By Mary Jones and Tony Bruce | Wednesday, October 19, 2024 | 16 min read
Haldeman’s background adds a complex layer to Musk’s family history, linking him to a figure known for expressing provocative and divisive views during a time of significant turmoil. In Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, Musk’s grandfather, Joshua N. Haldeman, emerges as an important influence on Musk’s penchant for risk-taking. Isaacson describes Haldeman as a “daredevil adventurer with strongly held opinions” and “quirky conservative populist views.” Haldeman’s boldness was evident in his performances of rope tricks at rodeos and hopping freight trains just for the thrill. Musk has said of his grandfather, “He knew that real adventures involve risk. Risk energized him.”
The parallels between Musk and his grandfather extend beyond a shared enthusiasm for adventure. Like Haldeman, Musk has shown a willingness to engage with controversial views and conspiracy theories, while aligning himself with figures like Donald Trump who embody hardline stances on immigration and populist politics.
However, in 1950, Haldeman’s “quirky” politics took a dramatic turn, prompting him to leave Canada for South Africa—a country he’d never even visited. At the time, Haldeman had a well-established life in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan. He ran one of Canada’s largest chiropractic practices, owned an airplane, and lived in a 20-room home with his wife and four young children. He was also politically active, having run for both provincial and national parliaments and even serving as the national chairman of a minor political party. Despite these accomplishments and comforts, he made the surprising decision to relocate his family to South Africa.
What could drive someone to make such a drastic move? According to Walter Isaacson, Haldeman felt that the Canadian government was increasingly encroaching on individual freedoms and believed the country had lost its toughness. One of his sons suggested that the move might have stemmed from a mix of adventurousness and a desire for a better climate for raising his family. However, there was a deeper reason: Haldeman’s strong support for the newly established apartheid regime in South Africa.
A closer look at Joshua Haldeman’s writings reveals a pattern of radical conspiracy theories, filled with racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic ideas. These views were expressed consistently over several decades, across a range of documents including newspaper articles, self-published books, university archives, and private letters. Haldeman saw apartheid South Africa as a potential leader for “White Christian Civilization,” defending against what he called an “International Conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of Coloured people” supposedly under their control.
Shortly after arriving in South Africa, Haldeman told Die Transvaler, a far-right Afrikaner newspaper, that rather than being discouraged by the country’s policies, he was inspired to move there because of them. The newspaper treated his arrival as a public relations win for apartheid, with headlines proclaiming, “PRAISES ACTION OF NATIONALIST PARTY REGIME: Canadian Politician Settles in South Africa.”
Haldeman’s beliefs were most explicitly outlined in his 1960 self-published book, The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and the Menace to South Africa. In the book, Haldeman argued that South Africa was poised to become a leading force for White Christian Civilization, standing as a bulwark against “anti-Christian, anti-White forces” worldwide.
If South Africa were to fulfill its potential, Haldeman believed, it would only happen if “White Christian people” united, recognized the forces behind global attacks, identified their true enemies, and fought against the perceived dangers of “Internationalism.” He warned that these so-called threats were already taking root within society. These views were not new; they had shaped his actions well before his move to South Africa.
In Canada, Haldeman led a minor political party notorious for its anti-Semitic rhetoric. In 1946, when the party’s newspaper published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a well-known fraudulent conspiracy text—Haldeman defended it, claiming that “the plan as outlined in these protocols has been rapidly unfolding in the period of observation of this generation.” A local rabbi criticized Haldeman’s speeches to a newspaper, describing them as “shot through with anti-Semitic talk.” Earlier in his career, Haldeman had been a leader in Technocracy Incorporated, a fringe political movement that advocated for the end of democratic governance in favor of a society led by a small group of tech-savvy elites. During World War II, the Canadian government banned the group, labeling it a threat to national security. Despite the ban, Haldeman remained involved, resulting in his arrest and conviction on three charges.
