Two-Tiered Resistance Hits Tesla – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Recent news out of a Tesla retail and service location in Oregon is quite shocking. Not only are protests happening, but bullets are literally flying. Pro-Elon folks would tell us that Tesla is facing a violent intimidation campaign by evil leftists, while most people protesting against Elon Musk will correctly tell you that they have nothing to do with the violence.

In this article, I want to explain what’s really going on behind the scenes and what both Tesla and protest groups should do about it.

The Real History of Peaceful Protests In The United States

There’s a lovely fairytale we like to tell ourselves about social progress, individual rights, and the future of humanity. On one issue after another, good people face the evil oppressors down and win. Jim Crow and segregation fell to peaceful protest, followed by laws banning interracial marriage via peaceful court proceedings. Then, gay rights activists fought for gay marriage, eventually winning in the courts of public opinion and of law. Now, the fight for more people’s rights will inevitably be won by making the right kind of social media posts and the right kinds of signs to hold up at protest events.

When it’s all over, everyone but a few baddies (who were once somehow the majority?) will tell their grandkids about how they were on the right side of history, and supported civil rights on issue after issue before it was cool.

There’s just one problem with this story: it’s a half-truth at best. We’ve sanitized history because we want to feel better about ourselves. Dirty, icky, nasty things like warfare, smashing people’s faces with bricks, and assassinations aren’t something anyone wants to be associated with. But, if you look at the history of advancing rights against bigotry, you’ll always find a dark underside of violence and death. Slavery ended only after a brutal war that ended with a massive campaign against civilians. Jim Crow and segregation required non-violence to beat, but those committed to non-violence had violent friends rightfully using violence to defend the leaders of the movement from assassination and intimidation by terror groups like the KKK. Stonewall wasn’t a peaceful affair, nor were other episodes in the fight for LGBT rights.

On the other hand, those fighting for the other side(s) do the same thing. There are peaceful prayer events against abortion, but there are also people who kill abortion doctors and burn down abortion clinics. There are people who don’t want to make the cake, and there are people who go out and commit acts of violence against the LGBT community. Is there some overlap? Probably. Should we paint whole movements with a broad brush and connect them all to the violence? Absolutely not. There are good people who disagree on things who don’t deserve that.

I bring all this up not to encourage violence or embrace the “other side,” but to show readers how this stuff really works. There’s ALWAYS a peaceful side and a violent side to these kinds of social movements. There may be links between the groups behind the scenes, and we know from history of things like the Irish Republican Army’s fight against the British that such coordination and overlap often involve leaders on the violent and non-violent sides. But the average peaceful protester and political activist is often not aware of this, and doesn’t want to be involved in such things.

The reason we like to forget about the violent side is that we MUST forget about it to move on and make peace. Nobody wants to give in to terrorism and let terrorists win, but you don’t have to meet with the terrorists and negotiate with them to make them go away. Instead, you meet with the peaceful protesters and activists, include them in power structures, and then the terrorists and vandals stop being terrorists and vandals. When we look back, we don’t want to reopen old wounds by admitting that the violent people played any kind of role. To do that would make it impossible for people who initially opposed it to save face afterward.

How This Happened At An Oregon Tesla Location

As with many places around the United States, activists are staging protests at Tesla locations in Oregon. While Tesla the company has nothing to do with what’s going on in Washington, DC, the goal is to get Elon Musk to see his fortunes dwindling (something that’s happening) and shift his focus back to making money. This would (hopefully) stop Elon Musk and his team of computer programmers from pretending to be accountants and efficiency experts. It might even stop Elon from dismantling the whole executive branch.

But one thing the protesters didn’t know was that someone else was working on a different approach to Tesla: shooting at the dealership at night.

Just got to the Tesla Tigard store for today’s planned protest of the Oregon EV Association meeting, and the road is blocked by police due to a shooting at the store earlier today. Nobody was hurt, but the event was called off, so the protest is too. #TeslaTakedown

— O.K. Computermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) 2025-03-14T01:05:42.997Z

Looking at local reporting, this is the second time someone has taken pot shots at this Tesla dealer. In both cases, the dealer was targeted after hours, so no humans suffered any bodily injury. But cars were damaged in both cases, including at least one that was in there for service. Because of the second shooting, the area was closed and a protest could not be held.

Dealing With This Problem

The easy and quick knee-jerk reaction is to try to score political points, play the victim, and try to blame everyone on “the left” for vandalism. Even some people I know who should know better are trying to approach it this way. Other wrong-headed approaches include conspiracy theories (the protesters are all working for the build-a-burgers or whatever), crackdowns (on who?), and trying to otherwise capitalize on this. But, the problem with all of that is that it doesn’t stop the vandalism, lawful protests, and other things that hurt the stock.

Instead, Elon Musk and the Republicans need to rethink what they’re doing. Instead of trying to play the blame game, it’s time to start asking why there is so much negativity toward Tesla, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, etc. Instead of focusing on the violent and the vandals, focusing on making peace with the peaceful protesters would make all of this go away.

Featured image by Led By Donkeys.