[At around 5 a.m. on Monday night, March 5, the Volcano group (Vulkangruppe) set fire to a high-voltage pylon near Steinfurt, a district of the village of Gosen-Neu Zittau in Berlin’s south-eastern suburbs, deliberately cutting off power to Tesla’s “Gigafactory”, located some ten kilometers away. The European factory of Elon Musk’s company, inaugurated in 2022 in Berlin-Grünheide, spits out 6,000 electric SUVs a week, the Model Y, hoping to double its capacity to 1 million units a year.
The plant’s 12,500 employees had to be sent home or told to stay there until production could resume. The Tesla Group is already estimating its economic damage at several hundred million dollars, with an assessment that each day without power or production at its Berlin plant is costing it 50 to 60 million euros. Finally, the General Manager of the Berlin plant, André Thierig, estimates that production will not be able to resume until next week at the earliest, after consulting the electricity grid operator… Here is the translation of the Volcano Group communique published on indymedia germany the same day].
Volcano group switches Tesla off! : Attack on the power supply near Steinfurt
Today, we sabotaged Tesla. Because in Grünau, Tesla devours land, resources, people and labor to spit out 6,000 SUVs – killing machines and “monster trucks” – a week. Our gift for March 8th is to switch Tesla off.
Because the complete destruction of the Gigafactory, and with it, the demise of “techno-fascists” like Elend1 Musk, is a step on the road to liberation from patriarchy.
Tesla’s Gigafactory has become notorious for its extreme operating conditions. The factory pollutes groundwater and consumes huge quantities of scarce drinking water for its products. The Brandenburg-Berlin region is unscrupulously drained of its water for Tesla. Critics of the waterworks, local residents and environmentalists are silenced. The numbers are fudged. Laws are circumvented. People are deceived. Yet a large part of the population around Grünheide is opposed to the Gigafactory because of water theft and gentrification. Protest and resistance are as strong as ever. And they’re growing, because there’s no shortage of reasons. In addition to its dirty battery factory, Tesla now wants to expand its site by a further 100 hectares, in particular to install a freight station. The extension of storage and logistics areas adjacent to the factory (including the possibility of intensive rail logistics), should help to stabilize its supply and production chains. This is compromised precisely because deliveries from forced labor camps in China cannot take the direct route via the Red Sea. Brandenburg’s Ministry of Economic Affairs is eating out of Tesla’s hand, despite the many reasons for refusing any authorization for these projects. The only thing that matters is that Brandenburg is a thriving economic center.
Tesla is the symbol of “green capitalism” and a totalitarian technological attack on society. The myth of green growth is just a dirty ideological trick to close ranks against domestic policy critics. The suggestion is that it could be a way out of the climate catastrophe. But “green capitalism” is synonymous with colonialism, land grabbing and worsening the climate crisis! Lithium batteries come from toxic mines in Chile and devour other rare metals, which means misery and destruction for the inhabitants of the extraction areas. The Grünheide battery factory near Berlin requires lithium, a rare raw material that is also mined in Bolivia, for example. To impose lithium mining in this country, Musk is laying his cards on the table: “We’ll have a coup d’état if we want”, commenting on indigenous resistance to mining. Mining resources are taken from the land under brutal conditions. The “green deal” is merely an extension of limitless economic growth. In Portugal, too, the rural population is opposed to forced lithium mining.
Just as the Earth is exploited and raped on a daily basis, Tesla does the same with humans. It uses forced laborers all over the world to work (to death) for its interests, such as the Uighurs in China, whom the racist Chinese regime puts to work for the company’s production (as does Volkswagen). Even at Berlin-Grünheide, working conditions are considered catastrophic. Only recently, a works council member of the IG Metall trade union in Grünheide was dismissed. Despite a works council set up by Tesla, working conditions at the plant end up being known to outsiders. To improve accident statistics, people are taken to hospital by cab rather than calling for help and an ambulance. Internal opponents are dismissed, and if they defend themselves legally, they are forced to sign a settlement agreement. Severance pay is then used as a muzzle, for example to stifle any public debate about a racist dismissal, by being threatened with contractual penalties. The fired employee has to keep his mouth shut in exchange for money – that’s the calculation.
