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FTR#1382 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
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Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Introduction: This program continues a series on the career and apparent influence of Joshua Haldeman, Elon Musk’s grandfather.
We begin by noting the surreal politics of Anna Paulina Luna, presiding over the “inquiry” into various conspiratorial processes. Ms. Luna: ” . . . . media to name the groups they claim are behind the protests that led to the violence, and the money that backs them. They describe a web of connections between the immigrant rights and leftist activists on the streets of LA with . . . the Chinese Communist Party. . . .”
Elon Musk has opined that the pyramids of Egypt were built by aliens, something that will look familiar to viewers of Trump’s streaming media platform. Like so much of Trump’s business empire, it has a familiar look: ” . . . . After winning the 2024 election, Trump placed his stake in the company into a revocable trust solely managed by his son, Donald Trump Jr., who is also on the company’s board. The president isn’t the only official who has been in a position to cash in on the company. Other members of the Trump administration have also held shares or served on TMTG’s board. TMTG’s CEO and chairman is Devin Nunes, who is a former Republican congressman and the current chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory board. . . .”
Much of the program focuses on Trump’s TMTG streaming fare. The platform is presenting “Alien Lizard Conspiracy” films, presented as documentaries. ” . . . . Less than two minutes into the movie, the narrator makes a shocking claim. ‘The evidence we are about to present to you has the potential to rewrite thousands of years of human history. It will present evidence that suggests ancient serpent or lizard-like aliens came to earth thousands of years ago,’ the narrator says. ‘We’ll also present evidence that these ancient aliens are still among us today.’ . . .”
Furthermore” ” . . . . Jesus Christ and Buddha are aliens. . . .”
As will be seen Elon Musk’s influential grandfather Joshua Haldeman’s political resume contains many items that appear to anticipate much of what the Trump/Musk administration is presenting.
This will be parsed in greater detail and at greater length in upcoming installments in the series.
. . . . politicians including Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna have taken to social media to name the groups they claim are behind the protests that led to the violence, and the money that backs them.
They describe a web of connections between the immigrant rights and leftist activists on the streets of LA with such billionaires as George Soros, Neville Singham and even the Chinese Communist Party. . . .
. . . . He wrote the manuscript for what became “Chariots of the Gods” while managing the Hotel Rosenhügel in Davos. At the hotel’s bar one day, he met the editor of a Swiss science magazine, who introduced Mr. von Däniken to an executive at Econ-Verlag, a Swiss publishing house. Econ-Verlag agreed to print 6,000 copies of what was originally titled “Erinnerungen an die Zukunft,” or “Memories of the Future,” but only after hiring Wilhelm Roggersdorf, who had edited the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, to rework much of it. . . .
Among other things, movies on the Truth+ streaming service have suggested Jesus Christ and Buddha are aliens.
Less than two minutes into the movie, the narrator makes a shocking claim.
“The evidence we are about to present to you has the potential to rewrite thousands of years of human history. It will present evidence that suggests ancient serpent or lizard-like aliens came to earth thousands of years ago,” the narrator says. “We’ll also present evidence that these ancient aliens are still among us today.”
This bizarre narrative echoes a paranoia about shadowy reptilians that has persisted for decades on the absolute fringes of the conspiracy theory movement. However, in this case, the story of “serpent or lizard-like aliens” who are secretly wielding influence over the human race isn’t coming from some pamphlet or dark corner of the internet. It is among the most watched films available for streaming on a service run by a multibillion dollar media company that is owned by the President of the United States.
When they launched a streaming service last year, President Trump’s business partners at the Trump Media and Technology Group announced it would be focused on “news, Christian content, and family friendly programming that is uncancellable by Big Tech.” Yet this supposed haven for young viewers and wholesome Christian fare is also home to “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space,” a bizarre hour-long movie that presents claims that there is a race of “serpent-like aliens who created humans and the religious systems used to control them.” As of this writing, Trump’s company is marketing this to viewers as a “documentary” — and it’s not the only one on their platform filled with shocking statements linking Christianity and other faiths to shadowy, sinister alien conspiracies.
These ideas are easy to dismiss as utterly and obviously ridiculous. However, they have a history of attracting troubled believers on the furthest conspiracy fringe. And, while these movies are available on other streaming platforms, in this case the sitting president’s nascent media empire is playing a role in the promotion of this extreme content. Trump’s streaming service also seems to have helped it to find an audience. On Monday and through much of last week, “Lizard People” was listed among the top 10 “most watched” programs on the streaming service.
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Throughout his second re-election campaign and first hundred days back in office, President Trump has used the Truth Social platform to issue near constant updates including policy pronouncements, personnel announcements, attacks on his political enemies, and even musings on last month’s NFL Draft. The site serves a quasi-official role with Trump’s “truths” sometimes also being distributed by the official White House Office of Communications. Truth Social was launched in early 2022 after Trump was banned from multiple more mainstream sites following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The platform is the centerpiece of Trump Media & Technology Group, a company that is majority owned by the president and that has extensive ties to his current administration.
More recently, as Trump’s media empire has made headlines for quickly losing and raising massive sums of cash, it has expanded beyond social networking into other forms of entertainment. Now, the company’s ventures include Truth+, the streaming service with multiple films being marketed as documentaries that present wild conspiracy theories, including allegations alien beings are “manipulating world events and are using religion and other means to secretly control humanity.”