Once in South Africa, Haldeman’s targets expanded to include Black Africans. In a letter to his hometown newspaper in 1951, he wrote, “The natives are very primitive and must not be taken seriously… the best of them cannot assume responsibility and will abuse authority. The present government of South Africa knows how to handle the native question.” His remarks were a clear endorsement of the apartheid regime’s policies.
While it is important to note that the actions and beliefs of a grandfather do not determine those of a grandson, the legacy of Haldeman’s extreme views casts a shadow. Joshua Haldeman died when Elon Musk was only two years old, and the family’s politics were not monolithic. For example, Musk’s father, Errol, was a member of the Progressive Federal Party, a parliamentary opposition to apartheid.
Nevertheless, as Elon Musk engages in disputes with Jewish institutions—most notably threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League for $22 billion over claims of anti-Semitism on Twitter—his grandfather’s history of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and white-supremacist ideology offers a troubling parallel. When Musk tweets accusations about George Soros wanting to “destroy western civilization” in response to claims that Soros was responsible for an “invasion” of African migrants into Europe, he echoes a pattern in his family history. Haldeman himself insinuated that a powerful Jewish financier was using Africans for hidden agendas.
Born in 1902 in a Minnesota log cabin, Haldeman moved with his family to Saskatchewan a few years later. His mother, Almeda Haldeman, was Canada’s first chiropractor, a profession still closely tied to its pseudoscientific and spiritualist origins at the time. Haldeman initially followed in her footsteps but temporarily left the profession to try his hand at farming. Unfortunately, his farming efforts coincided with the stock market crash of 1929 and a subsequent decade-long drought in Saskatchewan, leading to the loss of his farm, as happened to many of his neighbors.
The path Haldeman took, both ideologically and geographically, was shaped by his resistance to changing political and social landscapes in Canada and his support for South Africa’s apartheid regime. This legacy continues to resurface as Musk navigates controversies today.
The harsh conditions in Canada’s western prairies during the Great Depression created a breeding ground for radical political movements, spanning both the left and right, each proposing drastic reforms to address society’s challenges. Joshua Haldeman found himself drawn to several such movements over the years. His early political leanings were towards the left, with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a coalition of socialist, labor, and farmer groups that advocated for increased government intervention in the economy to alleviate widespread suffering. In the mid-1930s, Haldeman was a staunch supporter of the CCF, even serving as a local party chairman.
However, around 1936, Haldeman relocated to Regina and embraced a radically different ideology: Technocracy. This movement rejected democratic governance, advocating instead for a scientifically managed society. It emerged during a politically turbulent time in America, between Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932 and his inauguration in 1933, when the country was reeling from the economic collapse and social unrest. The movement’s leader, Howard Scott, presented himself as a genius engineer with a grand vision: to replace the capitalist system with a “Technate” run by scientists and engineers who would allocate resources based on energy output rather than money. Scott proposed a society where traditional government structures would be abolished, and citizens would receive “Energy Certificates” in place of currency. The movement gained significant attention during the Great Depression, with the New York Times publishing over 100 articles on the subject in just four months.
Yet, Scott’s credentials and claims soon unraveled. His stories of international engineering projects, football stardom at Notre Dame, and clashes with Jesuits turned out to be fabrications. As criticisms of the Technate’s feasibility grew, the movement’s appeal waned, though not for Haldeman. He became deeply involved, first leading the local Technocracy chapter in Saskatchewan, then rising to become the head of the organization in Canada. Writing in the Technocracy magazine in 1940, Haldeman, identified by the number 10450-1, warned of a societal “smashup” and urged fellow Technocrats to prepare for a new social order.
Technocracy’s decline accelerated with the outbreak of World War II. The movement’s isolationist stance, opposing Canadian involvement in overseas conflicts, drew government scrutiny. Howard Scott boldly claimed that the government couldn’t go to war without Technocracy’s approval. In 1940, the Canadian government, invoking wartime powers, banned Technocracy Inc., considering it a threat to national security, and Haldeman was arrested for distributing anti-war materials. He was convicted on all charges and fined or faced jail time.
