After spending last week with Tesla fans who wanted the world to know that their Tesla purchases had nothing to do with politics, I spent this weekend at the Tesla diner protests, talking to people who disagreed with that stance.
On both Saturday and Sunday, organisers from Resist the Coup and Tesla Takedown Santa Monica brought crowds and sieg-heiling Elon Musk-shaped car-dealership inflatables to the front of the new diner. Drums, megaphones, and shouts from the assembled protesters were accompanied by horns from passing drivers responding to “Honk If You Hate Elon” signs.
Steven was there on the first day of the protest with his 16-year-old daughter.
“He’s a piece of shit, but let’s get the political science stuff out of the way,” Steven told me when I asked if he thought support of Tesla could be considered apolitical. “Elon Musk has platformed white supremacists and anti-semites on X. He got rid of all the moderation. He put back accounts that were clearly neo-Nazis. He’s changed algorithms to promote that type of hate. Him and DOGE did massive cuts in the government, including our civil services. He’s cut cancer research. Did I mention he was a giant piece of shit?”
“He’s cut our aid to Africa, which will result, without exaggeration, in millions of women and children and innocent people dying. Millions,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of people who give the Hitler salute. I mean, I’m kind of fussy like that. He gave it twice at Trump’s inauguration,” he continued. “He’s a Nazi. And he cheats at video games. You have another question?”
“The guy saluted Hitler twice on national television,” Dave, lead organiser for Tesla Takedown Santa Monica. Dave spent both days of the protest drumming and calling chants, like “when you eat your Tesla burger, you’re funding mass murder, when you eat your Tesla fries, another hungry child dies”.
“We fear for the future of democracy in the United States of America,” he said. “And there is no bigger poster child for the corruption and the influence of money in politics than Elon Musk.”
Dave explained that targeting Tesla, as a publicly-traded company, is one of the only levers available for people to express disapproval of Musk’s actions. The protests took place days after a July 23 Tesla earnings call which disclosed an almost 12 percent year-on-year decline in revenue—its “steepest year-over-year revenue decline in at least a decade.” The share price is currently around 15 percent lower than it was a year ago.
Antonia and Stas had come to the diner for date night; they had known the protest was happening and “were talking and joking about that in the car,” as it would be a “feature” of their date. Antonia said the diner “is capitalism”, and “you can’t separate capitalism from politics.” But, she’d been thinking: “wouldn’t it be great if he just focused on ideas like this? Making people’s lives better and easier, in a way that, like, wasn’t interfering with elections around the globe, and at home in America?”
“Elon’s a full blown fascist,” said Josh Greene on Saturday afternoon. “I mean, he donated $250 million to put Trump back in the White House. He bought Twitter to spread right wing conspiracy theories, and he’s helping to dismantle democracy in this country.”
A group of teenagers walking by yelled “four more years! Trump is the greatest!” at Greene as I was interviewing him. “Read a book, pal!” he yelled back.
The teenagers hung around to try to interrupt the protest further. They spent about an hour standing very close to, yelling at, and filming individual protesters, shouting about Trump.
One Tesla-owner, Holly, was standing and watching this happen. ’It makes me sort of sad and emotional to watch,” she said. “ I can tell they’re trying to incite some sort of, like, interaction, violent or otherwise, and I don’t know. It’s just, I feel like it’s a sad state right now.”
Holly had brought her kids to the diner for lunch as she thought it would be fun. She said she didn’t identify with the Tesla community, but had “just wanted an electric car”, and she thinks it’s annoying that Tesla has become a political flashpoint.
“I don’t think Musk is a good guy. I don’t want him in politics. I don’t want him running our country,” she said.
She said that, politically, her allegiance was with the protesters. But she didn’t think there was anything that Musk could do that would encourage her to get rid of the car: “my privilege is, it doesn’t impact me one way or another,” she said.
People passing in cars honked their horns, waved, or flashed lights as they saw the protesters. A few times, I saw a Tesla slow down or pull up alongside the protesters to chat. Dave from Tesla Takedown later told me that “a lot of older Tesla model owners pump their fists and say, yeah, we’re with you too, we just got to wait until our lease is up.”
Other passing cars filmed or yelled out of their windows. Twice, I saw Cybertruck drivers interact with the protest. The first time, a woman gave them the middle finger out of her car window, and the second time, a man who had driven past once lapped the block, to do a sieg heil over his kid’s head.
A man does a “Hitler salute” from his car as he drives by the protesters on Sunday afternoon. Photo: 404 Media
Dean Barlage, a resident of the adjacent building, came down to see the protest. He said that he felt the saluting Musk balloons and protesters’ signs with swastikas or curse words were inappropriate for children eating at the diner, who might ask their parents for explanations of what they were seeing or reading.
Toby Bronson, who had helped organise the protest with Resist the Coup, was also at the diner both days. He said that they had experienced much more support than harassment from passing cars, which “shows what the city is all about… LA is the one fighting back and this town’s not going to quit. We’re not going to stop.” He said that he hadn’t been bothered by the teenagers – “it’s pretty hilarious considering they’re all about 13. So they can’t vote,” he said. “The only thing I said to them was, you know, you guys are the same age as the people on the Epstein list,” he told me. “They didn’t like that.”
On Tuesday, 29th July, I was contacted by Tesla Takedown Santa Monica who said that they had received anonymous messages online, threatening a drive-by pepper spraying event, if they came back to the diner the following weekend. That evening, Bronson posted that the protest would be happening again – every weekend until the diner closes.