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TMTG, which is also known as “Trump Media,” has had what one analyst described to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper as a “wild ride largely fueled by Donald Trump’s political influence.” TMTG was started in 2021 by Trump and two former contestants on his reality show, “The Apprentice.” The relationship between Trump and the other founders eventually descended into lawsuits as the company underwent a merger and prepared to go public. TMTG, which trades under the symbol “DJT,” had its IPO in March 2024 at an $8 billion valuation. Since then, the stock has been on a rollercoaster ride, with prices climbing above $60 after the initial offering before coming down to, as of last week, roughly $25.
Having a publicly traded media company means Trump, who owns a majority of the DJT shares, is in a position to rake in sums from individual advertisers and investors at a level that is unprecedented for a sitting president. After winning the 2024 election, Trump placed his stake in the company into a revocable trust solely managed by his son, Donald Trump Jr., who is also on the company’s board. The president isn’t the only official who has been in a position to cash in on the company. Other members of the Trump administration have also held shares or served on TMTG’s board. TMTG’s CEO and chairman is Devin Nunes, who is a former Republican congressman and the current chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory board.
TMTG’s high value has, thus far, been at odds with steep losses that have dwarfed the company’s revenues and totaled over $400 million last year. Stock sales have helped Trump Media offset that and close out 2024 with a $777 million cash reserve. However, even with those assets, the company appears to be searching for ways to expand its business model. Truth+, which includes a streaming service, launched last August and has been framed by Nunes as central to those efforts.
In an April 29 letter to shareholders, Nunes described several potential revenue streams from Truth+, including a crypto token and “premium features” for subscribers like a verified “red check badge.” Nunes reiterated the message that the streaming service would focus on the family and people of faith.
“We’re assessing various means of monetizing the Truth+ platform, including through advertising and a subscription package with premium content,” Nunes wrote. “Meanwhile, we are continuing our efforts to secure new programming encompassing family-friendly entertainment, documentaries, children’s shows, Christian content, and unbiased news broadcasts.”
The current slate of streamable video on Truth+ includes rebroadcasts of shows from the right-wing cable network “Real America’s Voice” and disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Along with partisan news, there are also documentaries, religious programming, and movies including some that are clearly labeled “sci fi, “fantasy,” and “horror.” Among these offerings are multiple shows that veer towards the extreme and conspiratorial.
While other Truth+ programming is categorized with entertainment genres, as of this writing, the full description on the service identifies “Lizard People” simply as a “documentary” that poses a tantalizing, troubling question: “Did ancient serpent or Lizard-like aliens come to Earth thousands of years ago to play a role in creating humanity and are they still among us today?”
Viewers who are intrigued by this pitch and opt to watch are treated to a brief “WARNING” noting “some parts of this film may be objectionable or offensive and may contain triggers for post traumatic stress disorder, for some viewers.” The disclaimer also declares “the views and opinions expressed in this film are entirely those of its makers.” Other than that, the hour-long show contains no effort to question or downplay any of the shocking claims contained therein. Instead, the deep-voiced narrator repeatedly and authoritatively suggests the film’s claims all may be true.
“There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that alien, serpent-like creatures did come to Earth thousands of years ago and created religion, humanity, and continue to control us even now,” the narrator says at one point.
Along with the dramatic narration, “Lizard People” includes a compilation from various stock footage and image libraries along with computer animations. The “evidence” presented resists basic scrutiny, as it largely lacks citations and consists of sweeping statements about ancient art, culture, and more modern alien encounters. While the premise and bizarre presentation ensure that remotely discerning audiences would dismiss the film’s claims, they are continually presented as wholly factual research supported in part by the assertions of federal government agencies.
“With every passing day, NASA tells us that they have discovered yet another earth-like planet that could sustain life,” the “Lizard People” narrator states near the end of the show, adding, “They alter their equations on the existence of alien life on a weekly basis. Even they are growing more and more aware that soon they will discover something special. The question is, will we awaken the ancient invaders and will they return — if they’re not already here?”
Those comments directly give way to some of the more shocking imagery that appears in the climax of the hour-long film. As “Lizard People” enters its final minutes, footage plays across the screen showing grey alien figures standing over a nearly nude man splayed out on a table surrounded by machinery and tubes prodding into his flesh.
Against this backdrop, the narrator declares: “The fact is, these serpent aliens may use more than space to appear on earth. They may also use time.” The footage gives way to images of human bodies suspended in pods and a suggestion that proof for all of this lies in tales of titans in “Greek mythology,” the story of the serpent and the Garden of Eden in the “Christian Bible,” and more modern disclosures about unexplained alien phenomena. This blend of strange imagery, ancient lore, and UFOlogy transitions to the movie’s final argument.
“In conclusion, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that ancient serpent aliens still visit earth and also use time travel,” the narrator says as the screen goes dark.
Variations of the claim that reptilian extraterrestrials have played an influential and sometimes sinister role in world history have been promoted by conspiracy theorists for well over a hundred years. Researcher Logan Strain, who has written about conspiracy theories for the Washington Post and covers the topic in depth for the podcast “QAA,” which he co-hosts pseudonymously as “Travis View,” told TPM the phenomenon can be traced as far back as the 19th century occultist writer Helena Blavatsky.
