How “Tesla Takedown” Activists Fool the Public

The campaign against Elon Musk’s company is hardly a grassroots movement.

Last month, a wave of more than 200 protests targeting Tesla properties erupted across the United States. The media portrayed this movement, officially branded the “Tesla Takedown,” as a spontaneous grassroots backlash against CEO Elon Musk’s role in dismantling waste and fraud in the U.S. federal bureaucracy. Each of these demonstrations appears to have been sparsely attended, but both the number of protest sites and the timeline of events suggest a coordinated effort.

On February 21, Rolling Stone published an article by activist-filmmaker Alex Winter describing the genesis of the Tesla Takedown protest campaign. Within two weeks of its publication, multiple Tesla properties were attacked with incendiary devices, and three men were arrested for separate attempts to firebomb Tesla locations in Salem, Oregon; Loveland, Colorado; and Charleston, South Carolina.

If the mainstream press accounts—as well as Winter’s own description—are to be believed, the fire-bombings and protests were unrelated. When mentioning the protests at all in the context of the violence, some outlets described them only as “dozens of peaceful protests at Tesla dealerships and factories.” Stories did not touch on how, more often than not, violent and nonviolent tactics reinforce one another and work toward the same ends.

A closer look suggests that Tesla is the latest target of an activist and organizing ecosystem that the Left has built over decades. That infrastructure manufactures, amplifies, and strategically uses protests and “direct actions” to force concessions or policy change. These direct actions range from nonviolent (sit-ins or flash mobs) to violent (arson, harassment, or even assassination), all meant to focus attention through the drama of real-world confrontation. The goal is to bypass the normal channels of democratic decision-making, obtaining desired ends through minoritarian pressure campaigns.

It would be impossible, however, to find a single person or entity directing both the protests and the violence. Rather, the two are linked by the concept of “diversity of tactics,” an activist doctrine that holds that a movement should welcome the use of coercion methods as part of the whole range of the radicalization spectrum—from conventional, nonviolent marches to riots, property destruction, and violence—within their strategic program.

Diversity of tactics encourages activists to take advantage of a clever ruse: the public-facing flank of the movement presents the image of nonviolent resistance, while the behind-the-scenes infrastructure supports and occasionally engages in violence. One creates strategic opportunities for the other, with any connection hidden behind a veil of plausible deniability.

Let’s examine diversity of tactics at work.

In describing the Tesla Takedown, Winter sought to project the image of a grassroots campaign on a shoestring budget. “I made a quick database and sign-up form using online tools,” he wrote. “Then I posted it all to Bluesky. And that was it.”

But the footprint of professional activists, whom Winter admitted having “reached out to,” was evident from the start. Each of the nationwide Tesla Takedown protests were scheduled and posted at The Action Network, a progressive for-profit company that provides online tools for left-wing organizing. It promises its customers the tools “to help you capture a moment, rally supporters to your cause, and sustain relationships with activists.” The pricing for these services—which include databases and sign-up forms like the ones Winter described—can run more than $4,000 per month.

The Disruption Project, a Philadelphia-based far-left organizing group, was initially identified as a host or co-sponsor of all the Tesla Takedown’s protests at the Action Network’s event listings. The Project has since been scrubbed from the Action Network’s site, but it still shares an SMS “short code” with Tesla Takedown—a sign of ongoing linkage.

The Disruption Project’s founder is Jeff Ordower, a longtime activist whose background runs the gamut of professional left-wing activism. He trained at the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute, led the Missouri chapter of ACORN, and worked for both SEIUand the Industrial Areas Foundation. He was an organizer for a group associated with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011, and helped organize the “Ferguson uprising” in 2014. His latest project, 350 Action, is linked to an international organization with ties to the Clinton Global Initiative, the Climate Action Network, Extinction Rebellion, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and many other left-wing groups.

According to his professional biography, Ordower calls himself an “itinerant organizer” who “spends a lot of his time thinking about sustained mass action.” In his writing, Ordower describes moments of social turmoil as “rupture[s]”—critical junctures when traditional institutions fail to control public unrest, creating opportunities for political and cultural transformation.

In other words, the Tesla Takedown shows all the markings of a professional operation. It’s hardly a grassroots movement—it’s the product of experienced activists, unafraid both to instigate and take advantage of “ruptures” to pursue their agenda.

