Behind the Bastards - The Class that made 200 Child Nazis

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Garrison Davis is joined by Robert Evans to discuss The Third Wave.FOOTNOTES: https://web.archive.org/web/20150202082041/http://www.thewavehome.com/1976_The-Third-Wave_story.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Jones_(teacher) https://web.archive.org/web/20110719004549/http://www.ronjoneswriter.com/wave.html https://www.27east.com/arts/ron-jones-talks-about-his-50-year-old-experiment-in-fascism-that-inspired-the-one-man-play-the-wave-at-bay-street-theater-2-1336315/ https://timeline.com/this-1967-classroom-experiment-proved-how-easy-it-was-for-americans-to-become-nazis-ab63cedaf7dd https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/sep/16/schoolsworldwide.film https://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/In-The-Wave-ex-teacher-Ron-Jones-looks-back-3274503.php#photo-2424107 https://www.amazon.com/Lesson-Plan-Philip-Neel/dp/B076KS3CCS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lesson+plan+video&qid=1605288537&sr=8-1 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. That was terrible. Hi, I'm Robert Evans and you're listening to Brian the Bastard, the podcast about the worst people from history. That doesn't sound like something I'd say. It's me again on the podcast.

It's another coup episode. Garrison's helping me out because I have once again taken on enough projects that I'm terrified about my life. So yeah, we're doing another coup episode. We're doing another episode of Trump's Coup. In honor of Trump's Coup. It's amazing how we keep recording these and coups are still relevant each time we record. Oh, coups are always relevant. Didn't you say Trump's is not technically a coup because no military?

Yeah, I mean so far. I do think we're splitting hairs a little bit, but either way, I love a good coup. So we're going to have us another podcast. Podcast. Coupcast. Robert, how do you feel about Nazis? Lukewarm. How do you feel about child Nazis?

Also lukewarm. Okay, because we're going to be talking about child Nazis. Yay, oh man. I was holding back a little bit. My favorite kind of Nazis are child Nazis. I mean, if we're going to have them, which we shouldn't. But if we are, if they're little baby teenagers. Little baby teenage Nazis.

Then that is kind of the funniest. Like you're, Garrison brought over his little baby kitten and it's very cute and I'm imagining the kitten with a swastika. With like a little armband. No, you're not. No, you're not. It'd be so, to be so terrible. I know. I'm irony-poisoned.

I can't stop. I did not, I did not like that. But more, are we talking like JoJo Rabbit? Like what's the situation here? Oh, for kind of kid Nazis. Oh, no. Okay. So today we're going to, we're going to dive into one of the things that got younger, Garrison, to actually start to realize that fascism is like an ongoing and active problem.

And way more complicated than just weird people hating Jewish people. And what we're going to be learning about and the thing that I learned about a few years ago that, you know, got me, you know, to learn more about fascism and kind of got me interested in the topic is the accidental five day social experiment done on a group of teenagers in a California high school. And this experiment is referred to as the third wave. Some people may be familiar with this. But if you're from Germany, you are because they force you to learn about it. But with the dubious ethics aside, looking at how a charismatic high school teacher got a small group of impressionable teenagers in the 60s to grow into a group of dedicated, of 200 like dedicated fascists. Yeah. Over the course of just five days.

That's it. It's something we can, it's something we can learn from. And, you know, is like still, is still relevant, even though this was an experiment done in the 60s. I mean, it sounds like, first off, this is an incredibly, a story of an incredibly ethical teacher who did nothing wrong. Yeah, like, that's why I started this by saying ethics aside, because yeah, it kind of messed up a lot of kids. Yeah, it sounds like it really fucked up some people, didn't it? A lot of, yeah, like one of the people that the high school teacher became friends with is Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo.

Zimbardo. Zimbardo. He did the Stanford Prison Experiment a few years later. So yeah, they're buddies because they both did highly unethical experiments. Yeah. Yeah. Philip Zimbardo is my favorite psychologist because he decided long ago that it was way more valuable to do things that were interesting rather than things that were morally defensible. And I think that's beautiful.

Yeah. And I mean, yeah, I mean, same thing kind of kind of happened here. All right. Well, let's, let's start this motherfucker, Garrison. You do know when you do giant pours of liquid, it does show up. Yeah. Well, the audience wants me to have coffee, Sophie. I mean, I want you to have coffee because without coffee, you're just Evans, not Robert Evans.

I'm a Nazi. You're just Evans. Yeah. As soon as I get coffee in the morning, I stop understanding the benefits of national socialism. That's the thing that really gets to have the academic understanding. The best part of waking up is no longer believing that Nazism is morally defensible. Yay. Well, I mean, we're going to be learning a lot about that today, which is great.

