Civil disobedience practiced by the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one thing. Crimes against people or property for political ends are quite another. The latter risks return to the law of the jungle, a cure worse than the disease.

That provides the framework to assess the proliferation of criminal attacks on Tesla vehicles to express opposition to Elon Musk’s politics, including his virtual duumvirate with President Donald Trump and affinity for Nazi-like memes, gestures and ideas. For starters, there are multiple peaceful avenues to protest Musk. Boycott Tesla or sell Tesla vehicles. Criticize Musk and urge others to boycott his enterprises. Organize politically to oppose Musk, such as in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

Musk’s nemeses are disingenuous in their professed opposition to Nazis. BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have escaped their wrath. But all three profited from Jewish slave labor during the Third Reich. BMW’s Herbert Quandt was allied with the Nazi regime and benefited from the slave labor of at least 57,000 Jews. Gunther Quandt, Herbert’s father, acquired numerous Jewish-owned companies at forced, fire-sale prices. Quandt heirs are majority owners of BMW. An independent study from 2011 found that “the Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis.” The specific value of BMW’s reparations to Israel is unknown.

Volkswagen was born under the Third Reich and exploited slave labor, including Jews in concentration camps. The V-1 flying bomb, the world’s first operational cruise missile, was partly the handiwork of Volkswagen and was notorious in the bombing of London. Volkswagen has contributed a measly $12 million in reparations for its complicity in a crime against humanity.

Mercedes-Benz manufactured automobiles and fighter aircraft engines for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen, employing more than 60,000 Jews from concentration camps. The Mercedes-Benz 260 D was employed by the Gestapo to hunt Jews.

The masterminds of Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and BMW were never held criminally accountable for their actions, unlike executives and directors of the Krupp Group. The United States needed its support to make West Germany a bulwark against the Soviet Union. We similarly embraced and heroized war criminals Arthur Rudolph and Wernher von Braun, who used slave labor to build the V-2 rocket, to beat the Soviets to the moon. World powers cannot afford philanthropy. General Motors and Ford Motor Company had significant business operations in Nazi Germany during the Third Reich that boosted Hitler’s wars of aggression.

“Behind every great fortune is a crime,” Honore de Balzac purportedly observed. Untold numbers of people, businesses and universities flourish on the fruits of slavery or the slave trade, including Yale, Harvard and Georgetown. Moral purity is an illusion. The United States stole land and gold from Native Americans by concocting and breaking treaties. As Jesus admonished, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Business and politics are not morality tales. They are largely euphemisms for the strong doing what they can and the weak suffering what they must. Opponents of Musk should leave off the sanctimony.

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