The totalitarian technological attack then looks like this. A Tesla vehicle is a surveillance device for public spaces. It is equipped all around with high-resolution cameras from Samsung. Samsung is a company that is a leader in weapons technology, among other things. According to the manufacturer, the cameras record up to 250 meters. In “guard mode”, they film everything in the vicinity of the vehicle and guarantee that the driver is also monitored while driving. The driver is already a free integral part of the Telsa universe and a guinea pig. The artificial intelligence will register every movement and every mistake made by the driver and turn it into money in order to train the software for autonomous driving with the data.
Tesla militarizes the streets. Its moving tanks are weapons of war. The car as a weapon, and the road is the battlefield. Instead of 9mm, Tesla has now introduced 856 hp engines to the world: “If you get into a fight with other cars, you will win,” says Elend Musk. A Tesla is a status symbol, statement and propaganda at the same time: for contempt for humanity, boundless destruction through “progress” and an imperial, patriarchal way of life.
Anyone who buys an SUV is most likely a supporter of an imperial way of life who wants to profit from this madness to the bitter end. Every militant’s secret poetry album should include a scrapped Tesla. No Tesla in the world should be safe from our flaming rage. Every Tesla that burns sabotages the imperial way of life and effectively destroys the ever-tightening network of seamless smart surveillance of every expression of human life.
Armies use Tesla’s Starlink satellite system in their wars. For example in Ukraine. Russia’s army also accesses Starlink satellite terminals from third countries to carry out attacks. Israel also uses the Starlink satellite system to murder people in Gaza. Tesla’s Starlink infrastructure is a military player. Rolled up like a string of pearls of garbage, they plow through the sky to make surveillance total.
Let’s talk about a man who will crumble to dust, even if he would rather be immortal: Elend Musk.
For men like him, the insult has not yet been invented that could aptly describe them in their arrogance, contempt for humanity and anti-social greed for power and recognition.
He makes no secret of his chauvinism. His propaganda platform X is the means to an end. This is where he gathers supporters of an imperial way of life. This is where anti-Semites, anti-feminists, authoritarians, chauvinists, fascists and supporters of hatred against “foreigners” reassure themselves. This is where they organize themselves with their elitist view of the world and as master race. This is where the Aryans of the AfD [extreme-right party] meet their peers.
When Elend Musk cheers the anti-feminist and neoliberal president of Argentina on X, it is because they are united. There is no shyness in this regard, they have decided to stand on the side of a deadly masculinism and drag a trail of blood behind them like a man-eating monster.
Elend Musk is this century’s new type of neoliberal and patriarchal, neocolonial predatory capitalist, using different means than the exploiters who preceded him in the last century. It’s a pervasive zeitgeist, using the economic crises of exploitation to confront the coming destruction. He is merely following in the brown footsteps prepared by other patriarchal pioneers. The “car manufacturer” Henry Ford was already an admirer of the Nazis with their “Volkswagens” and their efficient organization of industry. The Wolfsburg factory operated with forced labor. Every German had to be able to obtain a Volkswagen in order to reach his or her destination, either by car or tank, on the new highways. Ford, inspired by the efficiency of German labor organization, transferred his ideas to his empire in the United States. The attack on workers and the economization of exploitation are also known as “Fordism”.
This involved the organization of work and assembly line work – mass production with simultaneous mass consumption of cars. The model, also known as Taylorism, was also class warfare from above. Elend Musk combines the invasive technological possibilities of our time with his misogynistic worldview, patriarchal extremism and the totalitarian attitude typical of his caste. As a “car manufacturer”, he is a throwback to historical tradition. In contemporary terms, he acts as a “technofascist”.
Instead of consigning the car to the dustbin of history and extending free public transport, only the technology is replaced, from the combustion engine to the electric motor, in order to save individual transport. The imperial way of life is economically more lucrative.