That was so funny. Speaking of Nazism. Yeah. When people first learn about like the rise of fascism and particularly the Nazis, usually one of the first questions I hear people, you know, talk about and ask is like, how could everyday Germans been so complicit? Why did so many people just like let things happen? And then, you know, when you're learning about stuff, at least when I did, you know, the thought in your mind is like, oh, surely I would have done something to stop this from happening. But I mean, if we look at the last American election, it's pretty clear that a lot of people, if not the majority, like would not take direct action against a rising fascist power in this country, let alone. Oh, no, really?

Let other countries. I have a feeling. Yeah. I have an inkling. But with that in mind, let's look back to the late 1960s and the high school classroom of one Ron Jones and how he quite by accident made 200 child fascists. First, a little background on Jones himself, since usually different types of fascism have unique elements drawn from their central leader. Ron Jones started teaching in 1966, having recently graduated from Stanford University. He became a high school teacher in Coverley High School, right outside of San Francisco.

Jones quickly became the favorite teacher due to his unique and unconventional teaching style. He was young, very charismatic and attractive. Jones did not just follow regular curriculums and just give lectures. He would often bring in guests. Students recall him bringing in communists, Klansmen, members of the American Nazi Party, and he actually got on the phone with Chairman Mao in his class. How did he get on the phone? Could you just call Chairman Mao? I don't know.

Did he just have like? I'm not sure. That seems like it would be a lot of work to get Chairman Mao on the phone. It's a lot of work. It also got all these great ideas. I don't think bringing a Klansman into your class is necessarily the best. I don't support bringing a Klansman or a Nazi into your class. Or some tankies even.

As a rule, if you can get a world leader on the phone in your high school class, that's kind of cool. He brought in other Soviet Union stands from America. I'm more fascinated by how the hell he got Chairman Mao on the phone. He just says he did. I cannot find any explanation how. See, I feel like that's a whole episode. How do you, okay, well, I'm very frustrated by this man. Because I want to know how he got Chairman Mao on the phone.

How did he get Chairman Mao on the phone for his class? He followed lots of unconventional teaching. With the guests, he would do like historical simulations in his class, like trying to replicate historical events, as we see here with the Nazi thing. A quote from Jones is, if you can feel something and work with it, that's better than just reading about it. So he likes a lot of learning that's not just reading in a book. He likes actually getting people to feel stuff.

Which, I mean, successful on the Nazi experiment. He messed up a lot of kids. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the basics of what he's saying, which is that kids learn, everyone learns best by doing. And if you can give people some sort of direct experience with the things they're learning about, that's good. Now, the problem is that he's teaching them about Nazism. And I don't know of many ethical ways to give people experiences with Nazism.

It's kind of a bad idea. Yeah, it seems like it. And Jones probably should have known better, because he was a left-wing activist back in the 60s, and still is now. He was a member of the New Left Students for Democratic Society. Saying back in the 60s, lots of people recall him being very supportive of the Black Panthers and participated a lot in the anti-war movement in the 60s with Vietnam going on.

So he should have kind of known better. But I think his intentions were good, but it very quickly spiraled out of control with this. But basically, he was basically just the cool new hip teacher, and students really did trust him, and lots of students really did like him. So at the last quarter of his first year of teaching, in a 25-student sophomore world history class,

Jones was talking about Nazi Germany. They were coming to the end of their kind of history section on the Nazis. And a student asked the question, the most of us do at some point, which is, you know, how could every German's been complicit? Why did people just let things happen? And Jones says he didn't really have a good answer, so he thought up a short experiment. Now, this is where kind of learning about the wave gets a little bit tricky.

There is a lot of, you can, when you're trying to research this, there's kind of a different accounts of what happened, because no one really was able to, you know, document this as it was happening, because the people that did all got beat up by the fascists of who were trying to, you know, the people who were writing stuff down all got kind of beat up. And I'm pretty sure that actually Jones tried this experiment in three classes at the same time.

But usually when people talk about the wave, they focus on, like, the one first class. But there can be a lot of conflicting information when you talk to, like, students of this. So we're going to kind of treat it as just focusing on this one class, but there may have been two other classes doing this experiment concurrently, but it's kind of unclear. So they were learning about Nazis.

But because this happened, Jones didn't know. He thought of the experiment the next week. So, like, the Monday after, because this experiment ran five days, when students came into the class on this Monday, Jones had set up all the chairs in five by five rows, which is weird for Jones, because he usually had a very loose setup, because he, you know, he was, like, the new hip teacher who had, you know, students in a circle or had people on the floor or whatever.

But, like, coming into his class and seeing, like, five rows of chairs was kind of weird. Music by Richard Wagner was playing. A German composer. Wagner Garrison. It's important to pronounce things correctly. Wagner. It's C-W. Richard Wagers. Our wags.