“She wrote about ancient civilizations that influenced the modern day, and ancient lost races,” Strain explained. Blavatsky theorized an ancient race of dragon men. These claims, Strain said, “were later adopted by conspiracists.”
”But what really got it kicked off was a couple things,” he continued. “Robert E. Howard, who wrote the Conan the Barbarian series — he wrote some fiction about lizard people. This was picked up by a cult leader named Maurice Doreal.”
Doreal, Strain explained, wrote a pamphlet entitled The Mysteries of Gobi that described a civilization beneath the desert. “He claimed that there was an ancient race of lizard people,” Strain said. “So, this was like from the 1940s.”
Strain described reptilian theories, today, as “more fringe than QAnon.”
“There are more people who believe fringe conspiracy theories about the faked moon landing and stuff than lizard people,” Strain said. “It is a very fringe, minority conspiracist belief in a land where people feel free to believe lots of wild things.”
While the number of people convinced of a dark reptilian influence may be small, Strain pointed out belief in lizard people has been linked to multiple incidents of real world violence.
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The lizard people conspiracy is also, as Strain put it, “very heavily intertwined with anti-Semitic tropes” and the idea Jews are among the sinister, elite forces operating behind the scenes. Strain noted that the idea that reptilians are manipulating the world was “really popularized” more recently by the prominent British footballer-turned-conspiracy theorist David Icke. While Icke denies being an anti-Semite, his past statements —including blaming Jewish groups for COVID — have led him to be banned from multiple countries and internet platforms.
The film “Lizard People” does not include focused criticism of Jews. However, the movie and another on Trump’s Truth+ platform include bizarre and conspiratorial statements about multiple religions. In “Lizard People,” the narrator suggests the “very children of Israel” engaged in “intermarriage” with “serpent worshippers.”
“This is very revealing,” the narrator declares. “Intermarriage and worship of the serpent gods. Today, we can easily replace the word ‘gods’ with aliens.”
The movie also includes some inflammatory commentary about the Catholic Church.
“The Vatican comes from the words ‘vatis’ for prophet and ‘can’ for serpent, making the Vatican a place of serpent prophecy,” the narrator says. “The very book of Christians across the world, The Bible, is full of the serpent.”
Most etymologists explicitly do not agree with this interpretation of the term “Vatican.”
Another film on Truth+ delves more specifically into the idea that major religions are part of an extraterrestrial conspiracy. “Conspiracy Chronicles: Dark Underworld” has also been described on the service as a “documentary.”
“Explore the powerful, secret underworld of a shocking coalition of the human elite and advanced beings not of this world dating back hundreds of years,” the description says.
Like “Lizard People,” “Conspiracy Chronicles” is approximately one hour long and seemingly wholly made up of ominous narration set against stock footage and computer animation. It begins with a disclaimer that says “the views expressed in this film are not necessarily the views of … any other person involved in the making and distribution of this film.” There is no other attempt to downplay the claims in the movie or indicate they have no basis in reality.
And “Conspiracy Chronicles” may be even weirder than the reptilian saga, as it includes a rapidfire smorgasbord of wild claims about everything from Freemasonry to the Jesuits to the Moon, which it contends is actually “hollowed out” and a “base for aliens.”
“Power cleverly shifts around, but always at the very top, the same families run the world,” the “Conspiracy Chronicles” narrator declares at one point, quickly adding, “The modern era of mind control began with the creation of the Illuminati.”
“Conspiracy Chronicles” also goes beyond the rhetoric of “Lizard People.” Rather than simply posing religion as a tool for nefarious forces to control the populace, it suggests the Judeochristian God and other religious leaders including the Hindu deity Krishna are actually extraterrestrials themselves.
“There are a few pieces of evidence that suggest that Jesus may have been an alien,” the narrator says before going deeper down the rabbit hole. “And what about other religious originators such as Buddha? … He wasn’t human. He was an alien. So, the next time you see a statue of Buddha, remember that he was an alien.”
The array of theories in “Conspiracy Chronicles” also include some suggesting the U.S. government is part of a scheme to cover up both UFOs and “dark ops” experiments. According to the film, this secret laboratory work includes “deliberate production of utterly abominable results such as ape-human embryos and other ungodly biological combinations.” The movie outlines an especially disturbing scenario that it links to a military base in New Mexico.
“One of the most horrifying claims made for this installation was the presence of the so-called ‘blood lab’ where various kinds of blood, both natural and synthetic, was processed ostensibly for the consumption of the extraterrestrials who required it for their existence,” the narrator says.
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There is other conspiratorial content on Truth+ including a film on the “Illuminati” that was also, as of last week, among the services “most watched” videos. However, “Lizard People” and “Conspiracy Chronicles: Dark Underworld” stand out as truly bizarre in both their claims and presentation. Alchemy Werks LLC is identified as the production company behind both films on IMDB pages that are also linked on Truth+. “Lizard People” also cites Alchemy Werks in its credits. The company says on its website that it has produced dozens of movies about aliens that it bills as “reality films.” “Conspiracy Chronicles” additionally describes itself in its credits as a production of American River Media Group, a company that also advertises THC “horse treats.” When TPM reached out to these businesses, we received a call back from a man who identified himself as Charles Thompsen, who is credited as a producer on both “Lizard People” and “Conspiracy Chronicles: Dark Underworld.”
