Why Elon’s mother Maye Musk might hold the key to her son’s ‘dark Maga’ views

It’s been a busy week for Maye Musk, the 76-year-old model, dietitian, author, and mother of the world’s richest man.

Last Friday, she sashayed down the catwalk in a shimmering gown and fluffy white fur coat to close Chinese label Juzui’s New York Fashion Week show, with the brand describing her in its show notes as “a true embodiment of timeless elegance”. Then, over the weekend, she enjoyed lunch in sunny Miami with two other women associated with immensely powerful, right-wing men: Ivanka Trump, daughter of the president, and Wendi Deng, the former wife of Rupert Murdoch.

“Fun lunch with two smart women,” Maye captioned her photograph on Instagram.

Of course, as a successful model who graced the cover of Sports Illustrated at the age of 74 in 2022 in her swimwear – not to mention the mother of a man who’s been making headlines at almost the same rate as money for years – her high profile is nothing new.

She revels in her role as a “silver influencer”, admired by younger women as an aspirational example of graceful ageing – particularly in China, where she spends a lot of time and where she claims her 2019 book, A Woman Makes a Plan, has been a bestseller.

Yet since her son became Trump’s “first buddy”, Maye has embraced the spotlight in a different way altogether. A self-described former Democrat until she decided that Biden’s government was, in her words, “dishonest and malicious”, she is now, just like Elon, an ardent Trump supporter, using her son’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to cheerlead for him.

However, for all her claims to have previously been a long-term Democrat, it’s impossible to delve into her family history without finding a blueprint for the increasingly far-right path that Elon, the Tesla billionaire and now head of the unofficial US Department of Government Efficiency, is taking.

You don’t have to climb too far up Elon’s family tree before you find Maye’s father, Joshua Haldeman, who held white supremacist and conspiracy theory views that he espoused openly. Although he died when his grandson Elon was just a toddler, chilling echoes of his beliefs can be found in a number of Elon’s recent activities.

These range from warring with Jewish institutions (he threatened to sue the Jewish Anti-Defamation League over its complaints about antisemitism on X) to talking about “multiculturalism that dilutes everything” at a far-right rally in Germany last month, endorsing X posts about the racist “great replacement” theory, and expressing a deep-rooted conviction that technocrats, not elected politicians, should be running the world.

So is it Maye, along with her lineage, who holds the key to her son’s embrace of “dark Maga”, as he terms it?

Maye’s father was raised on a farm in Canada and worked as a cowboy, rodeo performer and chiropractor before becoming chair of the Social Credit Party’s national council. The first leader of the conservative populist movement was an antisemite who spoke of a “perversion of cultural ideals” due to there being a “disproportionate number of Jews” in power.

Haldeman also headed the Canadian branch of the Technocracy movement, which was based on the antidemocratic doctrine that governments should be run by unelected technocrats rather than politicians. Its members wore identical grey uniforms and saluted one another in a similar manner to European fascists, but when it was outlawed in Canada, Haldeman took out a newspaper advert supporting it.

Maye and her twin sister Kaye were born in 1948, two of Haldeman’s four children with Winnifred, a dance teacher. The family enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle thanks to Haldeman’s thriving chiropractic practice, with their own small aircraft and a 20-room home, but Haldeman was dissatisfied with Canada’s liberalism. The family motto was “Live dangerously, carefully”, and in 1950, they relocated to South Africa, which was in the process of establishing white apartheid – something Elon’s grandfather actively sought out.

In an article in The Atlantic, Joshua Benton, director of Harvard University’s Nieman Lab, recently revealed Haldeman’s belief that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead “white Christian civilisation” in its fight against the “international conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of colored people” they controlled.

“Instead of the government’s attitude keeping me out of South Africa, it had precisely the opposite effect – it encouraged me to come and settle here,” Haldeman told a South African newspaper after his arrival. On another occasion, he said that Black Africans were “very primitive and must not be taken seriously”.

