‘0 to 1939 in 3 seconds’: Why Anti-Elon Musk Satire flourishes in Britain

Naughty posters have begun to appear all over London in the last two months.

On the part of a bus stop in East London, one of them shows that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, emerging from Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing up to a straight armed greeting. “It goes from 0 to 1939 to 3 seconds,” the ad said. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”

Another fake ad shows Mr Musk and President Trump in front of a red tesla with the words: “Now with white steering.” In northern London, a false Billboard Billboard movie: “Fast and the Führer”, with a picture of Mr Musk salting next to a Tesla with a Doge license plate, a reference to the Federal Security Service that leads today on behalf of Mr Trump.

“Parental guidance,” warns the sign, placed by a group that calls himself everyone hates Elon. “Tesla’s CEO is radiation activist. Don’t give him your money.”

Throughout the British capital and in several European cities, Mr Musk’s signature has become the target of the same kind of political anger that has fueled the vandalism of Tesla cars in the United States and sometimes violent protests in its delegations.

There have been some cases of unruly protests and vandalism in Europe. But much of the anti-Musk emotion has taken the form of political satire, the species that has flourished in Britain since at least the 18th century.

Just outside Berlin, a group called Center for Political Beauty used high -power lights to project the word “Heil” on the side of a Tesla plant to read “Heil Tesla”, along with a picture of Mr. Musk who greets during a speech in Washington. In Italy, street art depicts Elon Musk pulling out a mask to show Adolf Hitler’s face below. The words “Elon Mask” appear above the image.

“There has never been a goal exactly so,” said John Gorenfeld, a software engineer who helped start a London -based team called “Takedown Tesla”. The team has organized protests of several dozen for recent weeks. They hold posters along the highways that say “Honk if you hate Elon”. And they have printed bumper stickers for Tesla owners with phrases such as “Don’t make the same mistake” and “pre-2020 model”.

“No one who is the wealthy and powerful man behaved outrageously,” said Gorenfeld. “There is something curved and ridiculous for Musk toxicity and opens a real space for ridicule.”

In Europe, Mr Musk is not just a distant example of American wealth and power. During the last year, it has become a frequent political mediator, often weighing on the far -right causes on X, the social media platform, where it has 218 million fans.

In Britain, Mr Musk is known for the exchange of misinformation about a children’s rape scandal and demanding that Prime Minister Keir Starmer be imprisoned. He has requested the release of Tommy Robinson, a far-right, anti-immigrant shaker in prison for contempt for court. And he criticized the seven-year sentence of a neo-Nazis who stimulated and participated in anti-immigration riots last summer.

Small anti-music groups that have appeared throughout Europe have the same basic goal: Tank Tesla’s shares and sales as a way of sending a message to Mr Musk and other super-rich people who are thinking of promoting far-right policy around the world. Some teams refused to interview their actions, citing their concern to become the target of Mr Musk’s rage in social media. But others were more open to their goals.

“The point is to show Musk and other billionaires to be vulnerable and cannot act with impunity,” said Ben Stewart, founder of a British satirical activists called Donkeys, who worked with his political beauty center. “We need to make use of world public opinion to promote.”

The organizers believe it works. The price of Tesla’s shares has almost been reduced by half of its high in December, at the same time that Mr Musk began his high profile role that oversees the firing of government workers and reducing the budgets of the federal services. This week, Tesla reported a 13 % drop in sales compared to a year ago.

“What they are trying to do is to exert tremendous pressure and Tesla I guess, to know, I don’t know, stop doing this,” Mr Musk said last week in Wisconsin, where a Court of Court Campaign.

And yet, he added with a slap, “in the long run, I think the Tesla stock will do well, so maybe it is an opportunity to buy.”

Protesters who spoke about their goals said they wanted to question Mr Musk’s influence without resorting to vandalism that the billionaire has called to the United States as “coordinated violence against a peaceful company”.

Theodora Sutcliffe, a resident of London who helped organize Tesla Takedown, said none of the people he works with is involved in violence. Instead, they tried to find other ways to draw the public’s attention.

In one of their protests, a wavy, 20 -foot balloons that Mr Musk looked vaguely looked in the air. In other times, Ms Sutcliffe and her colleagues have left leaflets in the windshield of Tesla cars.

“Once upon a time, Teslas was cool,” says one flyer. “Now, unfortunately, this is not the case. Driving a Tesla and the use of Tesla chargers means that you support Elon Musk, a man who promotes climate denials and fuel minerals.”

“If you want to go viral to the UK. You have to be smart. I think,” said Ms. Sutcliffe. “This is our sense of humor normally.”

Efforts against Musk in Berlin were driven by Philipp Ruch, artistic director of the Political Beauty Center, a German group of activists. In an interview, he said that much of the anger at Mr Musk in Germany came from the billionaire’s support for the country’s far -right party, the alternative to Germany.

“On the first day the administration comes, Hitler’s greeting,” Mr Ruch said. “This is something we could not tolerate, politically and artistically.”

Mr Ruch executes many of his protests by “replacing” one image with another. In the Tesla delegation, he used lights to overestimate Mr Musk’s words and images to create a new artistic creation. (He said the police are now investigating his efforts, which were visible for about an hour.) The images of the building spread widely to social media.

Other efforts have gone viral.

There are fake car flirts called “Musk-B-Gone” that promise to cover “the stench of fascism”. And the cardboard cuts of Mr Musk and Mr Trump, thanking the Tesla owners for their support when completing their cars in the company’s batches.

“There are some people who come to Musk as if he were a passive Trump agent and that’s really. That’s just another way to get to Trump,” said Ms Sutcliffe. “There are other people who perceive Musk as someone who is a unique kind of threat that we have really not seen before in financial control and control of the information space.”