Positions of power allow patriarchal “visionaries” like Elend Musk to experiment, in the most terrible sense, with the most “advanced” forms of exploitation and the available resource that is the human being. To venture into new territories by conquering and penetrating the earth uninvited. In space, in the skies, in public spaces, in our heads – nothing escapes the rapist. His Neuralink neuro-technological venture aims to link human brains to machines. He is experimenting on animals to see how thought flows can be read. Like SpaceX and Tesla, Neuralink aims for a long-term perspective in which not all people are equally valuable. In which some people have a right to a better life in the midst of the ecological catastrophe that is already upon us.
Even those who aren’t on X, formerly Twitter, and who are merely strolling along the public highway, are nevertheless affected by this pitiful man, by his cameras and by his propaganda. Positions of power enable a permanent encroachment, an invasive relationship to all life, which can only be stopped by resolute opposition. The “technological progress” of the times offers them, the “technofascists”, a range of possibilities that enables them to add ever more exploitation towards the indescribable destruction of the planet.
Because of their power, this kind of person can sometimes act as an unelected head of state, with the means of production and the “human” resource to make political decisions. He can buy heads of state or bring parties to power, even if their name is Hitler. He is the brains behind so-called government decision-makers. He can set conditions for states or reduce heads of state to beggars. The patriarchal system throws up tons of people like this, they aspire to rise to the top because it fits the patriarchal model. They stage a coup when things don’t go their way. They are interchangeable. Only their power gives them these opportunities – without power, they’re just bloated, ridiculous egomaniacs. They’ve been driving millions of people to their deaths for centuries, destroying nature as if it belonged to them. If we don’t destroy the system that produces such egomaniacs, more of their kind will appear. So it’s not (just) a pitiful Musk – but an imperial way of life – that these men are imposing on us. It’s a confrontation between the imperial way of life and freedom for all.
This type of person and his economic concept represent a minority on this planet who regard this imperial way of life as the only correct one. What’s new is that the tipping points that remind us of the finite nature of this destructive way of life have been passed in many cases. Other tipping points are approaching at dizzying speed. Year after year, month after month, day after day.
(If all else failed, Elend Musk, a handful of slaves and his ilk would set sail to flee the consequences of his lifestyle and insult the planet Mars with their presence. But our powerful extra-planetary allies are waiting for him; solar storms would crush his rocket, as they have already done with 30% of his satellites in space. So we’re going to win).
Many people continue to regard this way of life and the supposed wealth associated with it as natural and worthy of pursuit. Confused and misled, many people confuse possession and material wealth with freedom and happiness. Ignorance, manipulation and fear have left their mark on generations of people. We are reduced to work and consumption, and lowered to an imperial way of life. This material wealth at the expense of others shows the poverty of “civilization”. Nor does this lifestyle make its beneficiaries happy. Alternatives are rendered invisible or destroyed as soon as they appear. Approaches that could benefit humanity without bringing in money or power are delegitimized. Indigenous forms of life that refer to nature and its protection have been and are being wiped out. Emancipatory approaches that tackle the roots of the problem have been drowned in blood at every turn. Or revolutionary movements have been corrupted, infiltrated, their “leaders” bought off, to ensure the domination and progress of destruction for decades to come.
So, on the eve of March 8th, we’ve lit a beacon against capital, patriarchy, colonialism and Tesla. We respond to the ongoing rape of the Earth with sabotage. The ideology of limitless economic growth and a belief in progress based on destruction has come to an end. In order for Europe to become a “prime investment location with a strong industrial ecosystem”, all obstacles are removed for giants like Tesla. But something is slipping. We, a broad and colorful resistance, are pushing them back. We are the piles of rubble and grains of sand in the gears of a machine that is stamping inexorably forward. We are disruptive factors in the engine room. We are the desperate and the excluded. We are middle-class people in Germany or migrants on the run. We, who can be numerous in the forest, in tree houses and on the streets, can be secret sabotage groups like ours. It can also be people inside the Gigafactory, using their master’s machines to take revenge for his working conditions. We can be arrested, beaten up, humiliated, raped or murdered – but we are in the right. Only violence can keep us down. But we will rise again. And others will come after us.
