The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate — Part 1

What does the title of this article—not to mention each unusual word in it — even mean? This is not a rhetorical question. We urgently need to understand each term. A precise political philosophy underpins each. A combination of these interrelated philosophies has been embraced — either in part or in their entirety — by some of the most powerful people on the planet. If we misapprehend how these controllers and influencers think, we risk blindly accepting whatever world order they wish to impose — and end up wondering how and why we find ourselves subjected to it.

What did Elon Musk mean when he said he was “dark MAGA?” Exploring this question will certainly take us to a very dark conclusion. Yet, ironically, it is this very conclusion that, once seen in the right light, can liberate us.

This two-part series examines the genuine but misplaced hopes of the millions of US citizens who elected Donald Trump to his second non-consecutive term. Unbeknownst to them, they have voted to live in a Technate administered by what is called “gov-corp.” In so doing, they have taken another step toward a multipolar world order, or “New World Order,” as some have long called it.

Shortly before the November 2024 election, Elon Musk, speaking at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, announced, “I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.” Only a couple of months earlier Trump had survived an alleged assassination attempt at the same Butler show grounds. Sharing the stage with “bullet-proof” populist hero Trump, an absolute shoe-in for the presidency, Musk seized his moment.

The Make America Great Again (MAGA) acronym is broadly understood. But Musk’s added adjective “dark” is little understood — and implies much more.

Explanations for his “dark MAGA” declaration have ranged from Musk pushing the Dark MAGA meme coin to Musk casting himself as a super-antihero or even an advocate of a violent fascist takeover of the US. None of these claims have addressed his more obvious reference. Musk is one of a cadre of technocrats behind the Trump presidency who promote the ideas encapsulated by the Dark Enlightenment.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal along with Musk, is probably the best-known proponent of the Dark Enlightenment while Musk is the best-known proponent of Technocracy. But, as we shall see in this article, these sociopolitical theories have considerable overlap and are mutually reinforcing.

Elon Musk’s Technocratic Heritage

In a 2021 SEC filing, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Tesla’s then-Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn officially changed their respective working titles to become the “TechnoKings” of Tesla. This might seem like nothing but irreverent fun—consider that Kirkhorn was also known by the Game of Thrones title of “Master of Coin”—but Musk certainly understands the gravity of Technocracy and the associated term “technocrat.”

Their careful choice of words is an important point emphasized throughout this article. While oligarchs like Musk and Thiel often express ideas in a seemingly flippant manner—or as if the ideas sprang from out of nowhere—these apparent offhand remarks are not meaningless. It is Aesopian language indicative of the core beliefs held by people like Musk, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other members of what Council on Foreign Relations think tank member David Rothkopf generously characterizes, in his book on the subject, as the “Superclass“: people who can “influence the lives of millions across borders on a regular basis.”

The “joke” is on us. Or, rather, on those of us who assume it’s all just a joke.

Both Musk and Thiel are members of the “superclass,” though “parasite class” might be a more fitting description for the oligarchy Rothkopf describes. “Insider” Rothkopf’s estimate of around 6,000 individual oligarchs, whose decisions impact the lives of the remaining eight billion of us, seems feasible.

Musk and Thiel are just two among the 6,000 by virtue of being welcomed into the “superclass” by behind-the-scenes oligarchs who do not feature on the published lists of the world’s wealthiest men and women. Musk and Thiel are made men. We are focusing on them because they are prominent accelerationist technocrat supporters of the Trump/Vance administration.

Elon Musk’s maternal grandfather was Joshua N. Haldeman (1902–1974), who hailed from Pequot, Minnesota. In 1906, when Joshua was four, his parents took the family north and settled in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. In 1936, after 34 years of life on the western plains of the US and Canada, Joshua Haldeman moved to Saskatchewan’s provincial capital, Regina, where he established a successful chiropractic business.

Between 1936 and 1941, Haldeman did more than realign spines. He was also the research director and leader of the Regina branch of an up-and-coming entity known as Technocracy Incorporated, shortened to Technocracy Inc. In 1940, while serving in that post, he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for violating Defence of Canada regulations, under which Technocracy Inc. was deemed an “illegal organisation.” As a result, Haldeman was denied entry into the US, where he had intended to deliver a speech promoting Technocracy. He was then fined and given a suspended sentence for heading up the controversial Technocracy Inc.

