Tesla halts production at German factory after attack claimed by far-left group
france24.com
france24.com
Not “mistakingly”, deceptively.
I just can't with German eco-"activists".
Oh, many have at-hand solutions alright! It's just that these heart-warming intuitive solutions break down when faced with realities of scale.
> Wind turbines deface! Solar panels pollute to produce! Batteries are full of metals you have to dig for! Screw industrial-scale food/production/distribution! Proof: I buy from the local shop/market/producer!
Yay, getting your Thanksgiving turkey from the local farm sure is nice, except... how much local producers have to produce to provide continuous daily sustenance to, say, a ~1M town? How much surface is needed to produce that amount? How are the logistics handled to move such local goods around? How much energy is expended in the whole process?
I'm not saying the ideas don't have merit, it's just that the revolution as envisioned falls apart with a bit of system thinking and a couple minutes of napkin math. That, or decimate the global human population and have survivors live in extreme scarcity.
Stupid people and hypocrite will use the same banner you do and sometimes it will be false flags as well, such is life and that's why you should never judge a group on their most stupid members, because on the Internet there's no barrier to entry and anyone can claim to belong to the group, even if everyone else in the group thinks they are morons.
How many stupid members do you need to call a club stupid? 20%? 50%? 80%?
It wouldn't make any sense to put you in the same club as coal runners right, would it?
When you start stretching coal runners definition, long-distance-flying-loving „greens“ will become coal runner colleagues than me :)
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.
Female CEO, problem solved
Ruled by emotions and not thought, reason, logic.
Exactly what one should expect from these groups.
Some more discussion:
Tesla Berlin gigafactory goes dark after alleged eco-sabotage
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.
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.
As usual with these kind of people I think they are counter productive to their own goals.
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?
If you want to debate climate change, submit a scientific report.
Those people just want activism for the sake of it. So they have the feeling they did something and they did, but I do not see it as productive or constructive towards the goal, rather distracting and further dividing.
No, thanks!
They chose violence in a country where democracy is working: as such, they only deserve to be closed behind solid bars and NO DIFFUSION of their opinions.
And this is a hacker news forum, focusing on curiosity. I am curious about why people do weird things. Sometimes they have good reasons, often not so much. But I still like to judge myself at the source and not read what others concluded.
In reality a ton of work is being done to reduce carbon usage within the current framework, importantly while still maintaining a good quality of life and not sending us back to the dark ages. Not enough, sure, but things are changing.
And they majorly slow progress and tarnish public opinion of legitimate movements by forcing their way in. It's group narcissism
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-...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/taiwan-chipmaker-tsmc-app...
[3] - https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23372783/tesla-gigafactor...
[4] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/09/poland-vying...
[5] - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Perhaps primitivists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
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.
I'm merely saying that we whitewash a lot of that part of German history exactly because the RAF stood in opposition to it and if we all agree that the RAF were bad because they were terrorists then their victims must have been "good" and that is arguably closer to the opposite of the truth. "1960s Germany was full of NSDAP members in leadership positions and used excessive police violence to suppress civil unrest" is not a far left take, it's historical consensus.
The problem with the horse shoe and why although law enforcement likes it political scientists generally ridicule it is that politics are not one-dimensional and more often than not there actually isn't a middle ground. This actually has led to real world problems in Germany because just like how the East German government's ideological convictions made it incapable of acknowledging the existence of neo-nazis in East Germany because they saw fascism as an evolution of capitalism, German law enforcement can't adequately comprehend the German sovcit "Reichsbürger" movement because while being clearly far right it's actually in large parts a monarchist movement not a nazi one (although there are of course overlaps for pragmatic reasons).
As an outsider, I find that part of German history fascinating. It's a miracle that Germany was neutered relatively peacefully and it took just a generation or two. Especially when you compare it to post-war Japan (which was a success, but different, maybe better in the long run?) and post-cold-war Russia (which was a failure as we see nowadays).
Regarding horse shoe, I can share my personal anecdote. I'm born USSR & raised ex-USSR. Here far right was (and still is to a big extent) built on top of anti-soviet dissent. Pro-free-market, pro-nation-states, free speech and so on, basically reverse of whatever the soviet regime was. Even soviet punks and hippies were quite (far-)right especially compared to their west counterparts at the time :) I spent some time on UK university campus a good decade ago. It was very interesting how (far-)left at the time was quite similar to far-right back home. The goals were different, but the people, vector and modus operandi were very very similar. Punk kids, often from good stable background, were trying to find a way to solve eye sores of the society. While UK right-wing was completely different world to me with old-money and all that jazz. Which was very similar to our ex-USSR-establishment circles.
We've been desperately trying to label groups as "left-wing extremist" ever since to avoid having to talk about right-wing terrorism without a comforting "all extremism is bad" caveat. The most recent example is the non-violent eco activist group Last Generation (Letzte Generation) which we've been trying to legally frame as a "criminal organization" (a legal device originally intended to help combat organized crime and terrorist cells) and which politicians and the media have at times referred to as "eco terrorists" and a "green RAF". Keep in mind their stunts mostly consisted of gluing themselves to intersection.
