A movement that wanted to merge North America into one nation and extend its borders as far as the Panama Canal might sound incredibly familiar. But this group, called the “technocracy movement”, was a group of 1930s nonconformists with big ideas about how to rearrange US society. They proposed a vision that would get rid of waste and make North America highly productive by using technology and science.
The Technocrats, sometimes also called Technocracy Inc, proposed merging Canada, Greenland, Mexico, the US and parts of central America into a single continental unit. This they called a “Technate”. It was to be governed by technocratic principles, rather than by national borders and traditional political divisions.
These ideas seem to resonate with some recent statements from the Trump administration about merging the US with Canada. Meanwhile, the US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) set up by Trump and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has also outlined a vision of efficiency cuts by slashing bureaucracy, jobs and getting rid of leaders of organisations and civil servants he thinks are advancing “woke” values (such as diversity initiatives). This slash-and-burn approach also fits with some of the ideas of the Technocrats.
