The patriarch and his nightmare dream
Elon Musk, owner and patriarch of Tesla, is for us only a single representative of a caste of men who are united in their aggressive capitalist-technological will to modernise and their delusion of world domination. As egomaniacs, they see themselves as the centre of a world they believe to own. They are characterised by extreme irresponsibility and anti-social activity.
But Elon Musk is also the richest person in the world and the founder of many companies, the prototype of the economic patriarch. In his companies, everything is strictly prescribed. Anyone who doesn't work efficiently is fired. Musk believes in limitless techno-capitalist progress - he also believes that we are very likely living in a simulation. Someone like that could not care less about the number of corpses he walks over. It is not for nothing that he is planning the colonisation of Mars. That's only logical if life on Earth will become hell for most people if things continue as they are. And he would know.
It is well known that his company SpaceX is the world's leading commercial provider of rocket flights. His SpaceX Dragon spacecraft supplies the International Space Station (ISS), and another spacecraft called Crew-Dragon also takes people there. Musk is currently working with "success" to make space flight the mainstream tourist experience for the rich. He is putting the money he makes from the supposedly so clean electric cars into expanding his rocket fleet. Thus, every purchase of an electric car from Tesla is nothing more than a contribution to the further ecological destruction of the biosphere - there is probably no need to say anything about the ecological balance of rockets. As a symbol of his potency, years ago he had a Tesla convertible, complete with a doll in a spaceman's outfit at the wheel, ejaculated into space on one of his rockets. Since then, the thing has been orbiting the earth devoid of meaning.
The fairy tale of the ecologically and politically correct big investor is a neoliberal lie spread by those who want to believe it. Tesla mainly builds top-of-the-range models and SUVs; now also a passenger car that can go over 300 km/h. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, under the control of the inhumane crown prince, holds Tesla shares worth up to $3 billion. This dictator is building and earning money in Brandenburg.
Musk is a patriarchal visionary as well. He wants to network the human brain with machines and founded the company Neuralink for this purpose in 2016. Elon Musk's earthly dream is automated driving based on artificial intelligence. Many functions in Tesla cars are already controlled by app. The new models continuously film the interior of the car and also the external environment. This data is sent directly to the Tesla cloud. Anyone who buys a Tesla makes themselves part of a dystopian surveillance apparatus. In 2020, Tesla received the Big Brother Award, which is given for particularly intrusive technical control. The reason given was that data is permanently analysed and stored. It was said that Tesla cars are "surveillance systems on four wheels".
This resource-wasting surveillance mobility is supposed to secure the future of individual transport and integrate it into the social context of exploitation and surveillance. This has also been the case in the car industry up to today: assembly line work was enforced by Ford on the automobile so that it could be produced more cost-efficiently. But above all, to isolate the workers and to undermine their union organisation through the fragmentation of work steps. One only has to read what Mr. Ford wrote about this. We take just as seriously how Musk wants to shape the world. He unabashedly dreams the patriarchal dream of domination over earth and space. Enough experiences have been made with such men in the last 5000 years. Let's make sure that time has run out for him and his ilk.
Grünheide
Grünheide is to become Elon Musk's second large factory to produce electric cars. He calls it the "Giga-factory" for a reason. The dimensions are monstrous, like those of the other giga-factories. The first one builds batteries in Nevada (USA). In order for it to be built, laws were changed at Musk's request and 1.3 billion in taxes were waived. Giga-factory 2 builds photovoltaic systems. Giga-factory 3 in Shanghai (China) builds cars. Number 4 in Grünheide will be the same. Starting in the summer of 2021, around 12,000 workers will build 500,000 cars per year there. Later on, 40,000 people will build 2 million cars per year. That would be about 5500 cars per day.
Property prices in the area are already rising. The gentrification known from Berlin will affect the area around Erkner with an expected 35,000 newcomers. This will be at the expense of financially weak households and will lead to strong displacement of the population from the region. The uncertainty and anger is correspondingly great.