Thompsen pointed to the disclaimers on both films, which state that the filmmakers do not vouch for the “accuracy” or “completeness” of the claims presented. The disclaimer on “Lizard People” also states that the filmmakers are “not responsible or liable for any action or inaction by a viewer of this video that is based on the content of this film.”
“I don’t know how you could take ‘Lizard People’ seriously, honestly,” Thompsen said. He went on to compare the films to “Dungeons and Dragons” and other fantasy entertainment.
“We have nothing but support for President Trump,” he said. “They should be noted that the genres are sci-fi and there’s a big base that enjoys movies about aliens and lizard people and such. They’re insatiable about it.”
Thompsen suggested he would talk with Truth+ about having his movies marked as “sci-fi/fantasy.”
“Unfortunately, they’re not being denoted as such on the Trump Media site and I’m going to have to look into that,” he said.
In the days since, the label on “Conspiracy Chronicles: Dark Underworld” has been switched from “documentary” to “sci-fi” on Truth+. As of this writing, “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space” is still identified as a “documentary.”
Conspiracy inflected plots are, of course, not uncommon in mainstream entertainment. Films, books and television including “The Da Vinci Code,” the “National Treasure” film series starring Nicolas Cage, and “The X Files” have long included clearly fictionalized storylines that delved into elements of popular conspiracy theories. While it is more rooted in conspiracy theories than any actual evidence, the idea that aliens played a role in early human history has also spawned relatively mainstream content that straddles the line between faux news and tongue-in-cheek entertainment. Specifically, the series “Ancient Aliens” has earned meme infamy while being broadcast on the “History Channel” and Netflix.
However, the conspiratorial “documentary” content that is popular on Truth+ is different, in part because it leans into the version of this mythos that frames the ancient extraterrestrials as “lizard-like” serpents. This reptilian take on the theme has historically been one of the most extreme versions of the belief that aliens played a pivotal role in human history. Strain, the conspiracy theory researcher, suggested it is particularly troubling to see lizard people conspiracy theories advanced on a platform owned by Trump because the presidential association could give these wild ideas momentum. He alluded to instances where Trump has engaged with followers of another popular conspiracy theory, QAnon, online and off.
“One of the reasons that QAnon spread so far and was so adopted is because Trump and some of his close associates were willing to sort of wink and nod at the QAnon community and make no effort to denounce them or denounce their beliefs,” Strain said. “That obviously fueled a lot of QAnon believers.”
Both “Lizard People” and “Conspiracy Chronicles” are also available on YouTube, Amazon Prime and other streaming services. However, at least on Amazon Prime, “Lizard People” is clearly identified as “science fiction.”
Other movies on Truth+ similarly come from companies that have dozens of little-known productions and that also make those films available on both free and paid streaming services. The fact these movies are simultaneously available from multiple different sources at widely varying price points brings up another question: How is it cost effective for producers to make dozens and dozens of movies? What exactly are they selling if these things are widely available and, in some cases, free?
TPM reached out to Richard Rushfield, a longtime chronicler of Hollywood and columnist at the entertainment industry site The Ankler, to try and understand this business model. There are various production companies who churn out work in bulk, at a low cost, and are then able to monetize even relatively small audiences via the internet or streaming, he said. He described it as a sub-Hollywood “weird internet” world and “very sort of bottom-feedery business.”
“It’s like the mud at the bottom of the floor,” he said. “It’s like living at that level.”
TPM asked Rushfield if it surprised him to see a company owned by the president engage with this type of content.
“Three months ago, it would have,” Rushfield said with a laugh. ”I don’t know that I have the capacity for surprise any more.”
2.“The Canadian roots of Elon Musk’s conspiracist grandpa” By Geoff Leo; CBC; 03/20/2025.
Raised in Saskatchewan, Joshua Haldeman was a tech-utopian, politician and apartheid fan
Joshua Haldeman was just one of thousands of Saskatchewan farmers who lost their land in the drought of the Dirty ’30s.
While that trauma shaped the lives of everyone who went through it, the crisis affected Haldeman in an exceptional way — he never stopped raging at what he perceived were the causes of the Great Depression.
“He would remain leery of financial institutions and other bureaucracies throughout his life, a sentiment that would shape his political philosophy,” says a 1995 academic paper about Haldeman co-written by his son Scott.
Haldeman came to believe that an international communist conspiracy controlled the banks, the media and the universities and was aiming to run the world.
“An ‘Invisible Government,’ working to carry out the objectives of the International Conspiracy, is operating in every country,” he wrote in his book The International Conspiracy in Health, which was published in the mid-1960s. In it, he also said the conspiracy was pushing for the fluoridation of water supplies, mandatory milk pasteurization and mass vaccination programs.
Haldeman dedicated his life to fighting it.
“Only by following the example and guidance of Jesus Christ will man be able to successfully combat the evil forces of the International Conspiracy and achieve the greatness for himself and his country.”
Haldeman thought government was being badly mismanaged and at one point in his career, he embraced the solution proposed by a movement called Technocracy: that government should be run by scientists and engineers, not politicians.
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Kevin Anderson, a historian at the University of Calgary who has studied the conspiratorial thinking that emerged during the 1930s and ’40s, told CBC there are stunning echoes between that time and today.
