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

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

The mischievous posters began appearing all over London in the past two months.

On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, emerging from a Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing upward in a straight-armed salute. “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” the ad reads. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”

Another mock ad shows Mr. Musk and President Trump in front of a red Tesla with the words: “Now With White Power Steering.” In North London, a fake movie billboard blares: “The Fast and the Führer,” with a picture of Mr. Musk saluting beside a Tesla with a DOGE license plate, a reference to the budget-slashing federal agency he currently leads on behalf of Mr. Trump.

“Parental Guidance,” warns the billboard, put up by a group calling itself Overthrow Musk. “Tesla’s CEO is a far-right activist. Don’t give him your money.”

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

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

Just outside Berlin, a group called the Center for Political Beauty used high-power lights to project the word “Heil” onto the side of a Tesla factory so that it read “Heil Tesla,” along with a picture of Mr. Musk saluting during a speech in Washington. In Italy, street art depicts Elon Musk taking off a mask to show Adolf Hitler’s face underneath. The words “Elon Mask” appear above the picture.

“There’s never been a target exactly like this,” said John Gorenfeld, a software engineer who helped start a London-based group called “Takedown Tesla.” The group has organized protests of several dozen people for the past several weeks. They hold posters along freeways that say “Honk if you hate Elon.” And they have printed bumper stickers for Tesla owners with phrases like “Don’t make the same mistake” and “Pre-2020 Model.”

“Nobody who is that rich and powerful has behaved that outrageously,” Mr. Gorenfeld said. “There’s something campy and ridiculous about Musk’s brand of toxicity. And it opens up a real space to ridicule.”

In Europe, Mr. Musk is not just a faraway example of American wealth and power. Over the last year, he has become a frequent political meddler, often weighing in on behalf of far-right causes on X, his social media platform, where he has 218 million followers.

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In Britain, Mr. Musk is known for sharing misinformation about a child rape scandal and calling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be jailed. He has called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a far-right, anti-immigrant agitator who is in prison for contempt of court. And he criticized the seven-year sentence of a neo-Nazi who incited and took part in anti-immigrant riots last summer.

The small anti-Musk groups that have popped up around Europe have the same basic goal: Tank Tesla’s stock price and sales as a way of sending a message to Mr. Musk and other super-wealthy people who are thinking of promoting far-right politics around the world. Some groups declined to be interviewed about their actions, citing concern about becoming a target of Mr. Musk’s ire on social media. But others were more open about their aims.

“The point of this is to show Musk and other billionaires that they are vulnerable and can’t act with impunity,” said Ben Stewart, a founder of a British satirical activist group called Led by Donkeys, which worked with the Center for Political Beauty to project Mr. Musk’s image on the Berlin factory. “We have to harness global public opinion to push back.”

Organizers think it’s working. Tesla’s stock price has almost halved since its high in December, around the same time that Mr. Musk began his high-profile role overseeing the firing of government workers and slashing federal agency budgets. This week, Tesla reported a 13 percent drop in sales compared with a year ago.

“What they’re trying to do is put massive pressure on me, and Tesla I guess, to you know, I don’t know, stop doing this,” Mr. Musk said last week in Wisconsin where he was campaigning for a state supreme court candidate.

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And yet, he added with a shrug, “Long term, I think Tesla stock’s going to do fine, so maybe it’s a buying opportunity.”

The protesters who spoke about their aims said they wanted to challenge Mr. Musk’s influence without resorting to the vandalism that the billionaire has called out in the United States as “coordinated violence against a peaceful company.”

Theodora Sutcliffe, a London resident who helped organize Tesla Takedown, said none of the people she works with are participating in violence. Instead, they have sought to find other ways to capture public attention.

At one of their protests, a wavy, 20-foot balloon man who vaguely resembled Mr. Musk saluted into the air. At other times, Ms. Sutcliffe and her fellow protesters have left fliers on the windshields of Tesla cars.

“Once upon a time, Teslas were cool,” one flier says. “Now, sadly, that’s not the case. Driving a Tesla and using Tesla chargers means you’re propping up Elon Musk, a man who promotes climate deniers and fossil-fuel junkies.”

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“If you want to go viral in the U.K., you have to be smart, I think,” Ms. Sutcliffe said. “That’s our sense of humor normally.”

The anti-Musk efforts in Berlin were led by Philipp Ruch, the artistic director for the Center for Political Beauty, a German activist group. In an interview, he said that much of the anger at Mr. Musk in Germany stems from the billionaire’s support for the country’s far-right party, the Alternative for Germany.

“The first day that the administration comes in, he does the Hitler salute,” Mr. Ruch said. “This is something we couldn’t tolerate, politically and artistically.”

Mr. Ruch performs many of his protests by “overwriting” one image with another. At the Tesla dealership, he used lights to superimpose his words and images of Mr. Musk to create a new artistic creation. (He said the police are now investigating his efforts, which were visible for about an hour.) Pictures of the building were spread widely on social media.

Other efforts have gone viral, too.

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There are mock car air fresheners called “Musk-B-Gone” that promise to cover “the stench of fascism.” And cardboard cutouts of Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump, thanking Tesla owners for their support when they top up their cars at the company’s supercharger lots.

“There are some people who are coming at Musk as though he’s some sort of passive agent of Trump and that really, this is just another way of getting to Trump,” said Ms. Sutcliffe. “There’s other people who perceive Musk as somebody who’s a unique type of threat that we really haven’t seen before in terms of his economic control and control of the information space.”

