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Tesla halts production at German factory after attack claimed by far-left group
- Manfred 3y ago[flagged]
- resolutebat 3y agoGiven that the website where they published their communique has "Solidarity with the RAF!" posts, for once the characterization seems correct. (RAF, Rote Armee Fraktion, was a Marxist terrorist group in the 70s responsible for multiple bombings and assassinations.) https://kontrapolis.info/ https://kontrapolis.info/ https://kontrapolis.info/12465/ https://kontrapolis.info/12465/
- Manfred 3y agoThis is exactly the nuance and historical context that I was missing in the article :)
- newsclues 3y agoBecause the Americans weren’t the only country establishing stay behind network like Gladio, when the Berlin Wall fell, the unification of Germany had many people who continued to work with/for the former USSR, now Russia. Russia, now fighting a war in Europe, is activating its underground networks to sow discord in Western societies and it uses far left (communist) activists. There is a global war going on. This isn’t a one axis thing, Russia complains about nazis in Azov.
- Sakos 3y agoThey'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".
- lifestyleguru 3y agobut the activists don't care about climate change
- Sakos 3y agoYou see the problem then.
- lukan 3y agoThey 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.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago[flagged]
- rancour 3y ago[flagged]
- CaptainFever 3y agoSource: the 20th century and literally any history book
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoSource: open a book on life in communism/USSR, or just look at Eastern Europe pre-1990 versus today.
- sgift 3y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
- lifestyleguru 3y agoOne really has to be clueless outsider to think that they can simply start producing their own cars in Germany.
- somedude895 3y agoHonestly, 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.
- lifestyleguru 3y 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 3y agoNot without reason they are the only economy in Europe in recession.
- bun_terminator 3y agoOr really anything. Intel will regret its Magdeburg factory, too.
- soco 3y agoIndeed, 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??
- lukan 3y agoHere is the link of the group, claiming and explaining the attack (in german): https://de.indymedia.org/node/344525 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 3y agoAt 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.
- atwrk 3y agoOr they are simply living in Berlin and only damage things in and around Berlin.
- soco 3y agoThere'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.
- lukan 3y 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?
- soco 3y agoTo 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".
- throwaway40748 3y ago[flagged]
- nforgerit 3y agoNo ofc he's not. But it's taught that he introduced social reforms (together with von Metternich) for keeping the (at that time) aspiring social democrats out of power.
- littlestymaar 3y ago> sometimes mistakenly referred as "far left". Not “mistakingly”, deceptively.
- averageRoyalty 3y agoMaybe "Americanaly". Lots of words there seem to mean different things than in the rest of the english speaking world.
- littlestymaar 3y agoOh don't worry it's not just an American thing: social democrats get called “far left” on French TV on a regular basis too…
- averageRoyalty 3y agoI'm not up to date on French politics, but is this just a fascimile of the American playbook? In Australia at least, the parallels are pretty obvious and easily tracked back to Americanism.
- atwrk 3y agoDoesn'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/vulkangruppe-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/brandenburg/vulkan... (German). Perhaps primitivists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
- pif 3y agoDo you mean "criminally idiots"?
- mantas 3y agoThat's exactly the old good european far-left. Lookup e.g. RAF.
- hnbad 3y agoI 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.
- resolutebat 3y agoHere's what appears to be the group's own communique about the attack: https://kontrapolis.info/12465/ 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 3y agoThe 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 3y ago> from patriarchy Female CEO, problem solved
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoThis 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.
- braza 3y agoSmall 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-states-in-germany.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-richest-and-poorest-... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/taiwan-chipmaker-tsmc-approves-38-bln-germany-factory-plan-2023-08-08/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/taiwan-chipmaker-tsmc-app... [3] - https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23372783/tesla-gigafactory-fire-berlin-germany-cardboard https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23372783/tesla-gigafactor... [4] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/09/poland-vying-steal-germany-crown-heartland-europe/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/09/poland-vying... [5] - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoRelated: Some more discussion: Tesla Berlin gigafactory goes dark after alleged eco-sabotage https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604320
- braza 3y agoThe 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.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoFairplay, thanks for insight, adjusted to Related.
- bitcharmer 3y agoThere 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.