He said if he were to read a list of Haldeman’s beliefs in one of his classes today and ask, “When do you think this was written? I bet the more aware students would say, ‘Oh, two years ago — this year.’”
The Canada connection
Haldeman died in a plane crash in 1974, when he was 72 years old.
His grandson, Elon Musk, was just three. Musk would become the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — and the wealthiest man in the world.
Elon’s mother, Maye, born in Regina in 1948, was one of Joshua and Winnifred Haldeman’s five children.
“Throughout his childhood, Elon heard many stories about his grandfather’s exploits and sat through countless slide shows that documented his travels and trips,” wrote Musk biographer Ashlee Vance in his 2015 book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
“My grandmother told these tales of how they almost died several times along their journeys,” Musk told Vance. “They were flying in a plane with literally no instruments — not even a radio…. My grandfather had this desire for adventure, exploration — doing crazy things.”
“Maybe that sort of adventurous spirit is in all of [Haldeman’s descendants],” Musk said to Vanity Fair in 2015.
Like his grandpa, Musk — a citizen of Canada, South Africa and the U.S. — has also taken an interest in politics, having become a senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump since his election last year. And, like Haldeman, Musk has tangled with a Canadian prime minister of his own.
In early January, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau posted a response on X to Trump mockingly calling Canada the 51st state. (Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 that he was stepping down as prime minister, and has since been replaced by Mark Carney.)
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Last month, thousands of Canadians started signing a petition to have Musk’s citizenship revoked for his attempts to “attack Canadian sovereignty.”
“Canada is not a real country,” he posted on X in reply. (That post has since been deleted.)
Eighty years earlier, Musk’s grandpa had a much different response when he saw a political movement advocate that the U.S. take over Canada and Greenland by “force of arms.” He issued a warning against its “insidious and seditious propaganda.”
“The Canadian people and the Canadian government must take positive action now as a measure of national safety,” Haldeman wrote in the Apr. 5, 1945, edition of the Canadian Social Crediter magazine.
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Gophers and scurvy
Joshua Haldeman was born in a log cabin in Minnesota in 1902 and raised in Waldeck, Sask., near Swift Current.
According to the CSC biography, Haldeman “became quite skilled in bronco horseback riding, boxing, wrestling and exhibition rope spinning.”
His mother, Almeda, recognized by many as Canada’s first chiropractor, ran a strict home, allowing “no one in her house to drink, smoke, use improper language or tell shady stories,” according to Erik Nordeus’s book The Engineer: Follow Elon Musk on a Journey from South Africa to Mars. “Playing cards and medicines were also prohibited.”
Haldeman attended nine colleges and universities, including Moose Jaw College and Regina College, according to the academic paper written by his son Scott. Scott Haldeman declined CBC’s request for an interview, but did answer some questions by email.
Haldeman concluded his chiropractic training in 1926. Throughout his life, Haldeman was a leader in the chiropractic industry, taking board positions in provincial and national associations and pushing for new legislation.
But in the mid-1920s, instead of taking up chiropractic, he began farming.
His timing was not ideal. He lost his farm during the 1930s after he was unable to keep up with loan payments.
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“Stewed gopher, canned gopher, gopher pie” were “not infrequently” on the menu at that time, wrote Curtis McManus in his book Happyland: The History of the ‘Dirty Thirties’ in Saskatchewan.
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Errol Musk, Elon’s father, told CBC in an interview earlier this year that he remembers Haldeman speaking about his frustration with Saskatchewan’s rail system, which had a difficult time getting food from the farm to those who needed it.
“He pointed out to me about how the Depression was man-made,” said Errol Musk. “In other words, it was planned…. a plan to screw up the world in favour of certain people.”
Anderson said people in Saskatchewan at the time had an understandable fear of “global forces that feel completely out of everybody’s control.”
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A government without politicians
Haldeman’s political activism began in 1928 when, at 26, he joined a couple of left-leaning farmers organizations.
In 1933, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was formed with the signing of the Regina Manifesto, which called for the eradication of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist state. (The CCF was the forerunner of today’s NDP.) The next year, Haldeman joined the CCF and took on leadership roles in the party, according to the paper written by Scott Haldeman.
“[The CCF] promoted the abolition of the profit system and the establishment of a planned economy,” wrote Joshua Haldeman’s secretary Vivan Doan in a letter to Scott cited in the paper. “He worked tirelessly for this new party.”
By 1936, Haldeman had moved to Regina and established his chiropractic office.
Around that time, Howard Scott — a 6’5” man with broad shoulders and a magnetic personality — began delivering fiery lectures across Western Canada. The New York-based engineer and political visionary was the leader of Technocracy Inc., an organization promoting his plan for an economy run by experts, not politicians.
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The movement began in the United States in the 1930s. By 1940, it was sweeping across Western Canada. Technocrats were known for wearing identical grey uniforms and saluting one another in what The Daily Province called “Technocrat fashion — right hand raised smartly to eye-level.”
Haldeman quickly became entranced by the movement and took up a leadership role. In a July 1940 article in Technocracy Digest, he argued that advances in technology and global affairs had made it possible to create a utopian society in North America.
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‘A scientific Frankenstein’
The Canadian government was not swayed by Technocracy’s rhetoric. In June 1940, it declared Technocracy an illegal and subversive organization.