Students were ordered to all sit in perfect posture with their hands by their side, and on the chalkboard, Jones wrote, Strength through Discipline. So we can kind of see where this is going to be going. Yeah, that sounds healthy. Yeah. The class on the values of strict discipline,

speaking on the efficiency of, like, a regimented system. To quote Jones, I lectured on the beauty discipline, how an athlete feels, how an athlete feels having worked hard and regularly successful at a sport, how a ballet dancer or a painter works hard to perfect a movement, the dedicated patients of a scientist to pursue an idea, its discipline, its self-training, control, the power of will, in exchange for physical hardships,

for superior mental and physical facilities, the ultimate triumph. Now, all the text I'm quoting Jones from is written from him and himself, so all typos are his fault. But yeah, obviously... Fair enough, Garrison. It's not my fault. He wrote this, and I fix some typos. Yeah, Garrison's blaming a... Don't blame me. Blame the teacher who made the Nazis.

Basically, Jones... That's pretty good... Pretty good summary of Nazism without using any of the Nazi terms, like, yeah, the Strength through Discipline stuff. That's very much like a lot of Hitler-Jugend-like shit. Jones was very familiar with fascism. As we see, he'll be talking...

He'll have sections later on when he talks about fascism. It's like, yeah, he understands what it is very well. So what Jones was doing on the first day, he basically changed his personality. He made him... He was way more open, playful... Oh, no! No! Robert, look at my cat!

Oh, no! The cat now has a Nazi band tied around it. Someone put a Nazi band on my cat! Tied around its torso, so it is a Nazi cat. It's now a Nazi cat. How? How? Someone who is in my own business.

Mysteriously has given my cat a Nazi... My cat's name is Chairman Miao, and now it's moved to a different type of authoritarianism. Either way, it's the responsibility of millions of deaths. Well, now it's a very cute little Nazi cat. God, we would post pictures of this online, but we should not. Nope. Don't do it, but...

Not gonna happen. This is really great audio content, y'all. People are really going to enjoy this audio content, that there is now a Nazi cat in the house. Walking with a leash. Walking with a leash. It is a very cute kitten. Like, oh my God, this little kitten, y'all.

You gotta... You should see this kitten, but not... I mean, you can see the kitten on my Twitter, not wearing a Nazi... Not wearing a swastika, yes. I'll take that off. That's so cute, though. Again, this is very good audio content.

Yeah, the little kitten doesn't know that it's wearing... It doesn't know it's tied to millions of deaths. Oh, little buddy. Oh, it's just chilling out now. No, it's just chilling with a swastika. That's healthy. Yeah. Okay, sorry, Garrison.

Yeah, so basically, Jones adopted a very strict personality. He told the class to only address them as Mr. Jones, as opposed to Ron, as I usually called him. He made rules about how many words you could use to answer verbal questions. He said that students should arrive five minutes before class and wait in seated position. He talked a lot about posture

and how better posture leads to better learning, which is dubious, but he knows that. He was just trying to make this disciplined environment. Jones had his students line up outside the class and have them enter the class to get into perfect seated position, and they drilled this over and over and over again with a timer, having everyone go inside and everyone come back inside and trying to get into perfect seated position very quickly.

They drilled this until everyone was perfectly in sync and got in and sitting under five seconds. He was trying to introduce this kind of... the rules of discipline and listening to authority and things without really any reason, but just listening in this disciplined environment. As all of Jones' experiments, grades were based on participation. If you wanted to opt out, you could just go to the library.

On the first day, everyone participated very willingly. No one seemed to make a connection to the German history classes that the class had just completed. The idea was to give students a peek into what it was like to be a regular German under the Nazis in the World History class into just a one-day fascist state. That's all it was. It was supposed to just be a one-day simulation, and that was it.

The next day, the plan was to have a discussion over what the experiment was. That was all Jones wanted to do, which is this one-day kind of experiment into getting used to an environment of discipline and following a strict leader. That's kind of all it was. Not super harmful.

First day, kind of all right. It's just a fun one-day thing. But as Jones entered class the next day, all the students were waiting inside the class five minutes early, and they were all sitting in perfect posture inside all the rows. In unison, they all chanted, Good morning, Mr. Jones!

Jones began to wonder how far he could take this, and he walked over to the chalkboard and wrote down, Strength Through Community. Uh-oh. This is... He saw everyone had like... He saw the students were very into this, and he's like, Huh?

I wonder how much he can turn them into fascists. He just decided to do it. It was just like a spur of the moment decision because the experiment was over. He's just like, Huh? What if it isn't over? See, this doesn't speak well for him as a person. Although, I guess maybe it doesn't speak well for anyone as a person, because maybe the lesson here is that, um,

that there's something intoxicating about fascism that can draw anybody in. Jones talks about this later, how he actually got pulled into the experiment himself. Don't like that. Yeah. That's very Zimbardo of him, which doesn't make it okay.