Undeterred by the ban, Haldeman attempted to form his own political party, the Total War and Defence Party, though it quickly fizzled out. By the mid-1940s, he had shifted his focus to the Social Credit Party, another fringe political movement born out of western Canada’s radicalism during the Depression. The party’s ideology was based on the theories of Clifford Hugh Douglas, a Scottish engineer who proposed that the economic system failed to provide adequate purchasing power to the public, resulting in a persistent gap between production and consumption. Douglas’s solution was a form of universal basic income, paid out as government-issued scrip to bridge this gap.
Like Scott, Douglas embellished his past, claiming roles as a high-ranking engineer for British Westinghouse and significant projects with the British postal service—none of which could be substantiated. Despite these dubious credentials, his ideas gained a following in Canada, where economic hardship made radical proposals appealing.
While Haldeman’s radical affiliations may seem peculiar today, they mirrored the desperate search for solutions during a time of profound economic despair. His ideological journey took him from leftist socialism to the anti-democratic visions of Technocracy and eventually to the monetary reform ideas of Social Credit. Each movement promised to upend a system seen as broken beyond repair, offering instead a new way of organizing society. This ideological restlessness would eventually contribute to Haldeman’s decision to leave Canada for South Africa in 1950, where he continued to advocate controversial views, now in support of apartheid.
Haldeman’s story is a reflection of a man continually searching for transformative answers in tumultuous times, often finding himself on the fringes of political thought. His extreme beliefs, however, would have enduring repercussions, influencing family legacy and resonating in unexpected ways in the life of his grandson, Elon Musk. Although Musk has not publicly embraced his grandfather’s ideologies, his own confrontations with conspiracy theories and controversies draw a line back to Haldeman’s era of radical politics and revolutionary fervor.
During the Great Depression, the appeal of social credit, like that of technocracy, was understandable given the widespread economic hardship. However, the economic theories underlying social credit were intertwined with a particular political ideology. Its founder, C.H. Douglas, viewed social credit and democracy as fundamentally incompatible. He advocated for the elimination of secret ballots, with votes being made public and citizens taxed differently based on whom they supported. Douglas also called for the abolition of political parties and saw majority rule as a form of tyranny; he believed governance should be left to experts.
Douglas’s opposition to democratic norms, such as secret ballots and majority rule, was rooted in his belief that these institutions were tools of a global Jewish conspiracy that influenced all areas of society. He was a staunch anti-Semite who attributed the flaws of the financial system to Jews, frequently citing the discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion as evidence of a Jewish plot against Christian civilization. In a 1939 issue of Social Crediter magazine, Douglas described Jews as culturally deficient, power-seeking, and corrupting influences on civilizations where they gained power. Paradoxically, he even claimed that Nazi Germany was a tool of Jewish power, sometimes suggesting that Hitler was secretly affiliated with the Rothschild family.
Despite his lack of formal economic training and the widespread dismissal of his ideas by economists, Douglas’s social credit theory gained significant traction in Canada, particularly in the prairies. William “Bible Bill” Aberhart, a charismatic Baptist preacher, became an ardent supporter of social credit, spreading its promises through Alberta’s radio waves. In 1935, he formed the Social Credit Party and led it to a stunning victory in the provincial elections, securing 56 out of 63 legislative seats, which made Aberhart the premier of Alberta.
Implementing Douglas’s ideas, however, proved difficult. Aberhart’s government experimented with “prosperity certificates,” a form of social credit, but the initiative failed. The Social Credit Party soon evolved into a traditional conservative party, albeit with a strong Christian influence from Aberhart and a strain of anti-Semitism from Douglas. It became routine for party members to denounce “Money Power,” “World Finance,” and “International Bankers,” with varying degrees of explicitness about their anti-Semitic undertones.