Haldeman self-published several books, including one called The International Conspiracy in Health, in which he railed against vaccines and the use of fluoride in water (part of the “brain-washing programme of the conspiracy” – a phrase more than a little reminiscent of the “woke mind virus” Elon claims is behind his estranged daughter Vivian’s choice to transition).

Growing up in this atmosphere, Maye began her modelling career at 15 and was a finalist in the 1969 Miss South Africa contest. In 1970, she married Errol Musk, a South African engineer she met in high school, and the pair had three children: Elon, his brother Kimbal, now a restaurateur, and a daughter, Tosca, a filmmaker who runs a steamy romance streaming service called Passionflix.

Errol and Maye’s marriage broke down and they were divorced in 1979. As a single mother, Maye eventually moved back to Canada when Elon was nine, and not before his formative years had been spent at the top of a racial hierarchy during a period in South Africa when the schools taught Christian nationalist versions of the country’s history, and in an atmosphere that became increasingly repressive, with the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement marching to protest against any weakening of apartheid.

Living in Canada, Maye earned degrees in nutrition and dietetics and began a private practice. She has said she was hands-off as a mother, as her own parents had been, giving her children independence. The children all helped with the business that she ran from home, which afforded them training as budding entrepreneurs.

Mother and son are exceptionally close, with Elon paying an emotional tribute to Maye last October, saying: “She’s been my biggest supporter from day one, no matter how crazy my ideas sounded.”

For Maye’s part, she has claimed she first realised her son was a genius when he was three “and his reasoning was sensible”. She finds it “degrading” when people call him “wealthy”, insisting instead: “I think he’s the genius of the world, and people are loving him for that!”

In her late sixties, with her hair a natural striking silver, Maye suddenly found herself feted as a model. Today, as a fashion lover, Maye is delighted that Melania Trump is “bringing elegance to the White House again” – and wherever Elon goes, Maye is usually invited, too. She was an attendee at the Trumps’ Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve parties at Mar-a-Lago, chatting about interplanetary colonisation with their son Barron at the former (Mars is apparently the “best place to start a new civilisation”, she learnt).

At the age of 76, she’s seeing her son become exactly what her father wanted to see: an unelected “expert” at the heart of government, making decisions that will affect millions of lives. In her son, her father’s anti-democratic vision for the way the world should be run is becoming reality. Maye’s prominent profile in China, where her son is also popular, is significant too. She has been described as his secret weapon there – a well-placed figure bringing goodwill to his business and political ambitions.

Although Maye has said that Trump “can completely trust” Elon, who “doesn’t have any alternative [sic] motives”, some commentators wonder if that’s entirely true. Tesla has its biggest factory in Shanghai, and there has been speculation that Elon may be serving two masters. Some say his campaign to cut government waste, including slashing foreign aid, will benefit China and put the US at a disadvantage.

Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has warned that many of the Trump administration’s early actions – most of which have been spearheaded by Elon – are “directly damaging the United States’ ability to compete with its top geopolitical rival”. He added: “Chinese president Xi Jinping is not shutting down his country’s foreign assistance; he is offering aid, trade, and investment instead.”

Elon’s father Errol has denied the influence of Maye’s family on his son’s political views, pointing out that Elon grew up helping with election campaigns when Errol stood as a candidate for an anti-apartheid party.

However, anti-apartheid campaigning is the polar opposite of what sprang to mind when Elon performed what appeared to many to be something akin to a Nazi salute on the day of Trump’s inauguration – an event Maye also attended, resplendent in a red dress for one celebratory ball, and posing with Trump’s health secretary nominee, the anti-abortion, anti-vax Robert F Kennedy Jr at another.

Maye has since had hundreds of “hateful” comments on X every day from people accusing her of being a Nazi, and has urged her son to file lawsuits against news outlets who reported on his salute. In fact, the revelation that Elon’s mother faced vitriol from the public came from a post written by her Jewish manager, Anna Sherman.

Of course, neither Elon nor Maye is responsible for Haldeman’s views – but as their own veer further to the right, the echoes from Maye’s childhood reverberate ever more loudly.