The Musk Files part 3: Technocracy Inc., Werhner Von Braun, Walt Disney, and Joshua N Hadelman

This is a photo of Walt Disney and Nazi rocket scientist Werner Von Braun.

Von Braun assisted Disney with the design of Tomorrowland, a futuristic themed attraction at his original Disney Park in Anaheim, California. He also enlisted Von Braun, as well as two other prominent members of the Nazi party that were brought to the US during Operation Paperclip, Willy Ley, and Heinz Haber. Together they made a series of cartoons about space travel; “Man and Space”, “”Man and the Moon”, and “Mars and Beyond”.

You may remember me talking about Von Braun recently in relation to Elon Musk. Hey was the author of Project Mars(1949), a book which creates a framework for and outlines many of Musk’s visions and ambitions, a book where Musk’s father, Errol, discovered the name Elon.

Project Mars is a high fantasy piece of science fiction about mankind’s first journey to Mars, where they encounter a technologically advanced civilization called “The Technocrats”. In this book, The Technocrats, lead by an enigmatic autocrat named “The Elon” live in a series of tunnels that were created and are maintained by a company called “the boring company”.

Fascinatingly, there are some dramatically similar elements in the technocracy of Von Braun and Disney’s original vision for an, at the time undeveloped swath of land near Orlando, he called The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow or EPCOT.

In Disney’s own words, EPCOT would be “the creation of a living blueprint for the future unlike anyplace else in the world”. Disney intended himself to be the autocratic ruler of this company town. He wanted to have complete control over the city, including the right to write building codes, produce electricity, sell tax-free bonds, giving Disney unrestricted power over economics and social hierarchy. His hopes were that the town could be used as a prototype, showcasing American technology and innovation.

But his dreams were cut short by his untimely death dude to lung cancer in 1966.

Similarly, Von Braun’s “Project Mars” centers on an autocratic utopian society governed by the technologically adept, helmed by a visionary ruler(The Elon) with unrestricted power. Adding to that similarity is the fact that Von Braun’s vision of a civilization on Mars was constructed in series of underground tunnels. In parallel, Disneys Utilidoor System below EPCOT and The Magic Kingdom boasts one of the largest network of underground utility tunnels in the world, to this day. Second only to “the underground city” in Montreal, Quebec.

After being brought to the United States during Operation Paperclip along with more than 1600 other members of the Nazi party, Von Braun was enlisted as the Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V Launch Vehicle; an adaptation of the V2 rockets be designed for the Nazis. The movies he made with Disney were a driving force behind the popularization of space travel; helping NASA win public sentiment and funding. It’s also noteworthy that the technology he developed at NASA was prototypical of the technology Musk now employees at SpaceX. 

Elon Musks grandfather, Joshua N. Hadelman, was Director of a company called Technocracy Inc. from 1936 until 1941. Technocracy Inc. was a private organization and business with ties to the Nazi party. They ALSO had a vision of a utopian future, run by a group of technologically elite. This organization was conceptualized in Canada in 1919, but was officially incorporated in 1933. The same year that Hitler rose to power.

Technocracy Inc. called itself an apolitical organization. Their utopian dream didn’t have room for politics. They didn’t even allow people with political affiliations to join. They were patently anti-democratic with only one exception; they employed an electoral process to determine leadership of each sector, but once elected, the head director of “each industrial and social function(would) hold their tenure for life, subject only to the top council of all directors.”

Due to its rigid autocratic social hierarchy, Technocracy appealed to the would be fascist and anyone seeking to assert their superiority through social posturing. A 1944 article from “New International” stated of the organization

“(Technocracy) turned out to be on the latest-model fascist techniques… …More distinctive even than these fascistic trappings is the fact that technocratic propaganda makes a systematic effort to appeal to as many rooted American prejudices as possible… …Nationalism, anti-foreignism and the cult of American superiority is as dominant a note in technocracy as the Aryan myth in Hitlerism.”

They were banned from 1940 until for “subverting the effort” but were allowed to resume business in 1943. After a legal battle, in 1941, musk’s grandfather, decided to move to South Africa. Errol Musk said of them(Maye Musk’s parents Joshua Haldeman and Winnifred Fletcher) in an interview with YouTuber and podcast host Macgyver Mukwevho

“They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff. But they didn't know, obviously, I don't think they knew what the Germans, the Nazis were actually doing. In Canada, they were part of the Nazi, the German party in Canada, and they sympathized with the Germans.”