Isn’t it a bit anachronistic to talk about Nazism in the 1900s? There were precursor German nationalist movements then, but the name “Nazism” is from later. That said, it sounds like Musk’s family were ready to embrace it good and early.

Edit: Maybe that date is a misprint? Musk’s mother was born in 1948. If her parents decided to move to South Africa in the 1900s for political reasons they’d have to have been adults then, which would make them implausibly old parents. Or maybe “early 1900s” is being used to mean “first half of the 20th century”?

Another edit: It seems that the maternal grandparents moved to South Africa in 1950, not the early 1900s. So it had nothing to do with Nazism per se, but quite a lot to do with thinking like Nazis:

But in 1950, Haldeman’s “quirky” politics led him to make an unusual and dramatic choice: to leave Canada for South Africa. Haldeman had built a comfortable life for himself in Regina, Saskatchewan’s capital. His chiropractic practice was one of Canada’s largest and allowed him to possess his own airplane and a 20-room home he shared with his wife and four young children. He’d been active in politics, running for both the provincial and national parliaments and even becoming the national chairman of a minor political party. Meanwhile, he’d never even been to South Africa.

What would make a man undertake such a radical change? Isaacson writes that Haldeman had come “to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft.” One of Haldeman’s sons has written that it may have simply been “his adventurous spirit and the desire for a more pleasant climate in which to raise his family.” But another factor was at play: his strong support for the brand-new apartheid regime.

An examination of Joshua Haldeman’s writings reveals a radical conspiracy theorist who expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and antidemocratic views repeatedly, and over the course of decades—a record I studied across hundreds of documents from the time, including newspaper clips, self-published manuscripts, university archives, and private correspondence. Haldeman believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead “White Christian Civilization” in its fight against the “International Conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of Coloured people” they controlled.

Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather

Archive link: https://archive.is/x3OYY