Which is why they're friends. Yeah, because they're both kind of not great people. Okay. So, Jones wrote Strength Through Community on the chalkboard next to Strength Through Discipline to quote Jones here. Well, the class sat in stern silence. I began to talk, lecture, and, uh,

ceremonize, that's a weird word, about the value of community. At this stage in the game, I was debating in my mind whether to stop the experiment or continue. I hadn't planned on such intensity or compliance. In fact, I was surprised to find that the ideas of discipline were enacted at all.

While debating whether to stop or go on with the experiment, I talked on and on about community. I made up stories from my experiences as an athlete, a coach, and historian. It was easy. Community being something bigger than oneself, something enjoyable, they really bought onto that argument.

So, students were, I mean, like Jones, by all accounts, was a very good lecturer. He was very engaging, both when he was more like relaxed and charismatic, and both when he was, you know, putting on this more strict dictatorial character. Jones had the class all chanted together,

strength through discipline, strength through community, echoing between pairs of students, getting the whole class in unison, starting with one person, then adding on another person each time, just a whole bunch of, you know, like community drills of doing this, you know, fashion chant. I don't enjoy this at all, Garrison,

and I know where it's going, and it's just progressively getting more sentence by sentence. It is kind of predictable. Yeah, this might be, I don't want to be like radical here, but this might be why you shouldn't experiment on children. Impressionable children?

Yeah, perhaps. I mean, I've carried out some experiments on a child, and it worked out pretty well. But... That was a Garrison joke. Yeah, because I tear gas. I mean, look at me now reading about fascism with my cat with a swastika band.

Yep, everything's going great. Yeah, this was his plan from the start. You know what won't convert a kitten to national socialism? Define folks who make those chips. Yep, Raytheon. Raytheon would never do that, and neither will the other sponsors of this podcast.

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And we're back. All right, Garrison. The Nazi armband is off the kitten now. The kitten has got it off himself, so it's good. The kitten has been de-radicalized. It's a little edgy fascist kitten. Aww. Most podcasts don't even radicalize the kitten,

so we're really very productive today. That's great. I'm going to ask Anderson. No, Anderson is a committed anti-fascist. He stands fast in his beliefs. Yeah, Anderson, she's a free thinker, you know? Speaking of committed fascism, um,

so after all of the chanting together in unison and stuff, at the end of the class, Jones made a terrible decision, and that decision was to make a class member salute. Oh, no. Oh, no. Someone really should have talked to him.

People did. He had, like, read by his colleague and threw out this whole experiment, and Jones is like, no, don't worry, it's just an experiment. They're like, okay, yeah. I don't like this. It's not great. So, the salute here. Jones made... Students were commanded to give each other,

both in and out of class, like, whatever two students met, they were supposed to, you know, salute each other, both in school, out of school. Jones called it, and now the experiment was also called the third wave. Jones claims the third wave is not a reference to the third rite.

He claims it has to do with, like, waves and beaches, and how, like, the third wave is, like, the strongest wave, but I don't really buy that. No, because it also sounds too much like a third position, like, there's a lot of... There's a lot of third... A lot of fashy things that involve a third, yeah.

Don't ever count to three. Never for fascists. Skip two to four. Skip three or right to four if you're going to count, if you don't want to, you know, enable Nazism. To make the salute, you brought up your right hand towards your right shoulder in a curled position. He called it the third wave, or, you know, just the wave because the hand

resembled the wave of the shoulders. Like, I do buy that part for calling it the wave, but the third part, I mean, is just, you know, that's just... Come on, come on, come on, buddy. But just like how my cat removed its fascist armband as now an anti-fascist, day two is where we also got to see the start

of an anti-fascist resistance forming within the school. So, like, the really cool thing about this experiment, even though it's highly unethical, is that we've got a really good microcosm of how fascism develops and how, like, anti-fascism develops beside it. By the end of the second day,

a student in the class got up and said, Mr. Jones, why can't we just say what we want to think? Why can't we express our own opinions about what we think about the third wave in the experiment? And Jones very quickly said, you to the library for the rest of the semester. So this is the first time a student got banished from the class.

I say first time, it's not the last time. This student went to the library and the librarian asked why the student wasn't in class. Based on what Jones had told the students, the student thought that, like, the whole staff was in on the experiment, which they were not. So the student was actually scared

to tell the librarian what happened and why she was there. Now, it just so happened to be that the librarian was born and raised in Nazi Germany. Oh. This is actually good. When the student finally told the librarian

what happened, the librarian was very alarmed and very concerned. The librarian told the student that she has to do something to kind of stop this. Stop this from spreading to other students. The librarian thought this was very dangerous. So the student went home and talked to their parents about what they should do.

