Tesla halts production at German factory after attack claimed by far-left group

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240305-tesla-halts-production-at-german-factory-after-attack-claimed-by-far-left-group

by seydor • 2 years ago

32 68 2 years ago

france24.com

Sakos2• 2 years ago

They'll attack Tesla but not traditional automakers or other industrial instances more directly responsible for destroying the environment and contributing to climate change.

I just can't with German eco-"activists".

lifestyleguru3• 2 years ago

but the activists don't care about climate change

Sakos2• 2 years ago

You see the problem then.

lukan8• 2 years ago

They care, but see "capitalism" as the root problem and revolution as the only solution. It is just, that their concepts of what comes next, are quite vague.

FirmwareBurner2• 2 years ago

The same eco activists who are anti nuclear but not anti coal in their back yard and who travel yearly across the globe to vacations in east Asia.

account42• 2 years ago

You can blame the government-controlled media for fostering that mindset.

lukan8• 2 years ago

In this case, nope. They are also very much against coal and probably were involved with the occupation of the Hambacher Forst to stop more coal extraction(something I supported as well). And it is likely that they are so radical, that they don't fly. You are talking about a different group with the vacation in Bali after blocking streets in germany, eco groups are really not that homogenous.

bun_terminator2• 2 years ago

It's not about eco at all, that's just a facade. They're part of the annoying trend that discriminates the world into good and bad and attack the "bad" by all means. Musk has been shifting to the "bad" side in public perception for a year or two. That's the only reason why Tesla is a target - this has nothing to do with Tesla at all.

rbehrends• 2 years ago

This particular group ("Vulkangruppe") isn't about ecoactivism. They're an extremist, violent anarchist group that have previously attacked objects such as cable ducts or radio masts with the overall aim to disrupt public life.

lifestyleguru3• 2 years ago

One really has to be clueless outsider to think that they can simply start producing their own cars in Germany.

somedude895• 2 years ago

Honestly, I expected bureaucracy, politics and unions to ruin Tesla's Germany adventure. I did not expect this. This level of self-destructiveness is quite unprecedented, even for Germany.

lifestyleguru3• 2 years ago

bureaucracy, politics and unions

Not a problem at these levels of geopolitics and funding, Germans are the same bribable as anyone else. The problem is you are becoming a competition at someone's own territory.

sinuhe69• 2 years ago

Not without reason they are the only economy in Europe in recession.

bun_terminator2• 2 years ago

Or really anything. Intel will regret its Magdeburg factory, too.

soco5• 2 years ago

Indeed, let's keep producing all our goods in China and not hire anybody in Germany, because we know where this will lead. Are you for real??

lukan8• 2 years ago

Here is the link of the group, claiming and explaining the attack (in german):

https://de.indymedia.org/node/344525

Basically they fear, that green capitalism can work, so they attack the most prominent representant, so we all realize, we have to deindustrialize and live with very little.

I mean, there are some valid criticism of Teslas Gigafactory (and Musk in general), like that they pollute the groundwater already much more than allowed and the regulators are looking away.

But all in all, I am not that convinced, by such actions or manifests.

And Teslas or the Cybertruck are by themself surely not that ecologic - but they help make the transition much more, than continue to build combustion engines.

rightbyte• 2 years ago

At least they have the common sense of not picking on the domestic car manufacturers but a weaker target ...

As usual with these kind of people I think they are counter productive to their own goals.

atwrk2• 2 years ago

Or they are simply living in Berlin and only damage things in and around Berlin.

soco5• 2 years ago

There's no such thing as bad publicity. We are talking about it, picking what is better and what is ridiculous, imagining alternatives and ways forward... would this discussion be here on HN otherwise? Same in other corners of the net, same in the real world. Soup attacks and road gluing keep the topic in the focus lights, the way the rallies of old, having fallen in "normalcy", have not.

lukan8• 2 years ago

"Soup attacks and road gluing keep the topic in the focus lights"

Those things tend to keep the focus on the soup. Or was there anything constructive to actually combat climate change, that has been done, because of those attention seeking actions?

hilux• 2 years ago

I read the English translation. Quite a broad-ranging manifesto!

pif2• 2 years ago

Here is the link of the group, claiming and explaining the attack

No, thanks!