Tesla is also a disaster on the ground. Besides the deforestation for the construction of the factory and the massive increase in local and supra-regional traffic, the high water consumption will be the ecologically most serious consequence for the region. The board of the Strausberg-Erkner water board even warned of drinking water shortages. For the initial operation, Tesla forecast the consumption of 3.3 million m³ of water per year. Only after heavy criticism did Tesla change its estimate to 1.4 million m³ for the beginning. Later, it will be 2.15 million m³ of drinking water. In the long term, there is already talk of a demand for more than 15 million m³ of water per year. According to ecologists, this will have a negative impact on the water supply of the region and the nearby landscape and nature conservation areas. From 2022, with the estimated water consumption of the factory, there will no longer be sufficient water reserves for the development of the region. In addition, the pumping of large amounts of water exacerbates the problem of declining groundwater levels, which is a consequence of the climate disaster. None of this concerns the head of the Potsdam State Environmental Agency. Hearings of Tesla opponents leave him cold and he approves one environmental mess after the next. Now even untapped drinking water reservoirs are to be exploited.
In Brandenburg's politics, Daimler's investment of 50 million euros for the production of E-Sprinters in Ludwigsfelde celebrates the state as a "mobility hub".
And Tesla brazenly advertises itself as the "most advanced factory in the world". But Tesla has so far used technology in its factories (e.g. in the paint shop) that is both older and more backwards in terms of environmental protection than that used by conventional carmakers in Europe. Water consumption and emissions are significantly higher. It's like building a chemical plant in a drinking water protection area.
Tesla's payment record is poor, despite preferential treatment by local licensing authorities. They can just afford it. Tesla did not pay the water bill for the construction site. Only when the water was turned off in October 2020 did the money start flowing. They are used to laws being changed and structures being adapted for them. The Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences is setting up a degree course in "electromobility" so that the necessary young engineers can be bred, the nearby motorway is being renovated especially for factory operations and the L38 is being extended.
This is the continued normality of the destructive industrialisation of the 19th century, which is now riding the wave of green capitalism into the 21st century. In which, without regard for people and natural resources, vast landscapes, almost the entire continent, almost the entire world, is subjugated to industrialised, en-smart-ened production.
Consumption and individual transport - or: another world
For what is motorised individual transport, which has been elevated to a fetish, used? To get people to their jobs in a totally flexible and totally monitored way, to have them consume at all times, to be able to transport people as quickly as possible - so that they work more and consume more.
Is an electric SUV an improvement that will make anything better?
In order to be able to live a life that does not destroy the vital foundations of the earth, we do not need electromobility. What is needed is less mobility overall, less individual transport, and above all less consumption, the benefits of which and the associated promises of happiness are hammered into us every day. It needs free public transport. It needs progress in social coexistence, a future without exploitation of our labour power. Only the perpetuation of colonial relations of exploitation makes it possible to produce electric motors that make people here believe that the cars are ecologically clean.
And asked about the social aspects: Do the wealthy Tesla buyers with an eco-conscience want the mines and quarries for their "eco" car next to their "farmers' garden"? Do they want to see the power plants that supply them with electricity from their condo roof terrace? Do they want to see the huts of the downtrodden workers next to the eco-kindergarten where they send their children?
No. These people and their working conditions should remain outside the EU. They don't want to see the misery. Because they probably simply don't care that others have to pay the blood toll for their "privileges". There is no lack of knowledge regarding the global interconnections. One can decide which side one is on. One can buy an SUV or set fire to it. We recommend the latter - without getting caught, of course.
There is enough experience with the promises of capitalist-technological progress. 200 years ago, there were hardly any forests left in Central Europe because they were consumed for mining, industry, warships, heating and building. The forest clearings were replaced by the industrial extraction of coal. We all know what the subsequent burning of coal has done.
We know that the digitisation of the world has led, and will continue to lead, above all to new forms of domination. Tesla will always know who else is in the car, what is being said and where the journey is going. The data does not belong to us, it is sold and forms another foundation for the possibilities of totalitarian surveillance.