Their first idea was to make posters. That night, the student's father drove her back to the school. Because of how hot the area is around the school, like the town, all of the hallways are technically outside of the school, just with a canopy. The student was able to plaster all of the walls

with anti-third wave posters. So they filled up the school with anti-third wave posters. The next morning, within an hour of school starting, all of the posters had been torn down. Students admitted to like, we tore down the posters

because they were anti-third wave. They made a little Portland. Little poster wars back and forth. Later that night, on day three, we're skipping ahead for this, the student returned with a ladder to put up the posters up where they couldn't be torn down.

The student had titled their anti-third wave resistance, The Breakers, which is again another wave reference because waves break. It's all very silly. But like, this student is traumatized and you can hear the student talk about this experiment later on. They are very

clearly traumatized by this experience. You love to see it. Yay! By day three, this is Wednesday. So yes, the first day was strength through discipline, second day was strength through community. By day three, the class had

gained 20 extra students who were interested in participating in the experiment. That's not how classes are supposed to work. Why was this allowed? Oh, it gets so much worse. Eventually people from other schools joined the class. It's bad. And no one's, no one's, the school administration is just like,

yeah, he's recreating fascism in our campus. They let it happen. This is fine. So the class had gotten from like 25 students. God, it's just like America. Okay. Yeah, I mean, yes. Yeah. So the class had grown from 25 students to about 60 students

by day three. That's not how schools are supposed to work. It really isn't. When Jones went into class, the new phrase he wrote on the chalkboard was strength through action. So this doesn't get any better. No, it doesn't sound like it does, Garrison.

Jones announced that he was issuing third wave membership cards, which were just, they were just index cards he found in his desk. Because again, he didn't plan this at all. And it was just kind of like going with it. So he found these index cards and he's like,

huh, I should give them membership cards. And he's like without a second thought for how bad this is. Jesus Christ. So he gave everyone third wave membership cards to every student who decided to continue the experiment. All students were still continuing at this point.

Three cards, Jones secretly marked with a red X, which meant that these students were informants and were instructed to tell Jones if any students were not following the third wave rules. Or as a student referred to them as in a documentary,

the third wave community values. Jesus Christ. It's really bad. This doesn't seem good. So like, if one of these informants saw someone not salute them in a hallway or not do X, not do Y, they were

supposed to tell Jones. Great. Awesome thing to do to kids. Jones lectured the class on direct action. And in Jones' own words, how discipline and community were meaningless without action, which is definitely not something Hitler would say. He then gave the class

different direct action assignments varying from passing out third wave flyers and posters, outreach to other students and other schools and setting up info tables in the hallways. Sorry. I shouldn't be laughing, but it is

kind of terrible. To quote Jones, to allow students to have the experience of direct action, I gave each individual a special verbal assignment. It's your task to design a third wave banner. You are responsible for stopping any student that's not a third wave member from entering the room. I want you to remember and be able to recite

tomorrow the names of each member and addresses of each member. I want you to This is good. You're assigned the problem of training and convincing at least 20 children in the adjacent elementary school that are sitting posture is necessary for better learning.

It's your job to read the pamphlet and report on its entire content of the class tomorrow. I want you to give me the name and address of one reliable friend that you think will want to join the third wave, etc. Basically a list of all these terrible things you got students to do. To conclude the session on direct action,

this is still quoting Jones here. I instructed students in a simple procedure for initiating new members. It went like this. A new member had to be only recommended by an existing member and issued an ID card by myself. Upon receiving his card he's now a new member and had to demonstrate

knowledge of our rules and pledge obedience to them. My announcement unleashed a fervor. That's how he ends that section when he talks about this. So students were very into it. These are 15 year olds in the 60s.

We're going to talk more about why the experiment worked at the end and why it worked so well. People were very into this. The result to this call to action was recruiters at these infotables were starting fist fights with people who didn't want to join. Great.

There's multiple brawls in the hallway over people not wanting to join the third wave. This is all I wonder if maybe the original Nazism was a social experiment that just got out of hand. Hitler was like, I guess I got to invade a couple of countries.

He was trying to keep up the act because everyone was so involved. Even though only three people got the red X on their cards way more than three people were turning in names of people breaking the rules. Jones recalls though I formally appointed only three students to report a bad behavior

approximately 20 students came to me with reports about how Alan didn't salute or Georgina wasn't into the experiment and talking critically about it. This instance of monitoring meant that half of the class members now considered it their duty to report

and observe all other members of the class. A student recalls you never know who's going to come in the next morning and turn you in. All lines of student communication were broken down because of this fear. What a good history class this was.