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Top GOP lawmaker rallies around conservative school board member facing calls to resign

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Top GOP lawmaker rallies around conservative school board member facing calls to resign

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., rebuked a school board in Richmond, Michigan, after some of its members tried to remove a conservative colleague for missing meetings while on military deployment to the Middle East.

Ray Stier, who received an American flag and a copy of the Congressional Record from McClain on Thursday as a commendation of his work, had been on deployment, attending board meetings remotely, but eventually lost virtual access.

That’s when the board called for his removal, citing a “disservice” caused by his absence.

“One of the board members’ family was taking to social media and putting out misinformation about myself and my wife and things that were not factually accurate and then ultimately calling for my resignation and prompting others to reach out to the district to call for my recall,” Stier recounted.

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PARENTS SAY THEY’RE RUNNING FOR LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS TO FIGHT ‘POISONOUS’ CRITICAL RACE THEORY

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., left, pictured alongside Ray Stier, a school board member in Richmond, Michigan. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; office of Lisa McClain)

The moment is just the most recent clash between Republicans and school boards over policies that, in their view, are gatekeeping schools against diversity of thought and accountability.

“I think education is extremely important and vital,” McClain told Fox News Digital.

“And educators and administrators need to teach children how to think, not what to think. It’s about time that administrators begin to get held accountable for their actions. Good actions and bad actions.”

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McClain’s meeting with Stier comes on the heels of a congressional hearing last week where she grilled a superintendent from Virginia over student privacy policy, probing if those policies were being unevenly applied to favor transgender students.

VIRGINIA SCHOOL DISTRICT SLAPPED WITH COMPLAINT ALLEGING NEW CLAIMS IN VIRAL TRANS LOCKER ROOM FIGHT

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., leaves a House Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club on Feb. 28, 2023. (Tom Williams/ CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

“The victims got a 10-day suspension and the biological female that did the filming got a one-day suspension,” McClain said, referring to an incident at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County where students had been reprimanded for filming in a locker room.

“How does that make sense?”

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In Stier’s case, McClain questioned whether the board had targeted Stier on account of just his deployment overseas. Stierhad clashed with the board after learning that some of the district’s bathroom policies would have allowed fourth-grade students to use the same bathroom as transgender eighth-grade boys.

“Prior to him filling the seat, the seat was open for two months,” McClain observed. So that logical argument doesn’t exactly make sense to me; it doesn’t really hold a lot of water.”

MICHIGAN PARENT WANTS TRUMP TO ACT AFTER DAUGHTER SHARES LOCKER ROOM WITH TRANS-ATHLETE

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., left, pictured alongside Richmond, Michigan school board member Ray Stier right. (Office of Lisa McClain)

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For his own part, Stier believes his case will refocus attention on the importance of the school board and its membership.

“My goal is to continue being an advocate for the community. One of the good things that I think came out of this was that it got so much attention that some of the community members who were unaware of the dynamics that were not being brought to light,” Stier said.  

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Political watchdog fines Newsom for failing to report $5.5M in solicited donations on time

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Political watchdog fines Newsom for failing to report .5M in solicited donations on time

California’s political watchdog commission on Thursday finalized a $31,500 fine against Gov. Gavin Newsom, alleging that the Democratic leader failed to report three dozen behested payments totaling $5.5 million mostly to support wildfire recovery by the deadline under state law.

The Political Reform Act requires elected officials to disclose payments of $5,000 or more that they solicit or direct others to give to a charitable, legislative or governmental purpose within 30 days.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission said 34 of the violations were for failing to report on time that Newsom and his staff directed outreach from companies and foundations that wanted to help after the Los Angeles wildfires to the California Fire Foundation. The nonprofit was started in 1987 by the California Professional Firefighters to support the families of fallen firefighters and communities impacted by fire.

The donations include $1 million from the Chuck Lorre Foundation and $500,000 apiece from Lockheed Martin, the Anthem Blue Cross Foundation and BlackRock, among others gifts.

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The governor also failed in 2024 to report on time two behested payments, totaling $100,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation and Schwab Charitable Funds to the Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit within the League of California Cities.

The commission said the governor reported all of the payments “prior to public discovery” or contact from its enforcement division, which it considered a mitigating factor. Newsom also signed the stipulation and agreed to the fine.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom’s office, said the issue involved late paperwork at a time when the governor’s staff was focused on emergency response and supporting survivors. She also underscored the fact that the reports were filed before he was contact by the FPPC.

Gallegos said the fine is unrelated to an alleged investigation into the governor and his wife by the Department of Justice, which Newsom announced this week.

Newsom alleged Monday that Trump is using the government as a political weapon to target him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Newsom announced the investigation after he learned that the FBI and Internal Revenue Service asked his associates questions about nonprofits and businesses related to the couple.

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The governor’s office characterized the investigation as a fishing expedition. The Trump administration declined to comment.

A source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, said two federal probes have been going on for about a year, and that they originated not from Washington, D.C., but from conversations between whistleblowers and federal prosecutors based in Sacramento. The probes are linked to Newsom’s former chief-of-staff, Dana Williamson, and Siebel Newsom’s taxes, the source said.

The FPPC violations mark the second time Newsom has reported payments late, which increased his penalty for the new infractions. The commission fined Newsom in 2024 for failing to timely report 18 payments totaling $14.4 million.

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Video: Erika Kirk’s Message for Women at Turning Point USA

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Video: Erika Kirk’s Message for Women at Turning Point USA

new video loaded: Erika Kirk’s Message for Women at Turning Point USA

Our reporter Vivian Yee details what she saw at this year’s Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit in San Antonio.

By Vivian Yee, Christina Shaman, Lauren Pruitt, James Surdam and Melanie Bencosme

June 18, 2026

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