The ideological adventures of Elon Musk’s Saskatchewan grandfather

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As the Great Depression and devastating droughts ravaged the Prairies in the 1930s and 1940s, a Regina chiropractor named Joshua Haldeman became a leading proponent of an unusual new philosophy.

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The Technocracy movement talked of replacing democracy with a system of appointed engineers and scientists who would run government and industry in a more rational, productive way.

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“An observation of social trends reveals breakers and a smash-up ahead,” Hardeman wrote in 1940. “Technocracy Inc. is preparing for a New Social Order that is to come.”

The amateur pilot and former rodeo performer was committed enough to the ideas that he was arrested by the RCMP after flouting a short-lived Canadian-government ban on Technocracy during the Second World War.

The utopian movement is largely dormant today, but the notion of having unelected technologists organize society has a familiar ring.  A band of young engineers and scientists form the core of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is aggressively identifying cutbacks that could reshape the American federal administration.

And there’s another, cross-generational link between Technocracy and DOGE, as well. Three years before Haldeman died, his daughter Maye Musk gave birth to her first son – a future technology titan called Elon, who now famously heads DOGE on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump.

As well as being a proponent of Technocracy, Haldeman enthusiastically backed the apartheid system in his transplanted home of South Africa and expressed antisemitic views and conspiracy theories in Canada and Africa.

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There’s no evidence that Elon Musk was inspired in any way by his grandfather’s political leanings. His status as the world’s richest man and most successful capitalist would actually seem to run contrary to other aspects of Technocracy, which promised an equitable distribution of wealth and minimal environmental impact.

Musk told one biographer that he left South Africa for Canada as a teenager to avoid being drafted into a military that enforced apartheid, and has described himself as “aspirationally Jewish.”

In terms of familial influences, Musk’s father likely had a much greater, negative impact. He and Maye Musk have described Errol Musk as verbally and physically abusive. He and his son have long been estranged.

But the founder of Tesla and SpaceX drew accusations of antisemitism after endorsing a post on his social-media site X in 2023 that said Jews push a “dialectical hatred against whites.” Musk denied the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice, called the post one of his “dumbest” and visited Auschwitz to make amends.

Earlier this year he made what looked to critics like Nazi salutes at a political event – later calling them innocent expressions of enthusiasm that were misinterpreted.

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Musk also blasted the current South African government, accusing it of racism against white farmers over a new law designed to redistribute private lands that are still largely white-owned. The Trump administration subsequently cut $500 million in funding to the country.

The National Post asked Musk for comment through Tesla headquarters but did not receive a response by deadline.

Musk’s life was the subject of a 2023 bestseller by acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson. But as articles in the New Yorker and Atlantic magazines at the time pointed out, there was minimal mention of the Canadian grandfather.

While Isaacson made brief references to antisemitism and apartheid, Haldeman was cast in generally positive terms, the writer saying Elon took after him as “a daredevil adventurer with strongly held opinions.”

A glowing 1995 essay in the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association concluded Haldeman “did it all and did it well,” while leaving unmentioned his antisemitic and racist tendencies.

Haldeman was actually born in Minnesota, moving to Saskatchewan with his family as a child. He followed in the footsteps of his mother, the first chiropractor in Canada, joining the profession and setting up practice in Regina. He appears to have prospered, a 1950 Canadian Press story mentioning his 20-room house.

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But as the North American economy fell apart around him during the Depression, Haldeman joined Technocracy, a movement pioneered by Howard Scott, a charismatic American engineer.

It imagined a new nation – or Technate – that stretched from the Caribbean to Canada, managed by technocrats who would be appointed, promoted and demoted based on their ability to perform their specified tasks. The so-called “price system” would be replaced by one of “energy credits” assigned to all citizens. The resulting efficiency and productivity would afford everyone a solid income and comfortable living, its proponents insisted. Some aspects of the ideology have been compared to socialism.

In another odd twist, leaders were often identified by numbers, such as Haldeman’s 10450-1.

He eventually became the Canadian head of the movement, which the federal government banned in 1940 after Technocracy’s Scott decreed that no Canadian should fight overseas against the Germans or Japanese.

Haldeman continued to promote the movement, however, and was arrested by the Mounties in 1940 for belonging to an illegal organization, and later fined. The group eventually reversed its anti-conscription policy and the ban was lifted.

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As Technocracy steadily declined in popularity, Haldeman switched allegiances to the populist Social Credit party, running unsuccessfully in both Saskatchewan and federal elections.

The party espoused a form of monetary reform, but also had an antisemitic side in its early years.

In a letter to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Haldeman defended a Social Credit magazine that published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a thoroughly debunked treatise that has long been used to foment hatred of Jewish people. While denying the party was antisemitic, he said “the plan as outlined in these protocols has been rapidly unfolding in the period of observation of this generation.” A local rabbi responded in the Star-Phoenix that Haldeman’s speeches were “shot through with antisemitic talk.”

Then in 1950, he, his wife and four children – including twins Maye and Faye – moved to South Africa, along with their airplane.

It was a notable time to emigrate to the country, as the apartheid system that made the majority Black population fourth-class citizens had just been put in place by South Africa’s white-minority government. Haldeman appeared very much in tune with the racist laws.

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“The natives are very primitive and must not be taken seriously,” he wrote in an article for his hometown Regina Leader-Post. “The present government of South Africa knows how to handle the native question.”

In the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre – during which police shot dead 69 Black protesters – he replied to the worldwide condemnation of South Africa with a self-published book. He defended the apartheid regime as a possible “leader of White Christian Civilization” and warned of an “international conspiracy”  and a coming “outside invasion by hordes of Coloured people.”

Haldeman flew the family to far-flung destinations, including multiple trips to South Africa’s Kalahari desert to look for what he believed was a lost city there. He died in 1974 when his plane hit power lines and flipped over.

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