“The literature of Technocracy discloses, in effect, that one of its objectives is to overthrow the government and constitution of this country by force,” said prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie-King in a July 16, 1940, speech in the House of Commons.
Haldeman was apparently not intimidated by this move. He placed an ad in the Regina Leader-Post promoting Technocracy and calling the government’s move an “unjustified…. political blunder.”
A few months later, he was arrested and charged with stirring up disloyalty to the King and undermining Canada’s prosecution of the Second World War. He was found guilty in a downtown Regina court.
Shortly after his arrest, Haldeman left the movement, after coming to the conclusion it had become treasonous. His son Scott wrote that Haldeman became disillusioned when Technocracy flipped from opposing communism to supporting “complete economic and military collaboration with Soviet Russia.”
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In an April 1945 article in the Canadian Social Crediter, Haldeman warned that Technocracy had become “a scientific Frankenstein.”
He wrote that since his departure, the organization had begun pushing for the U.S. to take over Canada and Greenland “either by purchase, negotiation or by force of arms” – a position advocated by Howard Scott, who argued for isolationism and a strong continental defence.
Haldeman warned that Quebec and what is now Mexico were being targeted in particular. He quoted Scott as arguing “that these alien cultures on the continent of North America be annihilated. Assimilation is out of the question.”
Haldeman warned “Technocracy Inc. is conspiring against the British Empire — against the sovereignty of Canada.”
A maverick
Haldeman was a bit of a maverick throughout his life — confident in his own apprehension of issues.
“He never had any person that would be considered a spiritual guide,” Scott Haldeman told CBC in an email. “He felt he knew the Bible better than any minister and only went to church for weddings and funerals.”
After Technocracy, Haldeman decided he would start his own political party, Total War and Defence. In his 1941 book, Total War and Defence for Canada, which was his manifesto for this new party, he argued for a policy of total conscription to support our British allies during the Second World War.
He called for the conscription of “every employable man and woman between the ages of sixteen and sixty” and “all natural resources, all industrial equipment and all property,” including “all bank deposits and private holdings of money.”
His movement did not catch on.
His next stop was the Social Credit Party, a rapidly growing political movement that formed government in Alberta in 1935 and held it until 1971.
Social Credit advocated low taxes, minimal regulation and free markets. But it doesn’t fit neatly into the modern left-right political divide. Social Credit wanted governments to give money directly to consumers in order to combat inherent inequity in the market.
Haldeman quickly rose through the ranks, becoming leader of the Social Credit Party of Saskatchewan in 1945 and the chair of the national party’s council in 1946.
During his political tenure he ran, unsuccessfully, against three giants of Canadian politics. In the 1945 federal election, he faced Liberal prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie-King in a Prince Albert riding. In 1948, Haldeman led Social Credit in a provincial campaign against Tommy Douglas and the CCF. Social Credit lost, receiving just eight per cent of the vote.
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Haldeman campaigned as the Christian alternative to godless communists.
“The trouble with politics is that Christianity has been left out,” said Haldeman in an April 1948 address on CBC Radio, transcribed in the Canadian Social Crediter.
A 1948 confrontation at Regina City Hall put Haldeman in the midst of a political conflict that has echoes of our modern politics. He had been invited to a party leaders’ forum by the Regina Housewives League to discuss their proposal for national price controls.
Haldeman criticized their idea as a “strictly socialist resolution” and accused the league of being “a front for the communist organization.”
According to the Regina Leader-Post, “Dr. Haldeman was repeatedly interrupted by ‘boos’ and catcalls.”
“I am making a speech here,” Haldeman replied. “Isn’t there still freedom of speech in Regina?”
‘Home-baked fascism’
In 1946, Haldeman found himself in the midst of a national scandal, after the Quebec wing of Social Credit published the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
A Saskatoon Star Phoenix editorial said Social Credit was cooking up “home-baked fascism” by promoting a fraudulent document that “purports to reveal a plot [by Jews] to dominate the world.”
This reinforced Social Credit’s reputation as an antisemitic organization — which can be traced back to its founder, Clifford Hugh Douglas, also known as “Major Douglas.”
“The Jew has no native culture and always aims at power without responsibility. He is the parasite upon, and corrupter of, every civilisation in which he has attained power,” Douglas wrote in a 1939 edition of the party’s magazine.
Haldeman, as the chairman of the National Social Credit Association, responded in a letter to the editor of the Star Phoenix. He said “Social Credit is absolutely opposed to antisemitism,” adding, “the great mass of the Jewish people in Germany suffered greatly and our full sympathy goes out to them.”
But he also defended the publishing of the Protocols. He said whether the document was fraudulent “is not the point.”
“The point is that the plan as outlined in these protocols has been rapidly unfolding in the period of observation of this generation,” Haldeman wrote, noting the conspiracy this book supposedly revealed was executed “by international financiers, many but not all of them, Jewish.”
In a 1947 letter to the editor of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Rabbi Irwin Gordon expressed skepticism about Haldeman’s disavowal of antisemitism.
“Doctor Haldeman must have a short memory as well if he does not remember his own speeches shot through with antisemitic talk,” Gordon wrote. “Doctor Haldeman’s over-interest in clearing the party and himself from the charge of antisemitism and anti-Canadianism will not fool the people.”
