by supervising the dismissal of government operators and cutting the budgets of federal agencies. This week, Tesla recorded a 13 percent Sales decrease Compared to a year ago.

“What they are trying to do is to make enormous pressure on me, and Tesla I imagine, for you, I don’t know, stop doing it”, Mr. Musk He said last week in Wisconsin where he was doing a campaign for a candidate for the Supreme Court of the State.

Still, he added with a shrug: “In the long term, I think Tesla Stock will do well, so maybe it’s an opportunity to buy”.

The demonstrators who spoke of their goals said they wanted to challenge the influence of Mr. Musk without resorting to vandalism that The billionaire called In the United States as “coordinated violence against a peaceful society”.

Theodora Sutcliffe, a London resident who contributed to organizing Tesla Takedown, said that none of the people he works with violence. Instead, they tried to find other ways to capture public attention.

During one of their protests, an undulating 20 feet balloon vaguely resembled Mr. Musk greeted in the air. Other times, Mrs. Sutcliffe and her colleagues from the demonstrations left flyers on the windshield of Tesla cars.

“Once upon a time, the Teslas were cool,” says a flyer. “Now, unfortunately, it is not so. Driving a Tesla and using Tesla Changers means that you are supporting Elon Musk, a man who promotes climatic and drug addictions of fossil fuels.”

“If you want to become viral in the United Kingdom, you have to be intelligent, I think,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe. “This is our sense of humor normally.”

The anti-muscio efforts in Berlin were led by Philipp Ruch, artistic director of the Center for Political Beauty, a group of German activists. In an interview, he said that most of the anger for Mr. Musk in Germany derives from the billionaire Support for the country’s far -right partyThe alternative for Germany.

“The first day the administration arrives, Hitler’s greeting,” said Ruch. “This is something that we could not tolerate, politically and artistically.”

Mr. Ruch performs many of his protests by “overwriting” an image with another. At the Tesla dealership, he used the lights to superimpose his words and images of Mr. Musk to create a new artistic creation. (He said that the police are now investigating his efforts, that they were visible for about an hour.) The images of the building were widely widespread on social media.

Other efforts have also become viral.

There are fake car air deodorants called “Musk-B-Gone” which promise to cover “the stench of fascism”. And the cardboard clippings of Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump, thanking Tesla owners for their support when they recharge their cars in the lots of compressors of the company.

“There are some people who are coming to Musk as if it were a sort of passive agent of Trump and who really, this is only another way to get to Trump,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe. “There are other people who perceive Musk as someone who is a unique type of threat that we have never seen before in terms of economic control and control of the information space.”