An important article published Monday in the New York Times deserves our attention. Titled “The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk,” it helps explain some of the ideology behind DOGE and the current administration’s chainsaw attitude toward government programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and the rest.
CBC News Saskatchewan covers the conspiracy theories that shaped his life.
The author, Jill Lepore, professor of history and law at Harvard, staff writer for the New Yorker and host of the BBC podcast “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story,” has done her homework on Musk’s background.*
Lepore concludes that, while calling himself a “futurist,” the truth is that “few figures in public life are more shackled to the past.” She believes that Musk is taking us back to 1932 when Roosevelt promised a New Deal for the American people in the midst of the depression. Much of what Roosevelt accomplished rebuilding the country through government agencies and regulations to the economy providing jobs, aiding the poor and constructing public works is what Musk is working hard to dismantle. Antipoverty programs and national parks have their origins in the New Deal.
Where does Musk get his ideas about politics, governance and economics? Mostly from his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, who was a “flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy.” This movement sought to replace “democratically elected officials and civil servants—indeed all of government—with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico.”
Humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X AE:A12).” Musk’s grandfather became the movement’s leader in Canada and his number was 1050-1.
Convinced that liberal democracy had failed, the movement declared that “popular voting can be largely dispensed with” and the notion that “all men are created free and equal” must go. Scientists and engineers alone have the intelligence to run things, and most government services could be made much more efficient and “90% of the courts could be abolished.”
Technocracy crashed within a year, the chief reason being “democracy’s success.” Roosevelt sank it. Musk’s grandfather was arrested for trying to undermine Canada’s war effort in 1940 but called Technocracy Incorporated—which closely resembled Italian fascism–“a national patriotic movement.” He joined the antisemitic Social Credit Party as its national chairman. He retired from politics in 1949 and, attracted to South Africa’s newly announced policy of apartheid in 1948, he moved there in 1950.
In 1960, the time Mandela was arrested and jailed along with 11,000 other demonstrators, Haldeman wrote a pamphlet decrying the idea of the equality of races and objecting to those who called apartheid immoral. He also demanded “a watchdog financial agency” to combat waste and inefficiency in government. Sound familiar?
Musk himself left South Africa in 1989 and stayed with his family in Saskatchewan where his grandfather’s “memory loomed large.” His buying Twitter and renaming it X was an effort, he said, to kill “the woke mind virus” which sounds a lot like his grandfather’s objections to “mass mind conditioning” that opposed apartheid. Says Lepore, “Much that Mr. Musk has attempted to do at DOGE can be found in the technocracy manuals of the early 1930’s.”
We learn that one of our current co-presidents is the grandson of a pro-apartheid activist from South Africa, while we know the other is a son of a father active in the KKK. What could possibly go amiss?
To be continued.
* Jill Lepore, “Opinion | The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk,” The New York Times, April 4, 2025.
See Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
And Fox, The Pope’s War: How Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and Hot It Can Be Saved.
And Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the World.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Banner Image: Technocracy, Inc.’s map of “the Technate of America.” Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Does learning more about Elon Musk’s influences help shed light for you on some of the goings on in the current administration? Does it assist your call to stand up as all spiritual warriors do in a time of crisis and emergency?
Recommended Reading
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
The Pope’s War offers a provocative look at three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The final section in the book focuses on birthing a truly catholic Christianity.
“This book should be read by everybody, not only for its ferocious courage, but also for its vision for what needs to be saved from the destructive forces that threaten authentic Christianity.” ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope.
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The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