Climate catastrophe and the meaning of revolutionary acts of sabotage
Among other things, the unbroken belief and adherence of all previous market-dominated forms of society to technical progress has undoubtedly had the effect that the climate catastrophe can no longer be prevented. Sabotage cannot replace major social struggles, but it can support them or set courageous accents in order to force thinking spaces and perspectives.
Why then do we still engage in sabotage actions if we believe that climate destruction can no longer be stopped? Because we want to keep the magnitude of the coming catastrophes as low as possible. Because protest and resistance against the destruction of the climate through profit-oriented exploitation of the earth's resources can have a revolutionary outlook on the future as its objective. Because with the destruction of expansive market-radical economic policies there is the chance to establish a fundamentally solidary and social way of life that shows us ways to a different society. When the devastation of ecosystems is far advanced, a new society can better deal with the consequences of these legacies when the relations of domination are fundamentally destroyed. It is only in resistance to the existing destructive relations that the possibilities for change become apparent.
The rich men who drive these processes of ecological devastation are also only results of social processes, and thus to a certain extent interchangeable, but it is not by chance that it is precisely these men who represent a politics of modernisation through destruction. Let's destroy everything that is called Tesla!
People all over the world are fighting against their destructive belief in progress. For us, many of these struggles belong together. They are united by resistance to an aggressive push for modernisation. When indigenous women in Argentina shout to stop conquering their bodies and their lands, we also support these struggles with this action.
The struggles in Hambacher Forst, Dannenröder Wald and other forests of resistance were and are points of hope for us, as are the radical sabotage actions of others in the coal mines who no longer fall for the lies of the proclamators of progress.
By the way, the insanity of individual transport and electromobility can easily be attacked further: In September, the International Motor Show (IAA) will take place in Munich. We hope that there will be enough resistance locally, decentrally and also subversively on the net to make this a fiasco.
Volcano Group: Against the Progress of Destruction
The patriarch and his nightmare dream
Elon Musk, owner and patriarch of Tesla, is for us only a single representative of a caste of men who are united in their aggressive capitalist-technological will to modernise and their delusion of world domination. As egomaniacs, they see themselves as the centre of a world they believe to own. They are characterised by extreme irresponsibility and anti-social activity.
But Elon Musk is also the richest person in the world and the founder of many companies, the prototype of the economic patriarch. In his companies, everything is strictly prescribed. Anyone who doesn't work efficiently is fired. Musk believes in limitless techno-capitalist progress - he also believes that we are very likely living in a simulation. Someone like that could not care less about the number of corpses he walks over. It is not for nothing that he is planning the colonisation of Mars. That's only logical if life on Earth will become hell for most people if things continue as they are. And he would know.
It is well known that his company SpaceX is the world's leading commercial provider of rocket flights. His SpaceX Dragon spacecraft supplies the International Space Station (ISS), and another spacecraft called Crew-Dragon also takes people there. Musk is currently working with "success" to make space flight the mainstream tourist experience for the rich. He is putting the money he makes from the supposedly so clean electric cars into expanding his rocket fleet. Thus, every purchase of an electric car from Tesla is nothing more than a contribution to the further ecological destruction of the biosphere - there is probably no need to say anything about the ecological balance of rockets. As a symbol of his potency, years ago he had a Tesla convertible, complete with a doll in a spaceman's outfit at the wheel, ejaculated into space on one of his rockets. Since then, the thing has been orbiting the earth devoid of meaning.
The fairy tale of the ecologically and politically correct big investor is a neoliberal lie spread by those who want to believe it. Tesla mainly builds top-of-the-range models and SUVs; now also a passenger car that can go over 300 km/h. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, under the control of the inhumane crown prince, holds Tesla shares worth up to $3 billion. This dictator is building and earning money in Brandenburg.
