In Elon Musk’s bent worldview he showed us at Donald Trump’s inauguration, he’s busy rallying in 1934 Nuremberg. I guess the bundle of perks you receive for being the richest man in the world includes a time machine. However, if I were eco-conscious enough (or persuaded by a 0% APR offer) to drive a Model 3, I still wouldn’t want some vigilante to “decorate” my Tesla with a sticker of Elon Musk’s stiff saluted right arm while I’m parked in Coolidge Corner.

 Here’s the rundown if you aren’t familiar with the story: Brookline made national headlines when 39-year-old Harrison Randall terrorized parking lots with stickers depicting what I’ll put lightly as Elon Musk’s contentious hand gesture at Trump’s inauguration. Randall defended his actions by brushing vandalism off as free speech. He’s no saint but neither is Musk. Randall faces six counts of defacing property while Musk lies in whatever PR hell he’s dug himself into with his juvenile freehanded approach to public affairs.

 The decals are part of a larger “Tesla Takedown” movement across the country. On the weekends, hundreds of protesters stand outside Tesla’s Boylston Street showroom with signs to voice their displeasure. While it would be remiss to say that voters were completely blindsided — DOGE was floated in X threads and on alt-right podcasts — the idea of Musk holding so much power was easily lost amongst the two attempted assassinations and 34 felony counts.

 Yet, within the movement, those like Randall find ways to take it too far: In Littleton, several charging stations were set on fire; in Lowell, a Tesla ended up with two bullet holes; in Worcester, the owner of a gold Cybertruck (odd choice, but it’s a free country) has been harassed with accusations of being a Nazi sympathizer and messages that he “should do himself a favor and kill himself.” Tesla owners are being doxxed online for the crime of buying the premier electric vehicle when it was still cool. For Pete’s sake, it’s just a car! I’m not ecstatic about cuts to the Department of Education or USAID, but Musk’s not wrong when he notes that “a great wrong is being done to the people of Tesla and to our customers.”

 I’d argue that the Tesla incidents are not just wrong, they’re counterproductive. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s something up in Washington when administrators are using fire emojis in attack plans and leaking Social Security numbers in declassified JFK files. It is wrong that, as unelected officials, Musk and his DOGE bros can block PEPFAR payments for AIDS relief in Africa. Regardless, beating up Tesla owners as a straw man doesn’t do anything about that.

 In the psychological rush to jump on the anti-Musk train and steer it as far as it can go, people seem to forget that Tesla owners are people, too. Many of them are individuals who bought a Tesla five or six years ago amid calls for the Green New Deal and videos of Greta Thunberg’s ‘how dare you’ speeches to be more eco-friendly. In an era in which owning an electric vehicle is a partisan issue, CNN found in 2024 that electric vehicle ownership in Massachusetts consists of 95% Democratic and Independent crowds. More likely than not, Tesla owners fall on the same side of America’s political divide as their harassers.

 Infighting within the progressive movement as to who can be more ideologically pure by vilifying ideological allies encapsulates what’s wrong with the resistance to Trump and company. In a speech last month, former VP candidate Tim Walz couldn’t help but revel in Tesla’s stock market slump: “On the iPhone, they’ve got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day. Two-hundred-twenty-five and dropping!” Walz certainly gave the folks at Fox News a laugh on primetime; his comments reek of the out-of-touch progressive puritanism that they accuse him of. In Minnesota, Walz’s home state, the state pension fund consists of 1.6 million shares of Tesla stock.

 While Walz laughs at Tesla being in the red, Minnesota pensioners and Tesla stock owners across the country despair as their portfolios hemorrhage value. Walz commits the same mistake as Massachusetts vandals — alienating the base he should aim to capture with his riposte of Tesla and Musk.