Even Alberta’s Social Credit premier thought the party had an antisemitism problem. In a letter to a national leader after the Protocols incident, Premier Ernest Manning (father of Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party of Canada) took aim at the organization’s magazine, the Canadian Social Crediter.
“No one who values their name or their influence is going to get behind a publication which contains little but negative and destructive criticism flavoured with ‘Jew-baiting,’” Manning wrote, demanding that Haldeman, as party chairman, clean things up.
South Africa move prompted by prophecies
In the midst of his frenetic political career, Haldeman made time to start a family.
In 1942, he took up dancing and a few months later married his instructor, Winnifred Fletcher. (This was his second marriage. He married Eve Peters in 1934 and they had one child together — Joshua Jerry Noel Haldeman — but the couple divorced by 1937.)
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The couple had five children, including twins Maye and Kaye in 1948.
That same year, Haldeman got his pilot’s licence and bought a plane that enabled him to run his chiropractic business alongside his political career. The girls flew with their dad so often that newspapers began referring to the family as “the Flying Haldemans.”
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By mid-1949, Haldeman started looking for a new home, a search inspired in part by two prophecies, according to a biography of his son Scott.
“Josh relates an experience with a ‘medium’ [spiritualist] in 1936 who told him he must practice in Regina for 14 years and then, ‘move to a city in a faraway place,’” says the book, The Journey of Scott Haldeman, written by Reed Phillips.
It goes on to say that once his 14 years were up in Regina, “everything fell into place.”
“After speaking with an Anglican minister from South Africa at an International Trade Fair in Toronto, Joshua became convinced that South Africa was that ‘faraway place,’” the book says.
So what did that minister say?
Haldeman’s 1960 book, The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and The Menace to South Africa, begins this way:
“‘SOUTH AFRICA WILL BECOME THE LEADER OF WHITE CIVILIZATION IN THE WORLD’ was the prophetic and emphatic statement of an Anglican Minister in Toronto, Canada, 1949. He had lived many years in South Africa.”
A new life for Haldeman
The Haldemans’ move to South Africa made news across Canada, with a Sept. 11, 1950, article noting the family was leaving behind a “thriving practice as a chiropractor,” Winnifred’s dance school and a 20-room home in Regina, to “stake everything on this new venture.”
They settled with their five children in Pretoria, where they enjoyed warm weather and hired help.
“We have two native (Negro) garden boys in the summer and one in the winter and a native girl,” according to an article Haldeman wrote that was published in the Aug. 6, 1951, edition of the Regina Leader-Post.
“The natives are very primitive and must not be taken seriously. We get quite a bang out of them and they are really quite useful,” he wrote. “It takes three natives to do the work of one white man.”
In 1948, the National Party swept to power in South Africa and immediately began implementing its program of apartheid, a policy of racial segregation.
Months after arriving, Haldeman told South Africa’s Die Transvaler newspaper “instead of the government’s attitude keeping me away from South Africa, it has actually encouraged me to settle here.”
“White man…. the most difficult to control’
In his 1951 Regina Leader-Post article, Haldeman defended apartheid.
“Some [African natives] are quite clever in a routine job, but the best of them cannot assume responsibility and will abuse authority,” he wrote. “The present government of South Africa knows how to handle the native question.”
On March 21, 1960, police fired submachine guns on a crowd of Black people protesting apartheid in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing 69 and wounding more than 180 others. It came to be known as the Sharpeville massacre, “one of the first and most violent demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
A few weeks later, Haldeman published his book The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Government and Menace to South Africa, writing in such a hurry that the introduction said “due to the present urgency this brief has been rushed and typographical errors must be excused.”
Haldeman said the leaders of the Black protest movement hope, “with the support of the Internationalists, to oust the white man, who has in a few years brought their people from primitive savagery to a great measure of peace and security.”
“An unconditional propaganda warfare is carried on against the white man because the white man’s integrity, initiative and independence make him the most difficult to control,” he wrote.
Haldeman opposed the state mandating systems like compulsory medication on the white population, but had a different standard for the Black population.
“The State has the right to do for them what it thinks is best, the same rights as the parents have for their children,” he wrote in The International Conspiracy in Health. (Both of Haldeman’s International Conspiracy books were first reported on by Harvard historian Jill Lepore in a 2023 article in The New Yorker.)
‘The Great Farini’
Shortly after his arrival in South Africa, Haldeman was swept up in the “lost city” craze.
Hermann Wittenberg, a professor at South Africa’s University of the Western Cape, says in the late 1800s and early 1900s, white amateur archeologists and explorers discovered ruins, monuments and sculptures of ancient African civilizations.
He said because of widespread racism, these explorers — even more progressive, liberal explorers — believed “that Black Africans, Bantu-speaking peoples, are primitive, not capable of any civilizational attainments. The best they can do is build mud huts, you know?”
As a result, they theorized that these civilizations, which exhibited some sophistication, must have been built by non-Africans.
“They would have imagined that this was some ancient northern, Western, Mediterranean civilization which had built these things. And they thought there was a whole string of these things in southern Africa, including that Kalahari thing,” said Wittenberg.
“That Kalahari thing” became Haldeman’s obsession: the legend of the Lost City of the Kalahari, which was allegedly discovered by William Hunt in 1885.
Hunt, who came to be known as “The Great Farini,” was a Canadian circus performer who became famous in the 1860s for crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope — once with a washing machine on his back and another time with a sack over his entire body.