These developments alarmed the Canadian Jewish Congress, the nation’s foremost Jewish advocacy group. Louis Rosenberg, the research director of the Congress, characterized Douglas as someone who “mumbles mysteriously about the long-discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion and spices his stew … with a little anti-semitic paprika to taste.” In Saskatchewan, Joshua Haldeman, a chiropractor and rising figure within the Social Credit Party, was gaining prominence. By 1945, he was the provincial party leader and, a year later, the chairman of the national council, placing him at the center of controversies surrounding anti-Semitism within the party.
One such controversy involved John Patrick Gillese, the editor of the party’s national newspaper, Canadian Social Crediter. A staunch anti-Semite, Gillese expressed these views freely in the newspaper. Premier Ernest Manning of Alberta, concerned that Gillese’s rhetoric was damaging the party, urged Haldeman to remove him as editor. Haldeman refused, asserting that both he and fellow party leader Solon Low supported Gillese’s continued role. Low reassured Gillese in a letter, vowing to resist any efforts to “muzzle” the party. The Social Credit Party faced another blow in 1946 when it was revealed that the Quebec branch had been publishing excerpts from the Protocols. The Star-Phoenix newspaper in Saskatchewan condemned this as “home-baked fascism,” associating social credit with the authoritarian ideologies of figures like Hitler.
In response, Haldeman defended the party in letters to the editor, where he simultaneously denied anti-Semitism while making anti-Semitic claims, such as alleging that Hitler was installed by “international financiers, many, but not all of them, Jewish.” He also claimed that Jews deliberately incited anti-Semitism to generate sympathy. Haldeman argued that whether the Protocols were a forgery was irrelevant because the ideas within them reflected real-world events.
Haldeman’s correspondence provoked backlash, with many Canadians, including the Jewish community, voicing their objections. Historian Janine Stingel noted that Haldeman was adept at dog-whistle politics, using coded language to communicate his views to those who shared them. While active in the Social Credit Party, Haldeman ran unsuccessfully for both federal and provincial office. His increasing obsession with finding Communist influence everywhere, including among groups as benign as housewives in Regina, contributed to his failure to revitalize the party. In 1949, he resigned from his leadership role and soon after moved to South Africa.
The timing of Haldeman’s 1950 relocation coincided with the establishment of apartheid, a system of institutionalized racial segregation. When Haldeman spoke to Die Transvaler, a pro-apartheid publication with a history of anti-Semitism, it raised concerns among South African Jews who were familiar with his Social Credit background. Although Haldeman did not become a significant figure in South Africa’s far-right circles, the language in his interviews echoed the coded anti-Semitic discourse common among white right-wing groups in the country. In an essay for a Canadian newspaper, Haldeman portrayed Black South Africans under apartheid as content and the labor conditions as favorable, despite the obvious disparities.
Haldeman’s conspiratorial thinking intensified over time. After the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, in which police killed 69 Black South African protesters, he released The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and the Menace to South Africa. In the book, he attributed the unrest to “international interests” and warned of an impending invasion by nonwhite “hordes.” He often used phrases like “International Finance” to insinuate Jewish influence without explicitly mentioning Jews, though his anti-Semitic views occasionally surfaced. Decades later, his grandson Elon embraced a misleading narrative promoted by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who falsely portrayed the January 6th rioters—who had sought to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election—as mere “sightseers” peacefully visiting the U.S. Capitol. Carlson’s account essentially depicted them as pacifists.
Haldeman also recommended literature with strong anti-Semitic and far-right themes, including works by British fascists, Australian social credit advocates, and American publications known for their white supremacist leanings. His later writings, such as The International Conspiracy in Health, took aim at vaccines, health insurance, and fluoride in water, which he saw as tools of a global totalitarian agenda.
Although he is sometimes remembered for his adventurous spirit and efforts to explore the Kalahari Desert, like Elon Musk, Haldeman’s legacy is equally marked by his embrace of conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies. He harbored a deep suspicion of democratic governance, distrusted mainstream medicine, and saw shadowy forces at work behind global events. For him, democracy was a privilege for the few rather than a right for all.