But I find it really fascinating how even though the strength of your community and whatever they're all out of the actual community, all broke down over fear of people turning each other in which is very accurate to what

actually happened in Germany. Sounds like again just a real good high school history class. Trials were held for members that were seen breaking rules. Oh good. That's what I remember my favorite part of high school was the trials

that we would hold for each other after informing on each other. Now with Antifa Cat the kitten everybody for this great audio content now has a little antifa band around its back. So the kitten has been de-radicalized and it now

shows the fervor of a convert in fighting its old ideology. This has really been quite an arc for a very like what a four month old kitten. 12 weeks. 12 weeks. Little baby. Very small. Oh you're so good. Very happy. You're so good.

Yeah. So you didn't have trials in your high school because again I was homeschooled and homeschooled in the streets. We had some show trials. There were a couple of executions but it was over football. I grew up in Texas. Oh okay.

That's the one with the nevermind. Trials they were held for members scene breaking rules members that were just joking about the third wave or being seen with quote

known revolutionaries. God damn it. That's a good one. Good good work teaching teacher guy. Ron Jones I can see again it makes so much sense that Philip Zimbardo likes this guy because they are both monsters who view the brains of other human

beings. Zimbardo often brings Jones into his class to teach as well. Great. See I love Philip Zimbardo because whenever he comes up in a story you know things are about to get interesting. He's that kind of character but also he shouldn't be allowed to teach people. He shouldn't be allowed

to do anything. No. He's a terrible person. No. So in these trials basically Jones or a senior class member would read aloud the alleged offense. The entire class would immediately chant guilty all in unison and the accused

was banished to the library. I love that there's now banishments and again a high school history class. Yeah. So like the library became a concentration camp. If you weren't catching on to where this was leading. I mean as concentration camps go the library is not the worst. Better than most

concentration camps. Yeah. Thank you for making ethical concentration camps. Several students elected themselves. They did not like me saying ethical concentration camps. They're grass fed. That's not a great term. They're local.

By local when you buy a concentration camp. Stop it. I mean if Powell's books was just one concentration camp I wouldn't complain. They have coffee and books. Exactly. Powell's books is a large bookstore. When the Proud Boys take over Portland and they send me to the Powell's books. I hate

everything happening right now. Yeah. None of this is very good. I hate all of it. Garrison. Oh don't worry. I can make it much worse by reading my script. Oh good. Yes. Please continue. Several students elected themselves to become bodyguards for Jones. Great. And they made their own Black Arm Bands. So he's got an SS.

They made their own Black Arm Bands. Yeah. So he has spontaneously his students developed an SS. And they made their own Arm Bands. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Like parents were questioning their kids about why they had

Arm Bands. Like no, no, no. It's to protect Mr. Jones. It's just part of the experiment. And they called Jones very concerned. And Jones was like, no, don't worry. We're just studying the German psyche is what he told them. Yeah. See I would have additional questions as

a parent. Not to backseat parent because I've never had a kid. But I think I would have questions at that point in the experiment. Like what the fuck is wrong with you? And why are you a teacher? Raj was very funded by the sentence you just said. Oh, yeah.

Worst, worst, worst. Oh, my cat. You've never had a kid. I had a baby, but she's not a kid. All the kittens sleeping on your leg. The kittens eyes are closed. I know. But Antifa kitten sleeping on my leg now. Raj is having a rough day. My cat is not going to be happy, but

she'll learn because I want her to raise a kitten and teach it all that she knows. And because all of the quotes from Jones have just been amazing and full of typos, but also, you know, really, really interesting and terrible. I'm going to do another one and this one's actually pretty long. Okay. Many of the students

were completely into being third wave members. They demanded strict obedience of the rules from other students and believed those that took the experiment lightly. Others simply sunk into the activities and took on self-assigned rules. I particularly remember my student Robert. Robert was big

for his age and displayed very few academic skills. Oh, he tried harder than anyone else to be successful. I remember this for later. This is actually very important. But he handled in the, he handed in a lab, weekly reports

copied word for word from reference books to libraries, but he just wasn't wasn't very academically skilled actually. Robert, like so many other kids in school, didn't excel or cause trouble. They aren't that bright. They can't make the athletic teams. They don't strike out for attention. They're lost,

invisible. And the only reason I came to know Robert at all is that I often found him eating lunch in my classroom because he always ate alone. Well, the third wave gave Robert a place in the school. He was at last equal to everyone else. He could do something, be apart, be meaningful. And that's what Robert did.

Late Wednesday afternoon, I found Robert following me and I asked him what in the world he was doing. He smiled and announced, Mr. Jones, I'm your bodyguard. I'm afraid something will happen to you. He followed me everywhere. Oh, God. In the faculty room,

which was close to students, he stood silently at attention as I gulped down coffee. When accosted by an English teacher for having a student in the teacher's room, he just smiled at her and informed her that he wasn't a student, he was a bodyguard.

