Some Tesla investors are desperately turning to the company’s board of directors in the hope that it will rein in Elon Musk amid growing concerns that he is negatively impacting Tesla’s brand.
Over the past two years, Musk has tested the faith of his fans and Tesla investors.
Many have expressed concerns that his behaviour, particularly since his acquisition of Twitter, is negatively affecting Tesla’s brand.
On several occasions, most recently when he tried to bully Mark Zuckerberg into fighting him at his home, Tesla investors have called on the board to act and rein in its CEO.
The board, which is the only body with power over a company’s CEO, has never acted.
Now, after Musk agreed to make an anti-Semitic comment about the X, more Tesla investors are calling for the board to suspend or remove him.
Jerry Braakman, president of First American Trust, called on the board to suspend Musk for 30 to 60 days to ‘send a message’.
He is not alone in calling for action from Tesla’s board. Several other prominent Tesla investors have made similar comments – some going as far as calling for the board to fire Musk.
However, the chances of that happening are extremely low. Not only has Tesla’s board never responded to Musk’s more extreme behaviour, it has never even commented on it.
The board is technically independent and is supposed to act in the best interests of shareholders. It could fire Musk, who owns less than 20% of Tesla, but the CEO is known to be very close to several board members and has a lot of influence on the board.
Musk’s brother, Kimbal, even sits on Tesla’s board.
Electrek’s take
All right, this is a mess. I’m not going to lie. Elon fans will call me a hater and Elon haters will call me an apologist no matter what, so here goes:
The media is having a field day calling Elon an anti-Semite over this tweet, and this time it’s hard to argue against it.
He seems to have clearly agreed with a tweet that was tinged with anti-Semitism.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, it’s all about this simple thread:
In short, a Jewish person challenges anti-Semites to say their anti-Semitic rhetoric “to their faces”, and an X-user claims to have taken him up on the challenge. Apparently, anonymous and online now means “to your face”?
The X user makes a poorly worded argument about “Jewish communities” promoting “dialectical anti-white hatred” and then seems to blame the Jewish people for “hordes of minorities” immigrating to the West.
Elon decided to agree with this idiot.
Now, do I think Elon is an anti-Semite? No. I don’t think he is. I’m not trying to excuse his behaviour, but I think it has more to do with his obsession with X and the poor level of communication on the platform.
Elon is at war with the Anti-Defamation League and similar organisations who attack X for not doing enough to prevent racism and anti-Semitism on the platform.
Well, I don’t think Elon wants to promote anti-Semitism or racism on X, but I also don’t think X currently has the resources to do so properly. And Elon sees the boycott attacks from the ADL and others as a personal attack from the left or a “woke virus” against him.
When he sees people fighting against it, he supports them, as in this case – even though they are in this fight for different reasons. The nuance of this is not clear to X.
Now, at the end of the day, he is still agreeing with an anti-Semitic sentiment that is obviously going to hurt a lot of people.
My main concern is that he doesn’t recognise that or apologise for it. The longer that goes on, the harder it’s going to be to argue against the fact that he himself is anti-Semitic.
That’s what Tesla investors should be worried about. He seems to be losing his grip on reality and critical thinking when it comes to himself and how his cult of personality distorts the reality around him.
But asking Tesla’s board to do anything is pointless in my opinion. I’ve lost all faith in them.
Unless they publicly explain their position on this situation, I think investors should vote them all out at the next election.
