When the disgraced men of Colonel “Mad Mike” Hoare stood trial in 1982 for a failed mercenary operation in the Seychelles, he justified their actions by claiming to be “the bastion of civilization in Africa” fighting against what he called an “onslaught” of Blacks refusing to obey.
Hoare’s mercenary force, the “Wild Geese,” embodied a militant survivalist ethos popularized in certain South African circles during the Cold War.[1]
This wasn’t happening in isolation, and rather in concert with wider efforts to spread white nationalist thinking around the world. In 1940, Elon Musk’s grandfather was arrested in Canada as a national security risk for his leadership role in the “Technocracy” movement of extreme racism. Despite having built himself an elite life with a 20-room home and private aircraft, he fled to South Africa specifically to help lead a newly established post-WWII apartheid regime… building an even bigger home and more private aircraft on the back of state-sanctioned racism. His vision of a technologically-enforced white ethnostate for his children and grandchildren would echo through generations, and set the stage for his grandson Elon Musk’s push into the same vision.
By 1988-89, as apartheid crumbled under international pressure for democratic reform, wealthy beneficiaries of the system rushed to move their assets internationally. The Musk family, by their own account, hurriedly sold everything and moved their racist pile of wealth to Canada, following a common pattern of capital extraction before a racist regime’s collapse. This mirrored earlier patterns of flight by others, such as Peter Thiel’s parents, who profited immensely from racist extraction systems and sought to avoid accountability after war and during democratic transitions.
Today, these survivalist themes have evolved into something more insidious: a sophisticated form of technological fraud that preys upon the same fears and desires that once made advance-fee schemes so effective.
Just as “Nigerian prince” scams targeted educated professionals by exploiting their specific blind spots about international finance and wealth extraction, today’s marketing of “apocalypse-proof” vehicles exploits educated consumers’ technological blind spots.
Doctors, lawyers, and other highly trained professionals who would never fall for a crude email scam find themselves vulnerable to slick presentations about fake “full self-driving” and fake “bulletproof” vehicles — precisely because their expertise in other fields doesn’t transfer to evaluating complex engineering claims.
The Cybertruck represents a masterclass in this kind of deception. Its highly targeted disinformation pitches transform military survivalist themes of white nationalism into a consumer product while playing on the same psychological vulnerabilities that make advance-fee fraud so persistent.
Just as scammers promise vast riches for a small upfront investment, the Cybertruck promises “invincibility” for the price of a luxury vehicle to those prone to believing in a rapid elevation in selfish privilege. The same worldview that once described “wild humans” below private aircraft now markets vehicles as futurist personal fortresses against imagined threats — but beneath the poorly-designed false promises and dangerously-poor quality lies a deadly bait-and-switch.
The tragic deaths of three college students in Piedmont, California in November 2024 throws Elon Musk’s whole deception strategy into stark relief.
The Cybertruck, perhaps directly related to the fraud of its marketed indestructibility, abruptly “veered” off Hampton Road in the early morning hours, struck a tree and concrete wall, and burst into flames. This crash fits within a pattern familiar to experts in technological fraud: victims, believing in promised protections, take risks they otherwise wouldn’t for future promised gains that turn only into massive losses.
Perhaps most notably, the doors failed to open after the crash, killing the Cybertruck occupants by preventing escape — burning them to death like the cruel 1982 Operation Blanket of Lesotho (South African police invaded a neighboring country, rolled anti-apartheid refugees into plastic blankets and lit them on fire).
Just as a mark might drain their savings believing in guaranteed returns from an African prince, Cybertruck owners throw money at false confidence in their vehicle’s supposed “privileged survival” design.
The latest crash isn’t unique to one Tesla model, but rather a well-known pattern for those reading the notes in Tesla’s rapidly rising death toll in every model. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are now investigating this predictable tragedy of Tesla. The Cybertruck has seen six recalls and three previous investigations of the vehicle this year alone, including an August 2024 crash in Texas with eerily similar characteristics that really should have “grounded” all Tesla vehicles… to save lives from fraud.
The even bigger through-line from 1980s South Africa to modern Silicon Valley reveals a consistent pattern and origin of the tragedy: sophisticated fraud schemes that exploit specific blind spots in otherwise capable people’s knowledge. From Hoare’s mercenaries believing that they could overthrow a government dressed as a “beer-drinking tourist party,” to wealthy Musk and Thiel families believing they could permanently extract wealth ahead of democratic transitions, to today’s marketing of “apocalypse-proof” consumer products, there is a theme that stays constant. The victims change, but the exploitation of targeted ignorance persists.
The Piedmont tragedy thus raises urgent questions about how racist 1980s South African-themed marketing narratives are showing up in the 2020s to influence risk perception, particularly among communities like Piedmont that desire “safety” so badly they fall victim to a snake oil salesman. When vehicles are marketed to wealthy families as virtually indestructible, it may create a false sense of future gains that sets them up instead for a tragic end, like the American Vietnam vet who was shot up and barely survived following Hoare’s failed coup attempt. The fact that this crash occurred at 3 AM, with young college students home for Thanksgiving break, suggests the deadly potential of combining buggy software, buggy hardware, and marketing that emphasizes the exact opposite of reality — the unmistakable bogus elixr of mystical invulnerability in a cooked-up vision of false threats.