Musk is a patriarchal visionary as well. He wants to network the human brain with machines and founded the company Neuralink for this purpose in 2016. Elon Musk's earthly dream is automated driving based on artificial intelligence. Many functions in Tesla cars are already controlled by app. The new models continuously film the interior of the car and also the external environment. This data is sent directly to the Tesla cloud. Anyone who buys a Tesla makes themselves part of a dystopian surveillance apparatus. In 2020, Tesla received the Big Brother Award, which is given for particularly intrusive technical control. The reason given was that data is permanently analysed and stored. It was said that Tesla cars are "surveillance systems on four wheels".
This resource-wasting surveillance mobility is supposed to secure the future of individual transport and integrate it into the social context of exploitation and surveillance. This has also been the case in the car industry up to today: assembly line work was enforced by Ford on the automobile so that it could be produced more cost-efficiently. But above all, to isolate the workers and to undermine their union organisation through the fragmentation of work steps. One only has to read what Mr. Ford wrote about this. We take just as seriously how Musk wants to shape the world. He unabashedly dreams the patriarchal dream of domination over earth and space. Enough experiences have been made with such men in the last 5000 years. Let's make sure that time has run out for him and his ilk.
Grünheide
Grünheide is to become Elon Musk's second large factory to produce electric cars. He calls it the "Giga-factory" for a reason. The dimensions are monstrous, like those of the other giga-factories. The first one builds batteries in Nevada (USA). In order for it to be built, laws were changed at Musk's request and 1.3 billion in taxes were waived. Giga-factory 2 builds photovoltaic systems. Giga-factory 3 in Shanghai (China) builds cars. Number 4 in Grünheide will be the same. Starting in the summer of 2021, around 12,000 workers will build 500,000 cars per year there. Later on, 40,000 people will build 2 million cars per year. That would be about 5500 cars per day.
Property prices in the area are already rising. The gentrification known from Berlin will affect the area around Erkner with an expected 35,000 newcomers. This will be at the expense of financially weak households and will lead to strong displacement of the population from the region. The uncertainty and anger is correspondingly great. Tesla is also a disaster on the ground. Besides the deforestation for the construction of the factory and the massive increase in local and supra-regional traffic, the high water consumption will be the ecologically most serious consequence for the region. The board of the Strausberg-Erkner water board even warned of drinking water shortages. For the initial operation, Tesla forecast the consumption of 3.3 million m³ of water per year. Only after heavy criticism did Tesla change its estimate to 1.4 million m³ for the beginning. Later, it will be 2.15 million m³ of drinking water. In the long term, there is already talk of a demand for more than 15 million m³ of water per year. According to ecologists, this will have a negative impact on the water supply of the region and the nearby landscape and nature conservation areas. From 2022, with the estimated water consumption of the factory, there will no longer be sufficient water reserves for the development of the region. In addition, the pumping of large amounts of water exacerbates the problem of declining groundwater levels, which is a consequence of the climate disaster. None of this concerns the head of the Potsdam State Environmental Agency. Hearings of Tesla opponents leave him cold and he approves one environmental mess after the next. Now even untapped drinking water reservoirs are to be exploited.
In Brandenburg's politics, Daimler's investment of 50 million euros for the production of E-Sprinters in Ludwigsfelde celebrates the state as a "mobility hub".
And Tesla brazenly advertises itself as the "most advanced factory in the world". But Tesla has so far used technology in its factories (e.g. in the paint shop) that is both older and more backwards in terms of environmental protection than that used by conventional carmakers in Europe. Water consumption and emissions are significantly higher. It's like building a chemical plant in a drinking water protection area.
Tesla's payment record is poor, despite preferential treatment by local licensing authorities. They can just afford it. Tesla did not pay the water bill for the construction site. Only when the water was turned off in October 2020 did the money start flowing. They are used to laws being changed and structures being adapted for them. The Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences is setting up a degree course in "electromobility" so that the necessary young engineers can be bred, the nearby motorway is being renovated especially for factory operations and the L38 is being extended.
