Around the country over the last couple of months, left-leaning Americans have gathered outside their local Tesla dealers to voice their opinions on Elon Musk. These protests, though numerous, have been mostly small and locally organized. But on Saturday, the anti-Tesla movement attempts to go national and even global. Hundreds of demonstrations organized under the name Tesla Takedown will target Tesla dealerships throughout the U.S., in many places in Europe, and as far away as Australia. The message is simple: “Sell your Teslas. Dump your stock. Stop Musk now.”
Tesla drivers are peeved. As the head of one Tesla owners group said, people like him “want to just drive a car, they don’t want have to have a political statement on where they stand with Elon.” But their annoyance pales next to conservatives’ outrage. Fox News host Sean Hannity announced that he is buying a Tesla and is running a sweepstakes where you can win one. Musk is “paying the price for taking the lead,” said Fox Business host Stuart Varney. “Progressives, who frankly hate him … [are] trying to ruin his business.” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., demanded the Justice Department investigate which sinister leftist donors are supposedly funding the anti-Tesla ferment. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-Va., posted a picture of herself standing next to a Tesla.
The right, in short, is appalled that a single American corporation has been targeted for this kind of boycott and criticism, impeding the smooth functioning of the market and the consumer’s right to make purchasing decisions free from social pressure. But it’s too late for conservatives to make that argument. They love boycotts, as long as they get to choose the target.
Two years ago, Bud Light sent a trans influencer a beer can with her picture on it as part of its social media outreach, prompting the entire American right to lose their collective minds. If a man drank the same brand of beer as a trans woman he’d never heard of until the day before, could he still be a man? The only reasonable response was to put on a MAGA hat, get out a rifle and film yourself pumping bullets into a bunch of beer cans, which is just what Kid Rock did.
Bud Light is just one of many brands conservatives have tried to make an example of. In 2023, Fox News published a list of “51 companies at war with conservatives.” The right has organized boycotts of companies like Target and Disney for catering to LGBTQ customers. Donald Trump sometimes calls for multiple boycotts in the course of a single tweet. Even Chick-fil-A, whose conservative bona fides include donations to anti-LGBTQ groups, faced threats of boycotts from the right for making statements about the value of diversity.
Being a conservative today means constant vigilance against brand-based assaults on your values. Has Mr. Potato Head gone woke? Will we be deprived of lesser-known and kinda racist Dr. Seuss books? Are the cups at Starbucks this December not explicitly Christian enough?
But there’s something distinct about the current controversy over Tesla: The U.S. government has been mobilized to protect this one company. Earlier this month, Trump turned the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom to promote Musk’s cars. Then, in case that was too subtle, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on Fox News to tout Tesla stock. “Buy Tesla,” he said. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.”
The most passionate Tesla defender in the administration (other than Musk) has to be Attorney General Pam Bondi. In frequent appearances on Fox News, Bondi has deployed the full resources of the Justice Department against not just vandals who have defaced Teslas and even set them on fire (as has occurred in a few places), but even just critics of Tesla and Musk. Calling attacks on unoccupied Teslas “domestic terrorism,” Bondi has created a special task force to confront this threat to the nation, since “Molotov cocktails … could be a weapon of mass destruction.”
When Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, on an organizing call for Tesla Takedown, said that “all I want for my birthday is for Elon to be taken down,” Bondi sprung into action. Though Crockett had been clear that “everything I am promoting is nonviolent,” the attorney general nevertheless warned a sitting member of Congress “to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country.” In a subsequent appearance, Bondi demanded Crockett “apologize immediately, not only to all Texans, but to our country, to the American shareholders of Tesla, because she is promoting violence.” At long last, our government is standing up for the most oppressed: a private company’s shareholders. Perhaps the attorney general can do something about people giving the finger to Cybertrucks. However the Tesla Takedown protests turn out, the campaign against Tesla may have already succeeded. The stock is down, sales are plunging, and the brand’s image has been thoroughly tarnished. And conservatives have been told for years that only liberals would buy an electric car; it’s unlikely many will now switch away from internal combustion just to support Musk. Boycotts often have to educate consumers, to explain that shopping at a particular store or buying a particular product has political implications people might not have considered. That takes a lot of work. But when it comes to Tesla, Musk himself has done the heavy lifting. His cars no longer represent technological sophistication and concern for the climate. Today, every Tesla might as well come wrapped in a picture of Musk doing a Nazi salute. The brand may never escape that image. And that’s not good for business.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
