This past weekend, I went to one of the Tesla Takedown protests. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and the protest drew a diverse crowd. There were people of all ages and races in attendance, including families with young kids. I’d estimate about 70 people showed up.
It wasn’t just a diverse crowd of people, but a diversity of ideas on display. Nearly all of the anti-Tesla protesters brought signs and posters, all of them handmade, and every one of them expressing its own creative message. There were signs about standing up for science, preserving the national parks, protecting Social Security, defending the rights of immigrants and transgender people, and lots more. Two of my favorites were the person with a sign that read “Let’s Send Elon Musk to Mars”, and another with a Tesla logo turned upside down so it looked like a KKK hood.
We ranged along the sidewalk, across the street from the Tesla dealership we were there to protest. We chanted, played protest songs and waved our signs for two hours, garnering lots of supportive honks and thumbs-up from passing drivers.
Several of the Tesla customers came outside to stare at us. Judging by the absolute bafflement on their expressions, we might as well have been aliens from outer space.
On the other side of the street, there was a pro-Trump counterprotest. It was smaller, and unsurprisingly, it fit a narrower demographic: all white, mostly older. In contrast to our array of handmade signs, they universally signaled their allegiance with things they bought: Trump flags, signs, shirts and hats. It’s telling that they couldn’t think of any way to express themselves, other than by handing over yet more money to the felon-in-chief and subsuming themselves in his branding.
They even had an inflatable figure of Trump grinning cartoonishly and giving a thumbs-up. It looked so ugly, tasteless and garish, it was hard for me to believe they brought it in the sincere belief that it made them look good. I felt embarrassed on their behalf just looking at them clustered around it. If I spent my hard-earned money on something so hideous, I’d do my utmost to keep anyone else from finding out about it.
Lack of taste aside, there was something else I noticed about the counterprotest that’s deeper and more telling. It’s this: no one in that crowd had a sign that expressed any coherent message.
There were no real ideas to be seen among them. No policies, no opinions, no arguments. To the extent that they had any message at all, it was “Trump”.
Their political ideology begins and ends there: not with a philosophy, not with an ethic, not even a complete sentence. It’s a single man’s name, and they worship him with the fervor of pagans bowing down to a golden calf. They loudly cheer whatever he tells them to believe or whatever random impulse strikes him on any given day. You couldn’t ask for a better illustration of what it looks like to surrender your sense of self and identity to a con man.
This must be what cults look like in their early days. It’s characteristic of a cult – religious or otherwise – to annihilate its devotees’ personalities and replace them with loyalty to the group. Even so, most cults have some kind of ideology backing up and explaining why they believe what they believe. This is pure blind adherence, without even a skeleton of reasoning behind it.
The “ideology” backing the Trump cult is nothing but hate and resentment. Plus a lot of unwillingness to deal with the real causes of whatever real problems are plaguing their communities.
The “ideology” of Trump is idol worship of an ugly orange idol. A living one. A very ugly idol indeed inside as well as out.
I wonder what religion(s?) may follow Trump’s death and how badly it and its various schisms will twist a reality they already do not live in.
The counterprotesters at the event I went to that day did manage a complete sentence, several times:
Grammatically complete, yet semantically void.
A personality cult of Donald Trump? I’ll rewrite this expression of personality cultism to fit: https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/mod/stalin-worship.asp
Thank you, Trump. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Trump two days ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Trump, our inspired leader. Yes, and we regard ourselves as the happiest of mortals because we are the contemporaries of a man who never had an equal in world history.
The men of all ages will call on thy name, which is strong, beautiful, wise and marvelous. Thy name is engraven on every factory, every machine, every place on the earth, and in the hearts of all men.
Every time I have found myself in his presence I have been subjugated by his strength, his charm, his grandeur. I have experienced a great desire to sing, to cry out, to shout with joy and happiness. And now see me–me!–on the same platform where the Great Trump stood a year ago. In what country, in what part of the world could such a thing happen.
I write books. I am an author. All thanks to thee, O great educator, Trump. I love a young woman with a renewed love and shall perpetuate myself in my children–all thanks to thee, great educator, Trump. I shall be eternally happy and joyous, all thanks to thee, great educator, Trump. Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be : Trump.
O great Trump, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords…
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts.
no one in that crowd had a sign that expressed any coherent message.
It’s easy to be against something, but when it gets down to specifics, it’s hard to maintain political unity if you have diverse interests. This is a paradigm as old as humanity. People may want to destroy the government (I mean, seriously, I’ve argued for reforming the FBI and dismantling the CIA and Pentagon) but when they find themselves in power, they find out that one guy who wants to reform the FBI is not welcome in the troupe of FBI agents who are part of the movement because they hate immigrants. I already see potential hilarity and horror because the fascist nationalists don’t understand the difference between “immigrants” and “migrants” etc. The result is that when these crowds of clowns come to power, they rapidly fragment into a circular firing squad and the winner is the nastiest, most unscrupulous operator in the bunch. There is a moral to this, which is that if you’re building a movement you actually do want an ideological litmus test. It’s better not to have a movement shot through with Joe Manchins and Kirsten Sinemas that you don’t find until it’s too late.
It’s interesting that grass-roots progressives have particular goals while prefessional Democrats like Schumer are basically just anti-Trump. Compare that to professional Republicans who have their Project 2025 while the right-wing folks in the street are basically just anti-non-Trump. Or am I reading too much into this?
For the intersectional left, I’d suggest a very simple ideological litmus test: “No transphobes allowed.” Almost every bad actor or mere sell-out seems to be, at the very least, a transphobe these days. If sell-outs continue to be an issue, add “No donations from organizations or that are larger than $100.” That will keep the money-corruptible from being corrupted (or, most likely, even interested).
On local news video of an anti-Tesla demonstration, I caught a glimpse of a clever sign,
F-ELON
Nice double meaning.