Feb 18, 2025 Story by: Editor
During Donald Trump’s inaugural celebrations, Elon Musk raised his arm in a stiff salute, a gesture that startled many and led to immediate comparisons with historical figures. As speculation arose regarding his intent, Musk, the world’s richest man, denied any Nazi affiliation. However, discussions soon turned to whether his upbringing in apartheid-era South Africa provided any context for his actions.
In recent months, Musk has increasingly promoted far-right conspiracy theories. His rhetoric has shifted towards hostility against democratic institutions, and he recently endorsed Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). He has also expressed controversial views on genetics and has supported claims of a looming “white genocide” in South Africa, further endorsing posts that align with the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. His language and tone have increasingly echoed the ideology of old South Africa.
Musk is not alone in this ideological shift. He is part of the so-called “PayPal mafia,” a group of libertarian billionaires with ties to apartheid-era South Africa who now wield significant influence in the U.S. tech industry and politics.
Among them is Peter Thiel, a German-born venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder who spent part of his childhood in southern Africa during the 1970s, where Hitler was still openly venerated. Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has criticized welfare programs and opposed women’s voting rights, arguing they weaken capitalism. A 2021 biography, The Contrarian, alleged that as a Stanford student, Thiel defended apartheid as “economically sound.”
David Sacks, former PayPal COO and now a prominent fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and later moved to the U.S. as part of the South African diaspora. Another key figure, Roelof Botha, grandson of Pik Botha—South Africa’s last foreign minister under apartheid—has remained relatively quiet politically but retains close ties with Musk.
What sets Musk apart is his ownership of X (formerly Twitter), which has increasingly become a platform for far-right discourse, and his proximity to Trump, who has tapped Musk to lead a “department of government efficiency” to significantly reduce federal bureaucracy.
Some analysts draw a direct connection between Musk’s formative years as a white male in apartheid-era South Africa—a nation embroiled in internal conflict and government repression against anti-apartheid resistance—and his present-day political alignments. The week before Trump’s inauguration, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, remarked that white South Africans were the “most racist people on earth” and questioned their role in U.S. politics, specifically calling Musk a negative influence who should return to South Africa.
Others, however, argue that Musk’s extreme views cannot simply be traced back to his Pretoria upbringing. Renowned South African writer Jonny Steinberg recently dismissed such analyses as a “bad idea,” warning that they lead to “facile” conclusions.
Nevertheless, Musk’s early life offers some insights. His grandfather, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, moved from Canada to South Africa because he approved of the apartheid system. Musk was educated in a system heavily influenced by white supremacist ideology, during a period when Black townships were in a state of rebellion, prompting a government crackdown. While some white South Africans resisted apartheid, others, including the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, fought to maintain the racial hierarchy.
South Africa in 1971, the year Musk was born, was led by Prime Minister John Vorster, a former general in a fascist militia allied with Hitler during World War II. The Ossewabrandwag (OB), founded before the war, opposed South Africa’s alliance with Britain and conspired with German intelligence to assassinate Prime Minister Jan Smuts. Vorster openly admired Nazi ideology, equating it with the Afrikaner concept of Christian nationalism.
In 1942, he declared: “We stand for Christian nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism. You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy, it is called ‘Fascism,’ in Germany ‘German National Socialism,’ and in South Africa ‘Christian nationalism.’” Shortly after, Smuts’ government interned Vorster as a Nazi sympathizer.
Following World War II, the OB merged with the National Party, which won the 1948 election on a platform of institutionalizing apartheid, denying Black South Africans the right to vote. By 1961, Vorster was serving as Minister of Justice, and in 1966, he became Prime Minister. Although Nazi Germany had been defeated, South Africa’s version of Christian nationalism persisted, reinforcing racial segregation under the guise of protecting Afrikaner culture from the perceived “swart gevaar” (Black danger).
Education under apartheid was designed to instill this ideology. Afrikaner students were taught that their ancestors were victims—oppressed by the British in the Boer War and betrayed by Black leaders. Bea Roberts, a former apartheid supporter who later worked for the Institute for a Democratic South Africa, recalled: “It was a strange mix of ‘we got fucked up by the British in the [second Boer] war, and our women and children died in thousands in the concentration camps’ so we are going to rebuild our nation and make sure that we are invincible. And we’ll do that by extreme means.”
Schools were segregated by race, but divisions also existed within white society. English-speaking institutions often distanced themselves from apartheid ideology, despite benefiting from the system. Musk attended Pretoria Boys High School, whose alumni included anti-apartheid activists like Edwin Cameron, a future Supreme Court justice, and Peter Hain, a British anti-apartheid campaigner and Labour minister.
Phillip Van Niekerk, former editor of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian, described the nuanced racial attitudes among English-speaking whites: “We hated the National Party government. Even our teachers were kind of hostile. It was seen almost like an imposition. Yet you imbibe things through the culture. The truth is we didn’t see Black people quite as equals. We didn’t think about it.”
Thiel’s upbringing included an even deeper exposure to right-wing ideology. He lived in South West Africa (now Namibia), a former German colony where Nazi glorification persisted. In Swakopmund, where Thiel attended a German-language school, Nazi salutes and celebrations of Hitler’s birthday were still common. “I was there in the 1980s, and you could walk into a curio shop and buy mugs with Nazi swastikas on them,” Van Niekerk recalled. Thiel later said his experiences in Swakopmund led him to embrace libertarianism as a rejection of regimentation.
Thiel’s father worked at the Rössing uranium mine, where Black workers endured harsh conditions and meager wages, while white managers enjoyed a colonial-style luxury. Similarly, Musk’s father, Errol, profited from Zambian emerald mines, once boasting: “We couldn’t even close our safe because we had so much money.” Musk’s mother, Maye, described their affluent lifestyle, complete with multiple homes, a yacht, and luxury cars.
While Errol Musk claimed to oppose apartheid, he rejected its end, advocating for a gradual transition that maintained racial segregation. His views contrasted with those of Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, who emigrated from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because he supported the newly elected apartheid government. In the 1930s, Haldeman led the Canadian branch of Technocracy Incorporated, a movement advocating the abolition of democracy in favor of rule by elite technicians, which took on fascist overtones, including uniforms and salutes.
These historical influences offer a complex backdrop to Musk’s current ideological trajectory. Whether his upbringing directly shaped his political beliefs remains debated, but his alignment with far-right rhetoric continues to fuel speculation about the impact of his past on his present.
Source: The Guardian