They chose violence in a country where democracy is working: as such, they only deserve to be closed behind solid bars and NO DIFFUSION of their opinions.

GordonS• 2 years ago

With everything going on in Germany surrounding Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza, I have to wonder if this is sarcasm?

lukan8• 2 years ago

To be fair, it was violence against property, not people. That is quite a difference. (but I am not saying, that they would not also attack people)

And this is a hacker news forum, focusing on curiosity. I am curious about why people do weird things. Sometimes they have good reasons, often not so much. But I still like to judge myself at the source and not read what others concluded.

CaptainFever• 2 years ago

I really dislike how extremist eco activist groups keep trying to link any sort of badness to capitalism. "Nothing good will come unless we have a violent revolution." That's how dangerous radicalization happens.

In reality a ton of work is being done to reduce carbon usage within the current framework, importantly while still maintaining a good quality of life and not sending us back to the dark ages. Not enough, sure, but things are changing.

didntcheck• 2 years ago

Because they don't want to help the environment, they want to feel recreationally outraged and like heroic revolutionaries ending evil. Environmentalism is just their latest wedge to insist that the solution to all problems in the world is their preferred revolution. They actively dislike and frustrate measures that would actually help address real problems, as it would take away their excuse, and they'd rather the problem continue (or hopefully get worse) than admit that they're not the solution. That last bit is often quite explicit - "We can't end $x until we end capitalism!" etc., and accusing more moderate groups of being bourgeois infiltrators or various -isms for daring to actually get something done instead of shouting about an ill-defined utopic revolution ad infinitum

And they majorly slow progress and tarnish public opinion of legitimate movements by forcing their way in. It's group narcissism

soco5• 2 years ago

To state the obvious, Europe has far-left as well. And no they are not the ruling parties - who enable healthcare, kindergartens, pensions and other measures sometimes mistakenly referred as "far left".

littlestymaar5• 2 years ago

sometimes mistakenly referred as "far left".

Not “mistakingly”, deceptively.

averageRoyalty2• 2 years ago

Maybe "Americanaly". Lots of words there seem to mean different things than in the rest of the english speaking world.

atwrk2• 2 years ago

Doesn't actually sound leftist to me, besides sabotaging Tesla they also attacked a (public!) Covid vaccination app developer in 2020: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/brandenburg/vulkan... (German).

Perhaps primitivists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

pif2• 2 years ago

Do you mean "criminally idiots"?

mantas7• 2 years ago

That's exactly the old good european far-left. Lookup e.g. RAF.

hnbad5• 2 years ago

I think the RAF (i.e. specifically the Bader-Meinhof group) were idiots at best and ruthless at worst but public perception of the RAF tends to be heavily biased by a lack of historical context.

The Federal Republic of Germany used to hide behind the irrefutable cruelty and oppression of the German Democratic Republic to get away with disgusting levels of state repression well into the 1960s. After the end of WW2 both German states also rehabilitated a lot of former NSDAP members and restored their positions in public offices often wiping their records clean in mock trials. The modern examples of police repression in Lüzerath (which in Germany were mostly framed in favor of the police while international media often highlighted the excessive police violence) or the Stuttgart 21 protests (which even in German media were described as shocking police violence because the protestors were seen to be "average people" rather than activists) pale in comparison to what was normal at the time. Also, after WW2 the German communist party KPD had been banned on the flimsiest of legal justifications (which to this day are generally agreed to be bogus although there is no political interest in revising the ban from either side) - a fate that to this day has otherwise been reserved for NSDAP-offshoots. Germany has also been extremely slow to account for its past with trials of Nazi officers still happening a few years ago - many supposed criminals getting to die of old age before ever going to trial. The formation of the RAF can also directly be traced back to the murder of a student protestor by a police officer.

The RAF - correctly - identified the US as the source of West Germany's anti-communism and it saw the West German state as a capitalist project largely operated by the same people that operated the fascist project of Nazi Germany before it. Their initial targets were primarily NATO, the West German police, West German politicians and former NSDAP members.

