Local police said they have not yet received any reports of vandalism since the notes were sent. Tesla owners in California counties have reportedly received anonymous threats to sell their vehicles or they will be vandalized, according to a local media report. The messages claim to be from a group called "Students Against Nazi Extremism," who mailed a supposed manifesto to the news outlet claiming responsibility for the notes. The manifesto also issued threats to Tesla owners in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, Hayward in Alameda County in the city’s East Bay, and Seaside in Monterey County.
The outlet did not release the manifesto, but offered a summary of its contents. "So obviously this is a vendetta against [Elon] Musk, and their goal, they say, is to create a big stigma around owning a Tesla. So they want the value of Tesla vehicles to plummet," explained Ryan Burns, a reporter at Lost Coast Outpost. Police in Seaside said they were aware of the notes and were taking the implied threats seriously, but had received no reports of vandalism as of Wednesday afternoon.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla, X, and SpaceX, is currently in the process of gutting the federal government under the questionable authority he has been granted by Donald Trump as a "special government employee" running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is not actually a federal department. Musk has dismissed the criticism of his salute as "dirty tricks" played by the media, and responded to the criticism with a slew of puns incorporating the names of historical Nazi leaders.
Backlash against Musk's wholesale incursions into government systems – some of which have given Musk and his team access to pay systems of the Treasury Department with Americans' Social Security numbers and other sensitive information – has resulted in some ill-will toward those using Musk products. A woman in the Bay Area recently reported that someone spray painted the word “Nazi” on her Cybertruck. She said she believed the message was intended to be criticism of Musk.
A man in Worchester, Massachusetts who drives a Cybertruck claims he has been threatened for driving the vehicle. Tesla blowback isn't just limited to the US; a group projected an image of Musk giving his controversial salute onto an exterior wall of a Tesla factory in Berlin, along with the word "heil." German authorities have been investigating the incident with the intent to press charges against those responsible.
