“With our sabotage, we set ourselves the goal of achieving the largest possible blackout of the Gigafactory.
» It is with these terms that the small German far-left group “Vulkangruppe” claimed responsibility for the “sabotage” on Tuesday of the giant Tesla factory in Grünheide, near Berlin.
The movement confirmed that it was behind the arson attack which knocked out an electricity pylon located near the Tesla site, south of the German capital.
The American manufacturer estimated this damage at several hundred million euros.
Known to German general intelligence, this small group had already claimed responsibility for an arson attack on a Tesla construction site in 2021. It had set fire to six high-voltage cables near the site when it was still under construction.
After the fire, the group posted a message ensuring that Tesla was “neither green, nor ecological, nor social”, specifies Der Spiegel.
Two years later, ecology is still at the center of this action.
Tesla “eats land, resources, men, labor and to do so spits out 6,000 SUVs, killing machines and
monster trucks
per week,” according to activists.
They also accuse the factory of “polluting the water table and (of) consuming enormous quantities of an already scarce drinking water resource for its products”.
“Against capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism”
An attack on the factory and “technofascists”, such as Elon Musk, is seen by the group as a step towards “liberation from patriarchy”, reports Die Tageszeitung.
Before attacking Tesla, this anarchist group created in 2011 had repeatedly attacked “railway cables”, “relay antennas” or “company vehicles”, indicates the report on the protection of the Berlin Constitution dating from 2019. According to the German magazine Focus, "they see the sabotage of the electricity supply as part of their fight against capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism."
Also read: The Mona Lisa doused with soup by environmental activists at the Louvre
Their way of making themselves heard is always the same: setting fire to infrastructure to show their vulnerability, disrupting public order and causing significant material damage.
In addition to disrupting “everyday capitalist life,” these activists want to force people to take a break, writes the report on the protection of the Berlin Constitution.
“The group wants to clearly show how fragile communication and public life are,” says German extremism expert Felix Neumann, interviewed by Berlin public radio RBB24.
According to him, the group wants to draw attention to the fact that everything is vulnerable.
“That's why they choose targets that cause power or telecommunications outages, not only for big companies like Tesla, but also for the neighboring population.
»
Action against Covid-19
In 2020, these far-left activists had already made headlines after burning down the Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, which develops mobile networks and other multimedia systems, because the institute was working on the creation of an application intended to trace Covid-19 carriers.
Two years earlier, the group, which was then called "Vulkangruppe NetzHerrschaft zerreißen" (Editor's note, "Volcano group to shatter corruption"), had burned eight cables, as well as the power supply to 6,000 homes and 400 commercial businesses in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg, causing material damage estimated at 2.5 million euros.
To date, the composition and number of members of the “Vulkangruppe” remain unknown.
In the numerous claims messages, the authors often change names, each time referring to Icelandic volcanoes such as “Grímsvötn” or “Katla”.