Diversity of tactics creates a three-tiered structure of activism. At the first level are the officially sanctioned protesters—often nonviolent, racially diverse, and media-friendly—who serve as the movement’s public face, attracting coverage and providing a veneer of legitimacy. The second, smaller tier consists of more confrontational activists who are willing to disrupt events, block traffic, or engage in civil disobedience. The third tier is the smallest and includes those with the greatest commitment to radical action as well as a willingness to engage in acts of vandalism, sabotage, destruction of property, and violence against persons.

Each level claims to be distinct from the others, even while tacitly endorsing or creating opportunities for the others’ activities. In fact, the diversity of tactics framework lets activists simultaneously disavow and take advantage of violence.

Does the Disruption Project endorse violence? Its “About” page offers a qualified defense of nonviolence: “While we are inclined to think that emboldened mass action creates bolder mass action which begets a nonviolent overthrow of these systems, we have the utmost respect for those who are trying to win and consolidate structural reforms at this time.” (Emphasis added.) Such language creates plausible deniability, even as it endorses what it refers to euphemistically as “uprisings, resistance and mass direct action” which do not exclude revolutionary violence as a possibility.

A similar pattern of nondenial denial is apparent with Tesla Takedown. Following the spate of fire bombings of Tesla properties and vehicles in early March—and the attorney general’s decision to address the issue at the federal level—the Tesla Takedown campaign noted on its Action Network page that it officially opposes “violence, vandalism and destruction of property.”

While we may understand these words as synonymous, left-wing radicals see them as separate categories, as well as legitimate or even necessary methods of protest. In radical theory, property-destroying riots get framed as defensive responses to systemic oppression—and, in many cases, are encouraged outright. “Both civil disobedience and direct action can involve property destruction and can still be considered non-violent by many activists,” Brock University professor Janet Conway notes in a 2003 law journal article. “Offensive as it is to liberal sensibilities, property destruction may be integral to the success of the [Black Lives Matter] uprising,” writes RH Lossin, a lecturer in Harvard’s history department. “Disavowing property destruction and even theft because of a spurious attachment to a reified notion of nonviolence is a mistake. It is a disavowal of power.”

The Tesla Takedown campaign did not specifically address or denounce the fire bombings or their perpetrators in its statement opposing “violence, vandalism and destruction of property.” As a practical matter, the diversity of tactics framework works only with a commitment to a principle of “non-denunciation,” or refraining from publicly condemning the more militant tactics employed by allied activists. This preserves internal cohesion among activist groups and prevents public-facing activists from having to answer for the crimes committed by their more militant comrades. Such condemnations could also be used to splinter other activists or the Left generally. In this way, the Tesla Takedown leaders could invite escalation without owning it.

Because no single actor can be definitively tied to both the legal protests and the illegal acts of sabotage, the larger movement can present itself as both lawful and radical, pacifist and militant. The public-facing Tesla Takedown organizers don’t need to know who lit the Molotov cocktails, much less order them to do so. They merely leave room for such deeds in their strategic ecosystem, knowing that someone within their broad coalition might go ahead and commit them—and that their own efforts gain urgency, profile, and leverage as a result. The result is a seamless escalation that shields the leadership while enabling increasingly radical behavior at the margins. 

This model of layered disruption has proven remarkably effective, exploiting the media’s tendency to privilege peaceful imagery and to ignore the radical infrastructure that facilitates violence. Many journalists share the protesters’ worldview and see the activists as civic-minded truth-tellers, not insurgents playing a long game of institutional destabilization. The violence, however essential, is only one feature of the larger movement, which sympathetic media describe as “mostly peaceful.”

The Tesla Takedown isn’t merely a protest; it is an exercise in pressure politics. Tesla was the pressure point, and Elon Musk was the proxy for the forces of capitalism, fascism, and oppression. The campaign reflects a calculated application of the diversity of tactics approach, blending nonviolent protests with strategic acts of property damage intended to generate fear and economic pain.

The campaign’s architects knew that neither protests nor arson alone could delegitimize Tesla. But together—through contrast, escalation, and repetition—they could push public opinion, dampen consumer enthusiasm, and threaten capital flow.

Ultimately, the anti-Tesla campaign reveals the strategic logic driving modern protest movements. The Left relies on weaponized ambiguity, using its professional flank to draw headlines and its militant wing to impose costs and thereby achieve political objectives. 

Because of the campaign’s massive scope, as well as First Amendment constraints, law enforcement and policymakers have been slow to recognize the far-left’s activist ecosystem. Those responsible for our security need to understand how violent and nonviolent agitators work together to advance their revolutionary goals.