Farini, who was also the inventor of the “human cannonball’ performance, became a promoter of “freak shows,” featuring a girl he called Krao and deemed the Missing Link.
P.T. Barnum once called Farini “the most talented showman” he knew, according to Shane Peacock’s book The Great Farini: The High-Wire Life of William Hunt.
The showman was also an explorer and storyteller.
As the story goes, in 1885, Farini travelled to Africa and led an expedition across the Kalahari Desert. In a book he wrote about his travels (Through the Kalahari Desert), Farini claimed he had chanced upon the ruins of an ancient city:
A relic, may be, of a glorious past,
A city once grand and sublime,
Destroyed by earthquake, defaced by the blast,
Swept away by the hand of time.
According to Maye Musk, Haldeman read Farini’s book and became transfixed. In 1953, Haldeman began taking regular trips into the desert with his wife and five children to hunt for the lost city.
“My father wanted to try to follow Farini’s path,” Musk wrote in her autobiography. “And that became our July vacation. Now I think: Can you imagine taking five little kids to the desert for three weeks?”
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Lost city searches ‘always about white people:’ expert
Haldeman’s youngest son, Lee, has inherited his father’s passion for the lost city, having written two books on the topic. He dedicated Finding Farini’s Lost City of the Kalahari to his parents.
“They completed sixteen searches for the fabled ruins,” he wrote. “There are no others in the history of this mystery that believed Farini’s story as intensely, or who dedicated so much time, money, and effort to look for this fabled City.” Lee Haldeman declined CBC’s request for an interview.
Wittenberg agreed with the assessment, calling Haldeman “the undisputed Farini devotee of his time.”
As for the motivation behind Haldeman’s fixation, Elon Musk biographer Erik Nordeus wrote that “it’s unclear… why he became interested in finding [the lost city] but he did everything he could to find it.”
Jean-loïc Le Quellec, author of The White Lady and Atlantis: Ophir and Great Zimbabwe: Investigation of an Archaeological Myth, says Haldeman’s lost city search was part of a well-established cultural phenomenon.
He said there are more than 1,000 books on the topic of lost civilizations between the mid-19th century and 1940, “and none of them is about the search for or discovery of a ‘lost black tribe.’ They are always about white people,” he wrote in an email to CBC.
Le Quellec, director of research at France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, mentions Haldeman in his 2016 book, but had no idea of his connection to Musk until CBC reached out.
“I don’t know if Haldeman was explicitly looking for evidence of an ancient white presence, but this was very generally the case in his time, and for decades,” Le Quellec wrote.
He said these stories were used by colonists throughout Africa as a means of claiming historical legitimacy for their actions.
“The main motivation of the authors and explorers was to demonstrate the existence of an ancient white (European, Sumerian, Egyptian or Cretan) presence in Africa, in order to justify colonization in general, and apartheid in the case of South Africa,” he said. “The Lost City of Kalahari is just one example among many of this type of approach.”
Like Le Quellec, Wittenberg also wrote about Haldeman without knowing his connection to Musk.
In his PhD thesis, The Sublime, Imperialism and the African Landscape, Wittenberg noted that explorer Doreen Tainton, a contemporary of Haldeman, believed that the Indigenous Black people of South Africa were incapable of building the sort of intricate architecture described by Farini in his book.
That led her to ask “who, then, were these long dead builders?” In answering her own question, she suggested they could have been Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians or Arabs.
Wittenberg noted that just like Tainton, Haldman was also open to the notion that the lost city was not of Indigenous origin, writing that Haldeman believed “this would be a major archaeological find, if it could be located, as it would show that the Egyptians were this far south.”
In an interview with CBC, Wittenberg said “Egyptians were not seen as African at the time. The general sort of idea was that Egyptians were some sort of Mediterranean civilization…. It was seen as not part of Africa, but it was seen as a European type of civilization.”
A plane crash
Despite his years of searching, Haldeman was unable to locate the lost city.
On Jan. 13, 1974, Haldeman died in a plane crash along with his son-in-law Peter Rae, according to Die Transvaler newspaper. It was front page news, featuring a photo of the overturned plane.
“One of South Africa’s most famous chiropractors and adventurers…. died yesterday morning,” the article says. “The suspicion exists that they wanted to carry out an emergency landing,” but “there were power lines that prevented the alleged emergency landing and the plane crashed nose first.”
In a separate article, the paper reflected on Haldeman’s Kalahari obsession, noting he “never allowed himself to be convinced that he was looking for something that might not exist.” The paper said Haldeman’s trust in Farini’s integrity drove him, even as other explorers concluded the circus performer’s story was false.
Wittenberg said in the decades since the lost city craze, archeology, geology and ethnology have shown that genuine African ruins are, in fact, of Indigenous Black origin. And, he says, legends like the Lost City of the Kalahari have been largely abandoned — though not entirely.
“Myths are myths because they don’t die,” he said. “They have a particular longevity. They’re not killed off by fact, you know?”
According to Nordeus’s book, after Farini’s death, Haldeman wrote to his family, saying “We do not feel he made the Lost City up as we have confirmed everything else in the book.”
For much of his life, Haldeman was captivated and driven by mysteries — a shadowy group of international communists conspiring to control the world and an elaborate ancient city, lost to the sands of time.
And he believed in them to the very end.
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