"Tesla Takedown"

"All of the platforms in which we communicate and talk to one another are controlled more and more by the tech oligarchy."

"Were seeing that the press is being owned by billionaires, the social media we use is owned by the same billionaires, and the alignment that is happening in the United States ... is just a more overt version of the same kind of thing that's happening in Canada." 

Juan Alperin, professor, faculty of communication, art and technology, Simon Fraser University

 

"[It's my belief that billionaires are] interfering [with politics in North America and Europe in ways they should not be involved]."

"I'm also against the attacks on Canadian sovereignty ... by saying Canada is not a country and that our prime minister is a governor [Musk quips]."

Andrew Balakshin, Vancouver resident 

Over 80 Tesla vehicles were damaged at a Hamilton, Ontario dealership in a vandalism spree. Carscoops

The backlash against Elon Musk's support of U.S. President Donald Trump's war on Canada begins to mirror a rising tide of popular dissent within the United States that has begun targeting the appointed head of DOGE, through targeting his Tesla electric vehicle car production facilities in a series of protests outside Tesla dealerships to deliver a message of rejection. Those protests are par for the course with a disgruntled public expressing their opinion. It is the accompanying and linked violent criminal acts of sabotage, of puncturing tires, keying paint jobs and most of all fire-bombing vehicles that tell the story of matters getting out of hand.

 

Now Canadians in cities including Ottawa and Vancouver have linked themselves to the growing rejection of Tesla as representative of government-cost-slashing actions of DOGE, under the direction of Elon Musk that speaks to a spreading global rejection of U.S. President Donald Trump's abrasive and volatile style of government.

 

Surrey, British Columbia saw residents holding signs with messages including "elbows up", "Elon be-gone", and "democracy dies in apathy". President Trump has proceeded with his threat to slap steep tariffs on Canadian goods, the result of which has predictably been a trade war. His repeated barbs that Canada would be better off as the 51st state, and that Canadians would love to become Americans, surrendering their sovereignty for the 'greater good' of immersing within the U.S. has struck most Canadians as an unforgivable assault by a former friendly neighbour. 

 

A number of the most prominent incidents in the U.S. have been reported in left-leaning cities in the Pacific Northwest, like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, where anti-Trump and anti-Musk sentiment runs high. In this image, a member of the Seattle Fire Department is seen inspecting a burned Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla lot in Seattle, Monday, March 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

 

Ordinary Canadians have retaliated by refusing to buy American products, seeking out Canadian-produced goods or alternately foodstuffs arriving in Canada from other parts of the world rather than the United States. Musk, the self-described "free speech absolutist" faces criticism from hate-speech watchdogs, seething with outrage that his social media platform X allows extremist, dangerous and antisemitic comments to flourish on X.

 

The world's wealthiest individual has been advising President Trump on overhauling the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency, newly created to install Mr. Musk as a special government agent dedicated to reducing the costs of government services. There are those who cite a post Musk shared originating with another X user that posted: "Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn't murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did."

 

Tesla dealership in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

 

Few individuals have the high profile internationally as does Elon Musk. His partnering with the new U.S. president has only increased his visibility and the suspicions surrounding his intentions. Resulting in the auto production company directly associated with the man becoming a target for protests and vandalism. In Oregon gunshots were fired at a Tesla dealership. In Seattle four Cybertrucks were destroyed in a deliberate blaze.

 

Action Network website hosts the "Tesla Takedown" protests where events are posted, used by individuals and community groups to promote what the site describes as 'progressive causes'. Dozens of protests are shown scheduled across the United States and Europe through the remainder of March and into April. 

 

Law enforcement respond to reports of incendiary devices at Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas, March 24, 2025.  @DocumentingATX / X

"The FBI will be relentless in its mission to protect the American people. Acts of violence, vandalism, and domestic terrorism — like the recent Tesla attacks — will be pursued with the full force of the law."

"These criminal actions appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night."

"Individuals require little planning to use rudimentary tactics, such as improvised incendiary devices and firearms, and may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes." 

Federal Bureau of Investigation statement

Who Owns Tesla, SpaceX, X and Space?

"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future."

Elon Musk, X, 12/17

"[Amateur Turkish astronomer used software he developed in his free time] to parse through the [Minor Planet Center's] public archive of observations of objects, which anyone can peruse in search of asteroids and other small solar system bodies."

Space publication Astronomy

"[The satellite appeared to re-enter] over the southern Wisconsin/Michigan area [and was] widely observed from neighbouring regions including Chicago."

"[Satellites at the end of their life-span use] electric thrusters to lower the orbit to about 250 [kilometres]. "Then it's switched off and the atmosphere drags them in over the next week or so."

Jonathan McDowell, scientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, seen here departing Earth with its Starman mannequin at the wheel, launched on a SpaceX rocket in 2018 and mistaken for a near-Earth asteroid in January 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

 

If you're the world's wealthiest individual, and you are galvanized by the prospect of space travel to the extent that you launch  your very own extraterrestrial plans for colonizing a planet in the galaxy in which your home planet exists -- an enterprise of extraordinary hubris in a challenge to the natural order of a magnitude that is difficult to imagine -- it must come easy to feel entitled in such a cavalier manner as to launch a personal toy into space just for the fun of it. 

 

Humanity's impulse to litter Earth, expands to the compulsion to litter space...

On January 2nd, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of a new asteroid named 2018 CN41. The announcement of a discovery that lasted one day only, before a correction was posted the following day to declare that the original announcement had been deleted. The explanation was that this was an erroneous classification of an asteroid; what the object actually was, it turned out, was a Tesla Roadster.

 

NASA's now retired Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe was misidentified as an asteroid several times during its lifetime mapping the universe 1 million miles from Earth. (Image credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team)

The vehicle was in fact a fondly held possession of the founder of Space X, and the car, a red sports model, was favoured by the founder of Tesla, its proud manufacturer. In 2018 the car had been launched into orbit aboard SpaceX''s Falcon Heavy rocket, at the time considered the world's most powerful rocket. Can anyone name any other individual on Earth whose deep pockets could produce such fabled technology as an electric vehicle manufacturer and space rocketry duo, both used in a fantasy of the future? And then post it as a proudly amusing item on X, the social media platform he owns?

A SpaceX Starlink internet satellite fell from space in a blaze of glory overnight, lighting up the Midwest U.S. sky with a brilliant fireball, according to Space.com.

 

Elon Musk's little amusement is by no means the only object to make headlines connected to the world's wealthiest man with a penchant for oddball moves. What had been identified as a fireball streaking across the night sky on Wednesday for example. The object was in fact a Starlink internet satellite seen lighting up the sky as it streaked the sky over the American Midwest. The low-orbit launch of Starlink satellites for broadband internet are delivered skyward by SpaceX. 

 

The fireball appearance was posted in a video online by the American Meteor Society. Records have been maintained by the American Meteor Society of fireball reports since 2005. Dozens of reports along with videos and images were received by the Society this week from people who witnessed the satellite-cum-fireball, named Starlink 5693, that had been launched at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, February 2023.

The dramatic reentry of Starlink 5693 captured the attention of many, offering a glimpse of the growing interaction between technology and space. Science Magazine

"Spaceflight activities in cislunar and interplanetary space should be conducted in an open and transparent way."

"Such transparency is essential for promoting space situational awareness, reducing interference between missions, avoiding interference with observations of natural objects, including observations of potential hazardous asteroids, and ensuring the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies."

American Astronomical Society, 2004 statement