Saboteurs opposed to "automobile capitalism" fail to storm German Tesla factory, claim credit for stopping production on a scheduled holiday when nobody was at work in the first place

Grünheide is a small town in Brandenburg and the site of Europe’s only Tesla factory. It is a rare bright point in a German economy that is otherwise rapidly deindustrialising thanks to fruitless Green environmental policies, and so it has become a flashpoint for leftist activism. You might think that the German left would have no problem with Tesla, as e-vehicles are an important pillar of the energy transition, but here you would be very wrong. Happy fairy tales about the bright future of electromobility emanate primarily from the leftist political establishment; their activist militias have different ideas, often preferring broad crusades against everything related to industry, capitalism and profit.

The Grünheide factory employs 12,000 people and contributes millions of Euros every year in taxes, which is bad enough from the activists’ point of view. Still worse, production has caused some water pollution, and Tesla plans to expand the factory, which will entail cutting down some trees. A bunch of “water justice” advocates and forest saviours have therefore crawled out of their Berlin squats and made their way to Grünheide to defend humanity from the scourge of car production.

One of them is a 25 year-old named Luis, who we read “has been committed to climate protection since 2019” and who is “concerned about drinking water.” He also doesn’t like the fact that Brandenburg has moved heaven and earth to stimulate the local economy by incentivising Tesla to set up their factory:

Luis is bothered that many special permits were granted for the construction of the electric car factory. Tesla sometimes constructed its factory on the basis of premature approvals: “You can just tell how interested the state of Brandenburg was in having Tesla set up shop here.”

It is terrifying indeed, the extent to which regional politicians will go to attract industry and employment to their states. Somebody must put a stop to this.

Back in March, when we were all reading long think-pieces about the grave threat posed by the “extreme right” and hundreds of thousands of dim idiots were taking to the streets to denounce non-existent Nazis, a gaggle of arsonists (or, in media patois, “activists”) calling themselves the “Volcano Group” burned down an electricity pole, stopping production at the Grünheide facility for days and cutting off power to various nearby villages. Because the Volcano Group are on the left, this was not an example of escalating political violence or the fruit of brutalised social media discourse.

Yesterday, our activist heroes returned to further their bold stance against industrial production, which is something nobody has ever thought of doing before. Some of them hail from a group called “Turn off Tesla’s tap.” They have partnered with “Disrupt,” which the Süddeutsche Zeitung calls a “platform” but which appears to be little more than a Twitter account with 1,784 followers, which is so deeply reviled they have had to turn off comments on all of their posts.

Our tap-turners set about dismantling German capitalism by blocking a road with the corpses of some tragically slaughtered trees …

… by blocking another road with the help of an “end nEocoLONialism” banner (the capital letters spell ELON, which is very clever) …

… and by throwing paint over a fence onto some cars in a parking lot:

A random girl on the “Disrupt” Twitter account platform explained this bold act as an instance of militant opposition to “the absurdity of automobile capitalism.”

Then our brave communist warriors posed for a poorly staged photograph with a lot of trash, pink smoke and a “DESTROY TESLA” banner …

… before finally storming the factory itself with the help of an inflatable turtle:

Afterwards they declared victory on Twitter, and announced the immanence of socialism, wherein trams, buses and cargo bikes will be the only means of personal transport:

The Gigafactory has stopped production today. All car factories should be stopped just like this one!

We want to decide democratically how and what we produce: Trams. Buses. Cargo bikes.

Mobility that benefits everyone. #stoptesla

Their exultation was, alas, premature. None of our socialist revolutionaries managed to penetrate the perimeter fence, and the factory was already shut down to give the workers a long weekend following the bank holiday on Ascension Thursday. These are but mere details on the path towards communist utopia and the end of history.