Last month, a wave of more than 200 protests targeting Tesla properties erupted across the United States. The media portrayed this movement, officially branded the “Tesla Takedown,” as a spontaneous grassroots backlash against CEO Elon Musk’s role in dismantling waste and fraud in the U.S. federal bureaucracy. Each of these demonstrations appears to have been sparsely attended, but both the number of protest sites and the timeline of events suggest a coordinated effort.

On February 21, Rolling Stone published an article by activist-filmmaker Alex Winter describing the genesis of the Tesla Takedown protest campaign. Within two weeks of its publication, multiple Tesla properties were attacked with incendiary devices, and three men were arrested for separate attempts to firebomb Tesla locations in Salem, Oregon; Loveland, Colorado; and Charleston, South Carolina.

If the mainstream press accounts—as well as Winter’s own description—are to be believed, the fire-bombings and protests were unrelated. When mentioning the protests at all in the context of the violence, some outlets described them only as “dozens of peaceful protests at Tesla dealerships and factories.” Stories did not touch on how, more often than not, violent and nonviolent tactics reinforce one another and work toward the same ends.

A closer look suggests that Tesla is the latest target of an activist and organizing ecosystem that the Left has built over decades. That infrastructure manufactures, amplifies, and strategically uses protests and “direct actions” to force concessions or policy change. These direct actions range from nonviolent (sit-ins or flash mobs) to violent (arson, harassment, or even assassination), all meant to focus attention through the drama of real-world confrontation. The goal is to bypass the normal channels of democratic decision-making, obtaining desired ends through minoritarian pressure campaigns.