They also targeted Axel Springer, a right-wing media mogul whose tabloids still routinely run afoul of media ethics rules and border on violating laws against demagoguery. They bombed the Axel Springer offices but this was clearly intended to be more about sending a message and disrupting infrastructure as they called in advance and made an explicit bomb threat - twice. The building was not evacuated. The "most ethical military of the world" still insists that this practice washes its hands clean of any casualties of the bombing following the advance warning, so make of that what you will.

In the end, most of the original RAF members died in prison. The initial investigations were flimsy and there are credible allegations of their findings being motivated more by politics than evidence. Based on more recent examples of investigations into deaths in prisons or police custody, I find it difficult to trust either side on this.

I think it's accurate to describe the RAF as terrorists. I don't think they did any good no matter what their intentions were. Even if you somehow can come up with ideological justifications for their actions, that falls apart with the second or third generation at the latest. But that doesn't mean their victims were the Good Guys. The narrativization of RAF terrorism at worst just provided an excuse not to reflect on what motivated them - and to what extent those problems still linger today.

hnbad5• 2 years ago

Germany hasn't had a left-wing extremist movement since the RAF, which was a GDR-affiliated group (or more accurately, a number of groups as the members of the initial Baader-Meinhof group were imprisoned) that performed political assassinations, bombings and abductions initially and then later bank robberies and other less ideologically motivated crimes.

We've been desperately trying to label groups as "left-wing extremist" ever since to avoid having to talk about right-wing terrorism without a comforting "all extremism is bad" caveat. The most recent example is the non-violent eco activist group Last Generation (Letzte Generation) which we've been trying to legally frame as a "criminal organization" (a legal device originally intended to help combat organized crime and terrorist cells) and which politicians and the media have at times referred to as "eco terrorists" and a "green RAF". Keep in mind their stunts mostly consisted of gluing themselves to intersection.

There was a broad "anti-COVID" movement (Querdenker/Querfront - "quer" in this case meaning "traversing (political lines)") founded in 2020 that drew from a broad political base including anti-vaxxers, new agers, "völkisch" nationalists, libertarians/ancaps and some groups self-identifying as leftist. The vast majority of leftist and anarchist movements however strongly opposed this movement, on the one hand because it was strongly affiliated with the political far-right (as a consequence of being a mix of people openly far-right, lying about not being far-right, being politically apathetic or being okay with aligning with the far-right) and on the other because while even anarchists disagreed with the implementation and choice of state anti-COVID measures they often did not disagree with their necessity in principle. These disagreements eventually contributed to Sarah Wagenknecht, a celebrity politician in the minor party Die Linke (The Left) parting ways with her party and founding her own party - although it's noteworthy that the party's official position of refusing to expel her for her publicly stated views led to many people breaking with the party prior to this.

With all that said, I wouldn't put too much trust on the German authorities' ability to correctly assess a terrorist group's ideological positions. According to some other news articles, the group does use left-wing language tho. Apparently it describes itself as being in a battle against "capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism" - which to me sounds more Third Worldist (i.e. Maoist) than anarchist. I can't imagine leftists in Germany broadly welcoming their actions tho as they're providing exactly the boogeyman politicians have been holding up as a justification for cracking down on non-violent "eco terrorists". Anarchists too tend to emphasize the importance of prefiguration before revolution (which is difficult because prefigurative projects also run risk of being labelled "criminal organizations" purely based on ideological stances) so I doubt they're too happy about the association either.

braza4• 2 years ago

With all that said, I wouldn't put too much trust on the German authorities' ability to correctly assess a terrorist group's ideological positions.

Yes.