Share this communique. Translate it and send it to others in the global fight.
With our sabotage, we set ourselves the goal of the biggest possible blackout of the Gigafactory. We have ruled out endangering ourselves and others. Stopping production in the automotive industry is the beginning of the end of a world of destruction. Our liberation bonfire was aimed at Tesla’s power supply. We wanted to hit the overhead line of a high-voltage pylon at its connection with the underground cables, at the level of the watertight cable sheaths, and short-circuit the six 110 kV cables inside. To do this, we opened the shaft leading to the cable sheaths, half of which were submerged in water. Still, we burned the protruding high-voltage cables and, in combination with the water, may have caused a short circuit. Damage to cable sheaths is often time-consuming and costly to repair. At the same time, we set a large and high fire with lots of car tires to weaken the steel structure and cause the pylon to become unstable.
It’s only at around 1300 -1500 degrees that a steel mast melts. As we were working with a heat of around 900 degrees, the aim was to modify the mechanical properties of the tower. As a steel structure under load, a rapid and significant fire at 500 degrees and above can lead to a loss of strength and alter the metal’s rigidity, tensile strength and elasticity. This can lead to buckling, twisting or deflection effects. This was our intention.
We feel connected to all the struggling people around the world to whom our words reach.
We feel connected to all the people who won’t let Tesla extinguish them. If we are to defeat giants like Tesla, we need many forms of resistance. Ours is just one of many. Unpredictable and multiple, only together can we force the Brandenburg Ministry of Economics to respect the will of the people. Economy Minister Jörg Steinbach (SPD) sees the result of the Grünheide residents’ vote (71% against the Tesla factory site extension) as just one important vote. Above all, he sees the vote as an “opportunity for healing”, meaning that Tesla has failed to convince the people and that the company still has to do its homework to divide, buy, flatter and persuade the population. He doesn’t accept the public’s “no” and asks Tesla to soften that “no” by May.
Everyone is free to openly or secretly rejoice in our action. Those who feel obliged to distance themselves should ask themselves why? And who has a vested interest?
Together, we’ll bring Tesla to its knees. Switch off for Tesla.
Greetings to all those on the run, in hiding, in prison and in the resistance!
Love and strength to all the antif@s!
The Volcano group switches off Tesla!
Água de Pau 2
A report: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/potsdam/brandenburg/stubgen-spricht-von-perfidem-anschlag-tesla-fabrik-in-brandenburg-lahmgelegt-stromausfalle-auch-in-berlin-11313151.html
We have been inspired by several actions:
“Switch Off – the system of destruction!”
Reflection on the attack on the railroad, Tesla and war [German]
Sabotage of rail traffic, against Tesla, the war and the Tren Maya
Arson attack on power supply of Tesla plant
More information on Tesla and surveillance: “Cars as cameras”
Note of Sansnom: on the Volcan group
The first attacks by Volcano groups against electrical or fiber optic infrastructure (taking the names of Icelandic volcanoes such as “The rumbling of Eyjafjallajökull”, “Hekla” or “Grimsvötn”) date back to May 2011 at Berlin-Ostkreuz station, causing disruption to train traffic for several days, then in May 2013 against a cable duct in Berlin-Zehlendorf, again disrupting rail traffic. In March 2018, a Volcano group also set fire to two large fiber optic and electrical cable links belonging to various large civilian and military operators under the Mörschbrücke bridge (in Berlin-Charlottenburg), with significant damage. Finally, on April 15, 2020 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, a Volcano group burned down the large communications cables that supplied the “Heinrich Herz Institute”, the institute then commissioned by the state to work on a health pass-type smartphone application in the context of Covid-19. And on May 26, 2021, in Berlin-Grünheide, a Volcano group successfully set fire to six high-voltage power cables supplying Tesla’s Giga-Factory construction site.
via Sansnom