| Formation | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Protesting against Elon Musk and other billionaires |
| Location |
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| Methods | |
| Website | peoplevselon |
Everyone Hates Elon is a British political campaign group. The group formed in 2025 to voice opposition to businessman and US presidential advisor Elon Musk, citing his behaviour in the Department of Government Efficiency, his statements about British politics, and promotion of disinformation. The group creates humorous parody advertisements and viral social media campaigns to communicate their critiques of Musk and other billionaires. Their activities have included distributing posters criticising Musk and Jeff Bezos, as well as establishing a fundraising campaign in support of "causes [Musk] hates". [1] The group also organised an interactive protest event where participants were invited to destroy a Tesla Model S to raise money for food banks.
Everyone Hates Elon formed in early 2025 in response to Musk's interest in British affairs, including his support for far-right activist and anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson, as well as Musk's Nazi-like salute at the second inauguration of Donald Trump. [2] The group began as a "ranty group chat" among a small group of friends, [1] and is currently made up of "just a handful of people", [2] with members choosing to remain anonymous. [1] They told The Hollywood Reporter that they were working to "piss off Elon Musk one small action at a time", and that their campaigns targeting Tesla were intended to encourage the public to express their opposition to Musk by withdrawing their support from the company, which is the main source of Musk's wealth. [2] In an interview with Anna Russell for The New Yorker , Everyone Hates Elon founders described their strategy of using memorable, humorous slogans to combat the catchy political messaging used by the far-right; they explained, "We can't outspend [Musk] ... but we know that we're funnier than him. He's definitely not funny." [1] They also described their confusion as to Musk's motives for becoming involved in UK politics; Russell noted that a 2025 YouGov poll, which reported that eighty percent of British people had unfavourable opinions of Elon Musk, [3] indicates that the group's "dislike" of the billionaire is shared by a majority of the UK public. [1]
Everyone Hates Elon's first action was to create a fundraising campaign, titled People Versus Elon, which allows donors to pledge one penny (£0.01) every time Musk posts on X, with all funds to be donated to causes that Musk dislikes. [1] These include organisations such as Women for Refugee Women, Hope not Hate, and Rainbow Migration, a charity supporting LGBTQI+ asylum seekers. [4] [5] The campaign, which is anticipated to raise £150,000 over the course of one year, [1] was discussed in a February 2025 episode of The Guilty Feminist podcast. [2] [6]
Everyone Hates Elon rose to further prominence in February 2025 when they began a guerrilla poster campaign, installing posters criticising Elon Musk around London; one poster read "Elon Musk is a bellend. Signed, the UK". [1] Several posters were designed as parody advertisements for Tesla, [7] carrying the Tesla wordmark accompanied by the parody tagline "The Swasticar". [8] These posters displayed slogans including "Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds", "Now with White Power Steering", [a] and "Autopilot for your car. Autocrat for your country." [9] [7] The posters covered existing advertisements at bus shelters in Clerkenwell and Bethnal Green. [7] [8] [10] The group also produced and distributed posters targeting Musk-owned social networking service X (formerly Twitter); the posters showed an image of Musk doing a Nazi-like salute. One design carried the slogan "X marks the rot" [b] and another read "Delete your account. If the bar lets Nazis in, it's a Nazi bar." [c] [11] In an advertisement mimicking a public health information poster using the NHS logo, Everyone Hates Elon called on the public to recognise parasites, and listed as examples ticks, worms, and billionaires. [1]
Alongside the street furniture poster campaign, Everyone Hates Elon installed banners on London Underground trains. One of these posters carried the phrase "Hate doesn't sell. Just ask Elon Musk", alongside an image of image of Musk's salute and a graphic of Tesla's declining share price. [12] [7] Transport for London later confirmed that the group's posters "were not authorised" to be put up on the network, and that unauthorised posters would be "expeditiously removed". [11] [1]
Everyone Hates Elon also created and distributed stickers saying "Don't Buy a Swasticar", and shared the sticker templates with their followers on Instagram. [8] The group also turned the image of Musk's Nazi-like salute into a life-sized cutout, and installed it in a North London Tesla showroom. [1] They created a range of Car Freshners with the slogan "Musk B-Gone" and tagline "covers the stench of fascism". [13]
On 14 April 2025, singer Katy Perry was part of an all-female space flight run by Blue Origin, a space technology company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. [14] Bezos also founded Amazon, and both his own tax avoidance and that of Amazon have been the subject of criticism for several years. [15] [16] Following the space flight, Everyone Hates Elon produced posters targeting Bezos and Perry. One, which was installed near Amazon's UK headquarters in Shoreditch, read "If you can afford to send Katy Perry to space, you can afford to pay more taxes." [17] The group also installed posters featuring Perry outside a branch of Amazon Fresh in Angel, London; these posters carried the Amazon logo alongside the caption "Our tax avoidance is out of this world, just ask Katy Perry." [17]