That's good. Yeah. Child labor. Yeah. Well, more just like that's how the SS got started. It was initially Hitler's bodyguard. That's what it was and then it turned into a state within a state. He spontaneously generated

Heinrich Himmler. It started with Robert and then a group of seniors from another one of Jones's classes who were interested in the experiment, they were part of the car club, they all wore leather jackets and worked on cars because they were cool. That does sound pretty rare.

They all became the rest of his bodyguards putting on the black arm bands. They just beat up random students. Awesome. Yeah. They were not that cool. They kind of sucked. We'll hear more about this at the end, but Jones talks a lot about how the people

who really got into the wave were all the students in the middle. People who were not great at school, weren't terrible at school, old people who just barely coasted by and it gave them something to be and something to do for people like this rubber person who finally was able to

like he had some kind of meaning in school. Yeah. I mean, it's like we talk about in the little Nazis episode. It's the little men who to whom Nazi appealed the most. Yeah. That scans. Yeah. I mean, yeah. We'll talk a lot about this at the end, actually.

There's a lot of really interesting parallels there. By the morning of day four, so again, we've already had strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action. We've had fistfights and hallways, people trying to get kids from other elementary schools to join not even high schools, elementary schools.

By the morning of day four, Jones started to realize that he kind of lost control of the experiment. Earlier that night, a father of a student whom I believed to actually be the first person kicked out of class and the person who made the third wave posters, I believe I think I'm pretty sure it was actually

her father broke into the classroom and ransacked it to quote Jones. He was a retired Air Force Colonel who spent a lot of time in a German prison war camp. Upon hearing of our activity, he simply lost control late into the evening

he broke into the classroom and tore it apart. I found him that morning propped up against the classroom door. He told me about his friends that had been killed in Germany. He was holding on to me and shaking. He pleaded with me that I understand and I try to help him get home. I called his wife and with the help

of a neighbor walked him home. We spent hours later talking about why he did what he did and what he was feeling at the time. From that moment on on Thursday morning, I was very concerned about what might be happening in school.

Your self-appointed Schuttstaffel are beating up kids in the school. You have informants and show trials but you weren't concerned then. You finally get concerned when a Holocaust survivor tears up your

classroom. I don't know if this is true or not because this is something only Jones talks about. And he seems credible. But on day three Jones claims how he got the extra bodyguards besides Robert was

the members of his car club beat Jones up and threw him in a dumpster and demanded that they beat his bodyguards and he said yes. Now I have no way to put this in the script because I don't actually think it happened. Yeah, that seems like well, he doesn't seem like a credible person.

But it may have happened which I think is like if that happened that should have been the sign that things were getting out of control. There are so many red flags here. He should have I mean he never should have started this but he certainly like there were a lot of points which it was clear that this was bad before

the Holocaust survivor destroyed his classroom. Yeah. So at this point in the morning of day four the third wave was nearing 100 active members which is in how school works. You shouldn't have

100 students in your class that aren't part of your class. And the experiment was also affecting Jones. He reports feeling like relaxed in his dictatorial position. The character he was putting on was becoming his default personality. Even his wife had to like it was like getting him to be like

hey, you see you seem a little different at home. What's going on? Seems like you might have accidentally recreated Nazism. Yeah. The way you've had taken over students lives and how the whole school kind of operated

Jones decided he needed to end it but he didn't want to just end the experiment all of a sudden. He wanted there to be a conclusion and closure for participants. Okay. Jones wrote, if I stopped the experiment 100 students would be left hanging. They committed themselves in front of their peers

to this radical behavior. Emotionally and psychologically they'd exposed themselves. If I suddenly jolted them back to the classroom the reality that would face them would be confusion over the whole student body that would remain for the rest of the year. It would be too painful and demeaning for someone like Robert

and the students like him to be twisted back into a seat and told it was just a game. They would be ridiculed by the brighter students for their participation and I couldn't let people like Robert lose again. Which is

I think not a terrible Yeah, I mean once you have recreated fascism in your classroom and have people who have dedicated their lives to it, you do have to you can't just say we're done now like yeah, you have to de-radicalize the students you radicalized

like we de-radicalized this kitten. But Jones' solution to this is very perplexing from a standpoint of trying to limit the psychological damage and whiplash coming from this extreme assimilation back to the classroom. Because I think what he did actually made things

way worse. But it's very fascinating what happened from an experimental standpoint but it's again, I think this was way worse than just pulling the plug. In class, Jones announced that the third wave isn't just a school experiment it's a new national political

movement. In Jones' words Across the country teachers like myself have been recruiting and training a youth brigade capable of showing the nation a better society through discipline, community, pride and action. If we can change the way a school