As Captain Chris Monahan of the Piedmont police noted, they are “looking into actions that occurred before the collision.” But beyond the specific circumstances of this crash, we must examine the broader implications of marketing military-grade protection to civilian communities. Piedmont is known for its 0% Black population demographic surrounded by communities with 30% Black residents. Does anyone really think marketing to this community wouldn’t influence how people there — particularly young people — perceive risk as a function of their race-based privilege?
The candles and handmade cards left at the Cybertruck fatal crash scene tell a different story than the glossy survivalist marketing. They remind us that nobody who dons a stainless steel Tesla version of the white X robe is truly invincible, no racist burning cross is an actual safety act, and that the cost of believing such things can be devastatingly high.
As investigations continue and the Piedmont community mourns, we must consider how the white flight mindset of survivalist marketing narratives have evolved from Hoare’s era to today — and more importantly, how they might influence decisions that put lives at risk. The same racist-driven swagger that led Hoare’s “Wild Geese” to disaster has been repackaged into a consumer product, but the potential for tragedy remains. Instead of getting themselves shot-up in a firefight trusting Elon Musk’s grandfather in 1981, these kids were driven by Elon Musk straight into a tree and burned alive in 2024.
For the sake of future young lives, we must look past false narratives of mystical indestructibility – whether they come from white African technocrats, white African mercenaries, or white African manufacturers promising a trip to Mars — and recognize that true safety comes not from racist narratives of apocalyptic survival, but from building democratic institutions that allow for actual risk science, known as peaceful reform and representation.
[1] “Cooked Goose”, Time Magazine, Monday, Aug 09, 1982 (provided here for reference from an original printed copy)
“Mad Mike” gets ten years.
During his five-month trial, Colonel Thomas Michael (“Mad Mike”) Hoare, who gained notoriety while soldiering for fortune in the Congo during the 1960s, put up a plucky front. During recesses Hoare entertained visitors with tales of his derring-do and signed copies of his swashbuckling biography, entitled Congo Mercenary. But last week the bravado was gone from the man who used to run a swaggering group of commandos in the Congo who called themselves the Wild Geese. His face ashen, Hoare, 63, slumped in his chair in a Pietermaritzburg courtroom as Judge Neville James found him and 42 fellow mercenaries guilty of airplane hijacking and sentenced Mad Mike to ten years in prison.
Hoare and his mercenary band of brothers were forced to stand trial following their bungled attempt last November to overthrow the socialist government of the Seychelles led by President Albert René. The armed mercenaries entered the Seychelles disguised as a beer-drinking tourist party, “The Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers.” Hoare’s objective was to return to power ex-President James Mancham, 49, a pro-Western leader who was deposed by René in a 1977 coup.
But the operation failed when a Mahé airport customs inspector found a weapon hidden in a Froth-Blower’s luggage. A gunfight broke out at the airport, in which one mercenary was killed and several oth ers wounded. Desperate to escape, the raiders fought their way to the control tower, guided an incoming Air India 707 to a landing and commandeered the plane. They forced the Air India pilot to fly them 2,500 miles across the Indian Ocean to Durban.
Lawyers for Hoare argued that the mercenaries had harmed no one nor demanded any ransom. Indeed, the government had initially released most of the men after their flight to South Africa, holding only Hoare and four others on the lesser charge of kidnaping, which carries no minimum sentence. But that leniency was abandoned after other nations, including the U.S., warned that South Africa could be struck from air-travel routings unless Pretoria enforced international agreements against harboring of air hijackers. The government then brought hijacking charges against all 43 of the escaped mercenaries.
Only one was declared not guilty last week: Charles William Dukes, an American veteran of Viet Nam, who was carried onto the 707 under heavy sedation after being seriously wounded during the Seychelles gunfight. He was ruled incapable of having taken part in the heist.
Throughout the trial, the Irish-born Hoare insisted that his operation had had the blessing of the South African government. “I see South Africa as the bastion of civilization in an Africa subjected to a total Communist onslaught,” he said. “I foresee myself in the forefront of this fight for our very existence.” Indeed, more than half of the convicted mercenaries had been members of either the South African Defense Force or the army reserve. There was also evidence that Soviet-made AK-47s and Chinese grenades and ammunition used by the mercenaries had been supplied by South African Defense Force officers.
Judge James declared that individuals in the National Intelligence Service and Defense Force had clearly known about the operation but, nonetheless, ruled that allegations of an official South African connection to the operation were “purely hearsay.” The day after the trial, Prime Minister P.W. Botha, who had refrained from commenting until the legal proceedings were completed, insisted that the government had not known of the affair. He charged that Hoare had approached members of the intelligence and military forces with his plan and admitted that arms and ammunition had been given to him. Botha said that “departmental action” would be taken against anyone who had cooperated with Hoare.
The colonel, who got his rank in the Congo, drew the stiffest sentence. His fellow raiders were given from six months to five years, and the judge later reduced most to six months. Hoare and his co-defendants were clearly the lucky ones. Last month four of Hoare’s soldiers of fortune who were left behind in the Seychelles were convicted of treason by René’s government. They are under sentence of death by hanging.