Technically, the left as a political representation via vote is shrinking (fast)and theoretically Die Linke wouldn't be able to pass the 5% hurdle clause [1] plus with Sarah Wagenknecht et. al. leaving the space [2] it makes it harder to the government to classify something that they do not know for a while.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/sahra-wagenknecht...

resolutebat• 2 years ago

Here's what appears to be the group's own communique about the attack:

https://kontrapolis.info/12465/

Google Translate of the beginning:

We sabotaged Tesla today. Because Tesla in Grünau eats up earth, resources, people, labor and spits out 6,000 SUVs, killing machines and monster trucks per week. Our gift for March 8th is to shut down Tesla. Because the complete destruction of the Gigafactory and with it the sawing off of “technofascists” like Elon Musk are a step on the path to liberation from patriarchy. ...

Tesla is a symbol of “green capitalism” and a totalitarian technological attack on society. The myth of green growth is just a dirty ideological magic trick to close ranks against criticism domestically. One suggests a way out of the climate catastrophe. But “green capitalism” stands for colonialism, land grabbing and an exacerbation of the climate crisis! The lithium batteries come from toxic mines in Chile and devour other rare metals, causing misery and destruction for the people in the mining areas. The battery factory in Grünheide near Berlin requires the rare raw material lithium, which is also mined in Bolivia, for example. To enforce lithium mining in Bolivia, Musk puts his cards on the table: “We will stage a coup if we want,” commenting on the indigenous resistance to mining. Mineral resources are being ripped from the earth under brutal conditions. The “green deal” is just the expansion of economic growth without limits. In Portugal, too, the rural population is resisting the forced mining of lithium.

vasco• 2 years ago

The biggest reason there's protests in Portugal is because the project was adjudicated to a company that was started 3 days before the proposal application period and is clear corruption which Portugal has loads of issues with. We also have green people complaining, but most of the complaints and media shenanigans are about the corruption part.

seydor• 2 years ago

from patriarchy

Female CEO, problem solved

4gotunameagain• 2 years ago

This is akin to shutting down Germany's nuclear plants in the name of environmentalism. Idiotic, short-sighted and counterproductive.

Ruled by emotions and not thought, reason, logic.

bitcharmer2• 2 years ago

Ruled by emotions and not thought, reason, logic.

Exactly what one should expect from these groups.

braza4• 2 years ago

Small context for those who are not familiar with why Tesla setup the gigafactory in the most hostile place in Germany: Tesla had the idea to place a production plant in Germany to have access to some of the subsidies for electric cars since Germany has a plan to not have cars with fossil fuels in 2035.

The German government was a good deal because it would kill 2 birds with a single store: it would attract investments in a (debatable) lower cost via subsidies plus the site would be placed in East Germany in the 13th/16 poorest state is Brandenburg that converges to the big plan of the federal government to develop east Germany [2].

The whole process from the announcement until the end of gigafactory construction was "controversial" at least [3] but they made it.

I do not want to go to the avenue of the ideological antagonism of those groups with Elon Musk, using a bit of hindsight bias I think that Tesla right now should regret not opening this factory in Poland [4], the Czech Republic or Hungary are places where the production costs are lower from the working force perspective and energy perspective.

Considering energy prices, in Poland has 0.1769 EUR/kWh and Germany has 0.4125 EUR/kWh [5].

Even inside Germany they could have a way better pick in other states in the East as Thüringen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen. Those folks would have a way better reception than the population between the border between Brandenburg/Berlin (where the Gigafactory is located).

I would be surprised if the situation continues to deteriorate, Tesla will move to Poland in some point in future.

[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-richest-and-poorest-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/taiwan-chipmaker-tsmc-app...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23372783/tesla-gigafactor...

[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/09/poland-vying...

[5] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

Some more discussion:

Tesla Berlin gigafactory goes dark after alleged eco-sabotage

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604320

braza4• 2 years ago

The main differences between the two threads:

This current thread has a bit more insights into German politics, and the other thread has insights from the perspective of US folks about how unacceptable it is to think from their cultural framework.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

Fairplay, thanks for insight, adjusted to Related.

bitcharmer2• 2 years ago

There will never be a shortage of naïve young people thinking communism is something to aim for. It's incredible how easy it is for some people to not only refuse to learn from history but straight out deny it. People like this claim gulags were leisure re-education camps where people spent their time talking, painting pictures, playing games. I'm dead serious, just visit r/communism.

Tesla halts production at German factory after attack claimed by far-left group

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