In June 2025, Everyone Hates Elon collaborated with Greenpeace to protest against the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez. The wedding, held in Venice, Italy, had already attracted opposition from residents of the city, and protests were held in the weeks leading up to the event by a local group called "No Space for Bezos". [18] On 23 June, activists from Everyone Hates Elon and Greenpeace unfurled a large banner, measuring 20 by 20 m (66 by 66 ft), [19] in Piazza San Marco; the banner featured an image of Bezos laughing, along with the slogan "If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax." [20] [21] A statement from the two groups explained that although Bezos is one of the wealthiest people in the world, he "is reported to pay a 1.1% true tax rate", [20] and that the aim of the protest was to highlight the comparatively low tax contributions of billionaires, who nonetheless "exacerbat[e] the climate crisis with environmentally unsustainable lifestyles". [22] [23] The banner was soon removed by local police. [24] In response to the protests, the Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, said he was "ashamed of the protesters" [25] and defended the wedding, highlighting the financial gain that the event offered to the city; local activists argued that Venice needs "public services and housing, not VIPs and over-tourism." [26] Simone Venturini, the city's councillor for tourism, claimed that the protests were motivated by "social envy" and "a desire for media attention". [27] Eventually, the location of the wedding's main reception was moved from its planned venue, Scuola Grande della Misericordia, to the Venetian Arsenal further from the centre of the city; [28] [18] the move was prompted by protestors "threatening to flood the nearby canals with inflatable crocodiles to prevent [the] guests arriving". [28]
In July 2025, it was announced that Donald Trump would make two visits to the United Kingdom in the coming months; he visited Scotland later that month, [29] [30] and a formal state visit with King Charles is planned to take place at Windsor Castle in September. [31] [32] Following the announcement of these visits, and against a backdrop of recent developments concerning Trump's relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Everyone Hates Elon installed a poster featuring a large photograph of Trump alongside Epstein on a bus stop in Nine Elms, close to the US Embassy in London. [32] [33] Later, the group placed a placard with the phrase "Twinned with Epstein Island" beneath the entrance sign at Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire. [32] [34]
During Trump's visit to Scotland, while he and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer were meeting at Trump's Turnberry golf resort, Everyone Hates Elon drove a mobile billboard around Aberdeen; the billboard showed the photograph of Trump and Epstein, along with the phrase "Welcome to Scotland, Donald". [35] [36] The group stated that they had "tried to get close to Trump's golf course" with the van, but that they had been stopped by police. [36]
In August 2025, US Vice President JD Vance visited the UK with his family. The trip included several official engagements, such as a visit with Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Chevening in Kent. Following this visit, the family travelled to the Cotswolds, [37] where they stayed at Dean Manor, a grade II listed manor house in Dean, Oxfordshire. [38] During the Vances' stay, which was met with protest from local residents, [39] Everyone Hates Elon displayed "a now-infamous meme of the vice president with a digitally enlarged bald head" [40] on another mobile billboard; this was then driven around Charlbury, close to where the family were staying. [40] [41] The group also installed the same image on a large billboard in Cheltenham. [42] In an Instagram post, Everyone Hates Elon stated that the campaign was intended to show Vance that he was "NOT welcome in the U.K.", further explaining that they "couldn't allow him to dine at expensive restaurants, while people in Palestine starve to death ... [they] couldn't stand by as he freely hangs out with his far right friends, while taking freedoms away [from] his people". [40] The group also launched a crowdfunding campaign, raising funds to help them "ruin JD Vance's trip". [40]
On 10 April 2025, Everyone Hates Elon held a one-off participatory protest art event, titled 'London vs Musk', in South London. During the event, members of the public destroyed a Tesla Model S, which had been donated anonymously for the purpose. [43] The car was non-functioning and would otherwise have been scrapped; its battery had already been recycled. [43] [1]
Everyone Hates Elon described the event as a "public art piece" [44] allowing participants to express their frustration with the behaviour of Musk and other billionaires and show their opposition to the growth of the far right. [43] The event was described by The New Yorker as an "outdoor 'rage room '"; [1] around 100 participants were allowed access to the car for 30 seconds each, [1] and used baseball bats and sledgehammers to destroy the vehicle. [45] They also spray-painted the car's bodywork with phrases criticising Musk, expressing dislike of billionaires in general, and calling for wealth taxation. [46]
Following its destruction, the vehicle will be crushed and auctioned, with proceeds to be donated to food bank charities. [47] [48] [1] A spokesperson for Everyone Hates Elon explained that the group sees a connection between record numbers of billionaires and record numbers of food banks. [44] They said that the art was "a symbol of resistance to billionaire influence". [49]
... we wanted to ... put a message out there, and we did it on a ... 20 by 20 metre banner.
