I would mostly agree with
@DaveT , but the attacks on Tesla are not coming from one direction or one ideology, they are coming from an alliance of forces. There are some people motivated to attack Tesla because they have a short position, but I would not be surprised if the bulk of shorts are doing it for strategic/political reasons, not economic. If so, they are prepared to lose their money if their bet doesn't pay off.
The far right have taken over the Republican Party and turned it into a fringe party who will vote for them out of habit. The US has always had an extremist minority, mostly on the social conservative right. Many new religions started in the US (and most of those in the Northeast). Other religious movements started in Europe, but moved almost entirely or completely to the US: 7th Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites (Pennsylvania Dutch), the LDS church, the whole branch of Christianity known as Evangelicals, and several other religions that either died out or have nearly died out (Wikipedia claims there are still two elderly Shakers left for example).
Some of those religions never took very deep roots and others took root in a different part of the US from where they started. Evangelical Christianity took root in Appalachia and the Deep South and shifted a number of other religions in the region in their direction.
Whether anyone reading this believes in any of those religions or not, most are socially pretty conservative and they have had an impact on the national character of the US. The US has been one of the most socially conservative developed countries for quite some time, especially since around 1980. That has been decaying in recent years as ideas like legalizing same sex marriage and marijuana have taken hold, but the push back is still pretty strong in some parts of the US.
These social conservatives have been manipulated by a group of wealthy oligarchs who want to control the entire country. We have heard some of their names in the news: the Mercers, Kochs, Sheldon Adelson, etc. The Koch family has been behind every right wing fringe movement in the US since 1960: The John Birch Society, the Moral Majority, the Militia Movement, and the Tea Party. One of these movements crop up every time a Democrat gets elected president. Most of the people attracted to these movements are the same social conservatives who have been part of the fabric of the US from the beginning.
These oligarchs see the new wealth being created from tech to be a threat to their power base. The billionaires and millionaires created by tech are sometimes conservative, but most are progressive. Initially these people were mostly apolitical though and had little direct impact on American politics except to write some checks for Democratic politicians' campaigns. Mostly these new tech wealthy didn't compete with the legacy industries much. A better iPhone or a more powerful computer processor has little impact on the oil and gas business and may actually help industries like defense.
But the tech wealthy have begun to find their political voice. Jeff Bezos bought one of the flagship newspapers in the US, the one best known for political reporting: the Washington Post. Other tech wealth people like Tom Steyer (Silicon Valley venture capital guy) came out advocating political positions like impeaching Trump.
And in this mix was another new tech billionaire who threatens to overturn the entire base on which many of the oligarchs base their wealth: Elon Musk. If Elon was just doing SpaceX, it would not be as big a threat. He could threaten some corners of defense contractor's world, but not all that much. However Tesla threatens to disrupt not only the car business, but the energy business too.
The American automotive business probably feels the most immediate threat from Tesla. Tesla is proving that the thing they said was impossible: compelling and usable electric cars were not only possible, but better than ICE. Up until about a month ago, they could claim that
affordable electric cars were not possible in quantity today and even if they were, few people wanted them. Note all the FUD articles in June claiming Model 3s were not selling when a concentration of them were seen somewhere, usually waiting for transportation or until the end of the quarter. Tesla revealed the Model 3 not only is selling well, but the cars being traded in for it are not all luxury or other EVs and some thought, but mainstream ICE are being traded in too.
Tesla is pushing the energy business on two fronts. They probably are not deeply concerned about the threat from electric cars yet, but it is a long term threat. (Realistically it's going to take a long time to get all the legacy ICE off the road.) In the nearer term they are looking at first coal, then natural gas becoming economically unfeasible as Tesla Energy grows. In that market Tesla is just the tip of the iceberg, but remember these are the same people who trotted out the collapse of Solybra as a political point too.
The energy sector has mostly given up on coal except for a few die hards. Coal is not economically feasible and it hasn't been for some time. Natural gas though is in a glut in North America. The wholesale price is very cheap and it's been the biggest nail killing off coal. Some wells only produce natural gas, but almost all oil wells do too. As they pump the oil out of North American oil fields, they have natural gas as a byproduct and they need to get rid of it somehow. In Saudi Arabia they don't have any use for most of it and they just burn it in flares, some big enough to be seen from space, but too much of that is frowned on with environmental laws in most countries.
The growth of solar, wind, and other renewables threaten the viability of natural gas and could leave oil companies with a glut of gas they can't sell as a byproduct of oil production. Killing Tesla is a two-fer for the oil business.
I find Bannon's push to "hold" all the data held by tech companies in a public trust chilling. I can see his larger goal. He wants to be able to do what the Russians did in 2016 on a wholesale scale and if he had access to all the data on users that companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have collected, they could use it to ensure permanent Republican control of government. I'm not all that thrilled with anyone having that treasure trove of data on the public, but I definitely don't want Bannon or anyone like him anywhere near it.