Following his 1941 conviction, Haldeman joined the Canadian Social Credit Party (Socred), which had been formed in 1932 by evangelist William Aberhart. Socred sought to implement the “social credit” economic theory of British engineer and economist C. H. Douglas. Like Socred, Technocracy was based upon the “industrial efficiency” ideas of engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (Taylorism). It also dovetailed with the “conspicuous consumption” economic theories of Thorstein Veblen.

C. H. Douglas presented his theory of social credit to tackle what he saw as the inequality of opportunity created by the centralised control and hoarding of resources and wealth. He identified the “macro-economic gap” between retail price inflation and wage growth. He suggested filling that gap by creating the “National Credit Office”—which would be independent of state control—to issue “debt-free” credit to consumers. Part of this National Credit would be used to lower retail prices. The remainder would be distributed to all citizens, irrespective of their personal financial situation, as a way of creating consumer demand for goods. Douglas’ suggestion was an early model of Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Joshua Haldeman’s family of seven, which included a daughter, Maye Haldeman, left Canada in 1950 to set up base in Pretoria, South Africa. As entrepreneurs and adventurers, they travelled extensively. By her own account, Maye Haldeman was close to her parents and adopted their entrepreneurial spirit, sense of adventure and work ethic. Unavoidably, she was also familiar with her parents’ political ideas. Maye recalled that, as a child, she and her siblings would do their “monthly bulletins and photocopy newsletters, and then put the stamps on the envelopes.”

Maye Haldeman married Errol Musk in 1970. Their son, Elon, was born in Pretoria a year later. He was an infant when his grandfather died in a plane crash. Nonetheless, as he was growing up, Elon learned about and became intimately familiar with his grandfather’s political philosophy.

Though Musk was evidently close to his mother, he elected to stay with his father in Pretoria when his parents divorced in 1979. After Elon’s relationship with his father soured, he encouraged his mother to claim her Canadian passport, according to Maye. Her doing so enabled Elon to quickly secure his own Canadian passport, emigrate from South Africa—which he did at age 17—and thereby avoid compulsory military service in that country.

Elon’s ultimate goal was to live and work in the US. But before that, he decided to head from Montreal to Waldeck, Saskatchewan, where, upon returning to his roots, he worked as a farm hand on his second cousin’s farm. There, he awaited his mother Maye’s arrival from Pretoria. She was followed by Elon’s two siblings, Kimbal and Tosca, who also wanted to be closer to the Haldeman side of the family in Canada.

Musk studied at Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario, for two years before acting upon his aim of settling in America. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and economics. Subsequently, he interned in Silicon Valley tech companies before abandoning education to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.

Fast Forward to Today

In October 2024, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos posted on Musk’s “X” platform an alluring statement: “The Network State for Mars is being formed before our eyes.” Musk enthusiastically replied, “The Mars Technocracy.” To which Bezos responded, “Count me in.”

As he continues to dream about colonising Mars, Musk has made it abundantly clear which political system he prefers. In 2019, he wrote: “Accelerating Starship development to build the Martian Technocracy.” Note his use of the word “accelerating.” For Musk “accelerating” doesn’t simply mean an increase in velocity.

Musk has long advocated Universal Basic Income. Here’s one instance of his embrace of UBI: At the World Government Summit in 2017, Musk said, “We will have to have some kind of universal basic income.” Another example: In June 2024, speaking with then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the UK-convened first global “AI Safety Summit,” Musk painted a Utopian vision of an artificial intelligence-dominated society and “an age of abundance” before adding, “We won’t have universal basic income, we’ll have universal high income.” In other words, he was suggesting that the masses would have perfect “lives of abundance” enabled by the ultimate AI-controlled distribution of UBI.

Musk desires Technocracy—and a social credit system—just as his grandfather Joshua Haldeman did. This is evident beyond his personal history and his words. Everything Musk does is completely congruent with these dual pursuits. But when we are invited to discuss Technocracy in reference to Mars, we are of course asked to ignore all the evidence that exposes Musk’s and his fellow oligarchs’ attempts to establish a “Technate”—a system of technocratic, totalitarian continental control—here on Earth.