What do we know so far about the UK's anti-Musk campaigners?
German activists and Led by Donkeys are involved
Yesterday a group of activists from the group “Overthrow Musk” put up the poster (above) in Tottenham, down the road from Tesla’s showroom.
It follows two posters being put up in the weeks preceding, first by a group called “People vs Musk”, and next by a group titled “Everyone Hates Elon”, captured by Novara Media and Politics Joe, respectively (more on this later).
In this article I will outline everything known, so far, about the anti-Musk protest groups.
The first large-scale protests again Musk in Europe appear to have been started by Led by Donkeys, the British activist group with links to Greenpeace.
The four men in Led by Donkeys are either past or present Greenpeace employees.
Two members, Ben Stewart and Will Rose, scaled the Kingsnorth Power Plant in Kent in 2007, as part of a Greenpeace protest. Greenpeace are very good at large-scale protests, including ones involving climbing and abseiling.
James Sadri of Led by Donkeys formerly worked for the UN and BBC, as well as being co-Director of Team Halo, part of The Vaccine Confidence Project with the UN, Bill Gates and the UK government. More here.
In November last year, Led by Donkeys staged an anti-Musk display at Tesla European HQ, Amsterdam, helped by an activist wearing an “Occupy Musk” t-shirt (could this relate at all to “Occupy Wall Street”?)
Then in January this year Berlin, Led by Donkeys staged a similar protest at Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin. This was done in collaboration with Political Beauty.
Political Beauty - technically “The Center for Political Beauty” - is a far left activist group in Germany:
The Center for Political Beauty (CPB) invites people to become accomplices on its website, writing “As an accomplice you will make an invaluable contribution to inciting public unrest in the service of aggressive humanism.”
An archived page from the CPB’s website says: “the group’s interventions demonstrate how art can be a fifth state power”, and that “The Center for Political Beauty engages in the most innovative forms of political performance art- an expanded approach to theatre: art must hurt provoke and rise in revolt. In one basic alliance of terms: aggressive humanism.”
The CPB appears to be responsible for the anti-Musk poster in Tottenham (see below). Saying that, it may have British activists doing its work for it - especially as we know it already collaborates with Led by Donkeys, whose modus operandi is billboard/ large campaigns.
The CPB has also celebrated a new poster today, linking to the group “Overthrow Musk”.
From this, it appears that there are three “anti-Musk” groups in circulation.
People vs Musk
Everyone Hates Elon
Overthrow Musk
However, Ava-Santina Evans from Politics Joe (which was the second media outlet, after Novara Media, to capture the bus stop activists at work) has told me that People vs Musk is the same group as “Everyone Hates Elon”.
That leaves two groups - who I suspect are two versions of the same thing. One of the Left’s main tactics is to splinter into “mini groups” to give the illusion of their movements being bigger than they are.
People vs Musk’s campaign has similarities to Led by Donkeys & the CPB’s - in that it gratuitously uses Nazi comparisons (“The Swasticar”).
Making Nazi references is very characteristic of the CPB. Here’s its video of the AfD leader Alice Weidel:
It was also under investigation for 16 months “after the guerrilla artists had set up a replica of Germany's national Holocaust memorial outside of the home of Björn Höcke, Thuringia's leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).”
NB. I don’t know anything about Höcke and cannot comment on his politics. The point is that the CPB has a pattern of comparing individuals to Nazis, so it wouldn’t be that surprising if it had helped brainstorm or orchestrated the “The Swasticar” bus-stop campaign.
The CPB also clearly despises the AfD - so this is likely to be its main motivation in putting up anti-Musk posters.
Led by Donkeys probably have different motivations for hating Musk. They are simply allies in hating him.
Other points:
As I’ve written before, Novara Media and Politics Joe were first to cover the bus-stop protests:
There are big questions about their near-identical campaigns, filmed a week apart, and how they both were able to film activists right as they put the posters up.
It’s interesting that “People Vs Elon” quickly disappeared on X, shortly after Novara Media announced it. Could this be because of the backlash it received? Perhaps making its coordinators nervous enough to rebrand as “Everyone Hates Elon”.
More German links:
Novara Media, which - to reiterate - was amazingly able to capture the activists as they put up their posters, singled out the AfD in its post about “PeopleVsElon” - again hinting that the protests have German origins:
Interestingly, Novara Media has also received grants from a German foundation - “Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung” - which has a base in London called Pelican House (below is Ash Sarkar of Novara Media, at a meeting there):
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung is affiliated with the Far Left political party Die Linke. Here’s some footage of one of its members:
Who owns the advertising space protesters are using?
On Novara Media’s video below, there’s no advertiser but Politics Joe’s video shows JCDecaux (at the top of the poster).
JCDecaux is, according to its website, “the number one outdoor advertising company worldwide”.
The other major player in the UK’s outdoor advertising space is Global, which has advertised Led by Donkeys before:
And has a history of advertising brazenly political content, such as the Assisted Dying adverts on the tube:
Saying that, there’s no evidence that either company knows or is responsible for the anti-Musk adverts.
The question is why so many activist posters keep going up with such ease. Is no one keeping an eye on them? Here’s another example on the tube (Global is the sole provider of tube advertising, incidentally).
Summary
The people behind the anti-Musk activism, thus far, seem to be German activists and Led by Donkeys
There are big questions about why Novara Media and Politics Joe were able to set up identical films, a week apart, of the activists putting up the posters, especially when Novara Media links to the German Far Left.
There are also questions about why advertisers aren’t (apparently) noticing or preventing activists hijacking their spaces.
To be continued…
Great work again. I was in a coffee shop yesterday and heard two women in the 30s talking about X for marketing. The consultant in the couple said, careful about using X - you need to be aware who you are funding.
These leftist NGOs are puppeteering otherwise sensible people. I see Starmer has set up dozens of new ones. Presumably to reward Labour faithful and ensure interview fodder for the leftist media - BBC, Sky News, Channel 4, Guardian etc.