There was a broad "anti-COVID" movement (Querdenker/Querfront - "quer" in this case meaning "traversing (political lines)") founded in 2020 that drew from a broad political base including anti-vaxxers, new agers, "völkisch" nationalists, libertarians/ancaps and some groups self-identifying as leftist. The vast majority of leftist and anarchist movements however strongly opposed this movement, on the one hand because it was strongly affiliated with the political far-right (as a consequence of being a mix of people openly far-right, lying about not being far-right, being politically apathetic or being okay with aligning with the far-right) and on the other because while even anarchists disagreed with the implementation and choice of state anti-COVID measures they often did not disagree with their necessity in principle. These disagreements eventually contributed to Sarah Wagenknecht, a celebrity politician in the minor party Die Linke (The Left) parting ways with her party and founding her own party - although it's noteworthy that the party's official position of refusing to expel her for her publicly stated views led to many people breaking with the party prior to this.
With all that said, I wouldn't put too much trust on the German authorities' ability to correctly assess a terrorist group's ideological positions. According to some other news articles, the group does use left-wing language tho. Apparently it describes itself as being in a battle against "capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism" - which to me sounds more Third Worldist (i.e. Maoist) than anarchist. I can't imagine leftists in Germany broadly welcoming their actions tho as they're providing exactly the boogeyman politicians have been holding up as a justification for cracking down on non-violent "eco terrorists". Anarchists too tend to emphasize the importance of prefiguration before revolution (which is difficult because prefigurative projects also run risk of being labelled "criminal organizations" purely based on ideological stances) so I doubt they're too happy about the association either.
Yes.
Technically, the left as a political representation via vote is shrinking (fast)and theoretically Die Linke wouldn't be able to pass the 5% hurdle clause [1] plus with Sarah Wagenknecht et. al. leaving the space [2] it makes it harder to the government to classify something that they do not know for a while.
[1] - https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/
[2] - https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/sahra-wagenknecht...
There are some occasional flare-ups like the WASG splinter party that split off the SPD after accusing the SPD-Greens coalition Schroeder government of neoliberalism (which then went on to merge with the East German SED's successor party PSD to become Die Linke) but the most leftist forms of activism you see in practice is the ideologically very moderate trade unions like Ver.di and IG Metall and the ideologically incoherent anti-capitalist anti-state anti-whatever brick throwing troupes during the annual Labor Day riots.
I struggle to even describe the Wagenknecht party as left-wing despite her personal ideological origins.
I am in the middle of her book [1] and I have the same issue as well.
From what I understood: Her views are more weighted to what we call in English as "Labor Party" +_Entwicklungspolitik_ + _Gewerkschaft_ where she saw that the left went too far on the identity politics and ideological battles and lost ground to a big chunk of demographics in Germany (median white person, with the income between 22-42K EUR/year, working for industry or adjacencies).
For the internal politics me makes sense what she is doing - and I think why she will be over the 5% hurdle next election as well - but the issue that I see is on the external policy where she doubles down on the duality/dubious Germany foreign policy to make friends with everyone and not having a clear path in terms of partnerships and alliances.
Compared with 2010-12 where FDP and AfD has clear paths and ideological and political directions, the issue that I see with the BSW is that for now, it's a blank check that the voters are giving to her and once they are on the Parlament no one knows how the BSW will swings.
[1] - https://www.amazon.de/Die-Selbstgerechten-Gegenprogramm-Geme...
That said, I'd say both the FDP and AfD heavily engage in hollow populism and that has benefited both to some extent so far and seems to be what BSW wants to copy. The AfD uses a veneer of middle-class conservativsm to transport far-right extremist ideas, the FDP uses progressivism and futurism to transport very narrow interest group politics (i.e. despite all its bold claims in practice it tends to mostly do exactly what its core donor demographic wants and will abandon its supposed ideals if they gain too much traction). I'm not sure what it is the BSW is trying to transport but they seem to have adopted a shell that is a loose amalgamation of an anti-progressive, anti-Green reactionary sentiment mixed with a vague pro-worker veneer that is at the same time offset by a lot of pro-business ("innovation", "future technologies", etc) language.
Just an example: in the party's programme they go to great lengths to explain that the Bundeswehr should not follow US interests (i.e. anti-NATO without committing to an explicit position of leaving NATO), should not maintain presences in foreign countries (i.e. no participation in joint operations), should not receive funding that is offset with cuts to social welfare (i.e. less funding?) but must also be "equipped appropriately" to defend Germany (i.e. more funding?). This reads more like a political Rorschach test than a political position: you can either interpret it as being anti-NATO, pro-Russia and asking for cuts to military spending or as being isolationist and asking for more accountability in military spending or as supporting the idea of a European military organization as a counter-balance to foreign interests or ... and so on.
I don't know what it is but I don't have the feeling I'd get a straight answer from her or her supporters either.
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.