This is the continued normality of the destructive industrialisation of the 19th century, which is now riding the wave of green capitalism into the 21st century. In which, without regard for people and natural resources, vast landscapes, almost the entire continent, almost the entire world, is subjugated to industrialised, en-smart-ened production.
Consumption and individual transport - or: another world
For what is motorised individual transport, which has been elevated to a fetish, used? To get people to their jobs in a totally flexible and totally monitored way, to have them consume at all times, to be able to transport people as quickly as possible - so that they work more and consume more.
Is an electric SUV an improvement that will make anything better?
In order to be able to live a life that does not destroy the vital foundations of the earth, we do not need electromobility. What is needed is less mobility overall, less individual transport, and above all less consumption, the benefits of which and the associated promises of happiness are hammered into us every day. It needs free public transport. It needs progress in social coexistence, a future without exploitation of our labour power. Only the perpetuation of colonial relations of exploitation makes it possible to produce electric motors that make people here believe that the cars are ecologically clean.
And asked about the social aspects: Do the wealthy Tesla buyers with an eco-conscience want the mines and quarries for their "eco" car next to their "farmers' garden"? Do they want to see the power plants that supply them with electricity from their condo roof terrace? Do they want to see the huts of the downtrodden workers next to the eco-kindergarten where they send their children?
No. These people and their working conditions should remain outside the EU. They don't want to see the misery. Because they probably simply don't care that others have to pay the blood toll for their "privileges". There is no lack of knowledge regarding the global interconnections. One can decide which side one is on. One can buy an SUV or set fire to it. We recommend the latter - without getting caught, of course.
There is enough experience with the promises of capitalist-technological progress. 200 years ago, there were hardly any forests left in Central Europe because they were consumed for mining, industry, warships, heating and building. The forest clearings were replaced by the industrial extraction of coal. We all know what the subsequent burning of coal has done. We know that the digitisation of the world has led, and will continue to lead, above all to new forms of domination. Tesla will always know who else is in the car, what is being said and where the journey is going. The data does not belong to us, it is sold and forms another foundation for the possibilities of totalitarian surveillance.
Climate catastrophe and the meaning of revolutionary acts of sabotage
Among other things, the unbroken belief and adherence of all previous market-dominated forms of society to technical progress has undoubtedly had the effect that the climate catastrophe can no longer be prevented. Sabotage cannot replace major social struggles, but it can support them or set courageous accents in order to force thinking spaces and perspectives.
Why then do we still engage in sabotage actions if we believe that climate destruction can no longer be stopped? Because we want to keep the magnitude of the coming catastrophes as low as possible. Because protest and resistance against the destruction of the climate through profit-oriented exploitation of the earth's resources can have a revolutionary outlook on the future as its objective. Because with the destruction of expansive market-radical economic policies there is the chance to establish a fundamentally solidary and social way of life that shows us ways to a different society. When the devastation of ecosystems is far advanced, a new society can better deal with the consequences of these legacies when the relations of domination are fundamentally destroyed. It is only in resistance to the existing destructive relations that the possibilities for change become apparent.
The rich men who drive these processes of ecological devastation are also only results of social processes, and thus to a certain extent interchangeable, but it is not by chance that it is precisely these men who represent a politics of modernisation through destruction. Let's destroy everything that is called Tesla!
People all over the world are fighting against their destructive belief in progress. For us, many of these struggles belong together. They are united by resistance to an aggressive push for modernisation. When indigenous women in Argentina shout to stop conquering their bodies and their lands, we also support these struggles with this action.
The struggles in Hambacher Forst, Dannenröder Wald and other forests of resistance were and are points of hope for us, as are the radical sabotage actions of others in the coal mines who no longer fall for the lies of the proclamators of progress.
By the way, the insanity of individual transport and electromobility can easily be attacked further: In September, the International Motor Show (IAA) will take place in Munich. We hope that there will be enough resistance locally, decentrally and also subversively on the net to make this a fiasco.
Volcano Group: Against the Progress of Destruction
(end of statement)