Burn, baby, burn: the climate kids are firing up
Tesla owners are now under siege around the world by more violent climate saviours, all because Elon Musk switched sides and teamed up with Donald Trump, writes Tim Blair.
Opinion
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Pity the poor Tesla owners.
Well, not because they’re poor, obviously, at least not in any financial sense. Teslas are expensive and their owners tend to be on the richer side, so they can easily afford to get around in rolling displays of their own wealth and environmental compassion.
As is their right. Their money, their choice, their private property.
But pity them anyhow, as they are now under violent siege by their fellow climate saviours.
Teslas across the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, are being set alight, scratched and spray-painted by anti-Tesla vigilantes. Their owners – who, remember, are on the same left-inclined climate rescue team as the attackers – now find themselves accused of Nazism.
All because Tesla founder Elon Musk, a formerly left-inclined Democrat voter, swapped sides and joined Donald Trump’s Republicans.
In the logic-disabled minds of green leftists, this has somehow converted electric Teslas from sainted symbols of clean technology into foul representations of brutal racist hatred.
And so the anti-Tesla terrorists are lashing out.
“We’ve had our Tesla Model Y for 2.5 years, and over the past six months, we’ve experienced increasing hostility on the roads,” one contributor to a Facebook Tesla owners’ site posted.
“After speaking with the police, it seems Teslas are being targeted more frequently.”
In New Zealand, Reuters reported this month that a 52-year-old man had been arrested following multiple Tesla attacks in Auckland.
Matters are much worse in the US, where a kind of religious mania has taken hold among environmentalists who cannot cope with what they perceive as Elon Musk’s betrayal.
A row of Teslas at a Tesla facility in Las Vegas was torched last week. Three shots were also fired at the electric vehicles, because you cannot be too safe when it comes to destroying demonic Musk mobiles.
Interestingly, the word “RESIST” was written on the facility’s main building. Perhaps our EV-loving lefties will end up endorsing old-fashioned proper V8s.
“At least 10 Tesla dealerships, charging stations and facilities have been hit by vandals, many of whom have lit cars on fire,” the US NBC network reported, “while a growing collection of videos posted to social media have shown people defacing and damaging Tesla vehicles.”
Being a devotedly anti-Musk and anti-Trump outlet, NBC’s story ran below a headline that minimised Tesla terrorism: “No evidence of co-ordinated vandalism of Teslas despite Musk and Trump claims.”
There’s no evidence of co-ordinated vandalism except for all the vandalism happening co-ordinatedly. Across the border in Hamilton, Canada, news.com.au noted last week that “upwards of 80 Teslas parked outdoors were damaged on Wednesday – the largest act of vandalism against the US electric carmaker in Canada to date.
“Police described ‘deep scratches and punctured tires’ across dozens of vehicles.”
The only slight positive to emerge from this is how it reveals the left’s fondness for destruction. Conservatives like me have criticised at great length EV culture, EV shortcomings and EV mandates.
And that’s where it ends. We use words. But when leftists turn against the world’s most successful EV maker, they use weapons and fire.
And other means of assault. Security cameras have captured men and women wiping their arses on Tesla door handles, which probably amounts to a form of bioterrorism attack. Or maybe there’s a US-wide toilet paper shortage.
Know your enemy, advised Sun Tzu in The Art of War. But Musk’s enemies don’t know that his cars feature a Sentry Mode that records vehicle attacks, be they butt-based or your more routine keyings.
Which is why footage of these disgraceful incidents is appearing all over social media. One clip shows a vandal ripping his key across a Tesla’s flank before walking to his house across the road – with the street number on full display.
He’ll soon be contacted by Johnny Law, who is rounding up the anti-Tesla lunatics and preparing to put them away.
The US Department of Justice last week announced “charges against three individuals responsible for the violent destruction of Tesla properties” All three would face the full force of the law for using molotov cocktails to set fire to Tesla cars and charging stations.
“Each defendant faces serious charges carrying a minimum penalty of five years and up to 20 years in prison,” the department said.
Besides the criminal damage, please consider the environmental harm. All those burning Teslas can’t be good for our planet. I say we seek additional climate crime justice.
Life sentences. To be served in merciless Tesla work camps.