is run, we can change the way that factories stores, universities and all other institutions are run. You are a selected group of young people chosen to help in this cause. If you will stand up and display what you have learned in the past four days we can change the destiny of this nation. We can bring in a new sense

of order, community, pride and action. A new purpose. Everything rests on you and your willingness to take a stand. This doesn't sound like de-radicalization Garrison. He gets so much worse. So yeah, like no, everything he talked about

for trying to get out these students out of the experiment this is not doing it. No. But that's not all. Jones then to balladify the seriousness of my words, quote, his words ordered his bodyguards

to escort three of the more intellectually astute students who had been dubious about the third wave. So his, after he makes this big announcement and big lecture, he orders his guards to take three people to the library. Okay. And was

told the bodyguards to never let them re-enter the class. Jones then further explained that the next day there was to be a special third wave members only rally at noon. There was to be a nationwide broadcast formally announcing the new political party and introducing a presidential

candidate, quoting Jones. Quote, over 1000 youth groups from every part of the country would stand up and display their support for such a movement. There were to be students selected to represent their area. I questioned if they could make a good showing because press had been invited to record the event. No one

laughed. There was not a murmur of resistance. Quite the contrary, a fever pitch of excitement swelled across the room. So I really don't know what, why he thought this would calm things over. Yeah, no, that doesn't seem like an attempt to de-radicalize. It's very I think, I think, Jones'

plan here and what happened, I think made everything much worse, made the trauma much worse. And to make things even more, you know, unfortunate, by pure happenstance, a student had a copy of the Time Magazine from that month and it had a full

page ad for a lumber product but the ad was just in big red, white, and blue lettering. The third wave is coming. So like, there was this horrible coincidence that got them all to believe this is all very legit. With the class

convinced, Jones set a time for this member's only rally. It was going to be Friday, so for them it was tomorrow at noon. Members were told to be there 10 minutes early waiting for press in proper seating position and be there to quote, display the discipline,

community, and pride that you have all learned. The class was instructed to not tell any third wave members about this. So yeah, that was Jones' idea to de-eslate things on day four was to prepare kids for this national announcement and this big rally on the next day. Oh god. Not what I would have done.

I think I wouldn't have let the experiment get to this point anyway. No, but it seems like his attempt to de-radicalize them was to convince them that they were part of a national movement, which questionable call. But you know what's not a questionable call, Garrison?

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Alright, we're back. Okay, so he's told his... He's gotten scared because he recreated fascism. And now there's a concentration camp in the library. And also his students are...

He's attempted to de-radicalize them by telling them they're part of a nationwide movement to change the character of the country. No notes. Now they're going to have a big meeting and he's going to tell them all to stop being fascist, right? That's going to happen now? Okay.

But throughout the week, a school reporter was trying to find out about the third wave. But whenever he asked questions about it to people, they just wouldn't talk. Until he got a hold of the librarian. After the rally was announced. So basically, he got a lead about what was happening

through the librarian, because again, all the students who were banished were sent to the library. After the rally was announced, two of the third wave bodyguards went into the school journalism office and beat up the reporter. Telly... God damn it.

Yeah. He did a good job remaking Nazism. You gotta give him credit for that. He's the people wearing the black arm bands. It definitely wasn't his job, but he did it. Telly... After they beat him up, they told him not to write about or the upcoming rally, which he had, I guess,

learned a little bit about. So yeah, that was the state of that. If you're trying to keep a Telly going on how well the fascism is working. So day five, Friday morning, the final day, the school auditorium was plastered with third wave banners

and posters, like everywhere. By 11.30, third wave members began already arriving and filling up the seats. At noon, the auditorium held over 200 third wave members. So again, this class started with 25 people and it grew to an auditorium

filled with 200 Nazis. Over five days. So they were waiting to hear the national announcement of the new political party and their presidential nominee. Jones had several of his friends in the room posing as reporters, taking pictures. And he also set up a TV

in the middle of the room. As the clock struck 12, the bodyguards closed all the doors and were stationed in front of all the exits. I don't know why this happened, but everyone reports that it did, so it probably happened. Jones says, quote, he says to the class,

before turning on the national press coverage, which begins in five minutes, I want to demonstrate to the press the extent of our training. He then moves his arm up to salute. 200 arms follow. Oh God. All at the same time. Apparently also one student on day four

suggested they all wear white shirts, which they did on this last day. So it's like, you know, very unite the right-ish with 200 people all wearing white shirts. Doing this Nazi salute. Yeah. Jones says, strength through discipline,

and the students all in unison repeat back. The phrase gets recited over and over each time getting louder. At 12.05, Jones orders the lights turned off, walks over to the television set and turns it on. The white static illuminates the room just enough to see the faces of the students.

Robert the bodyguard is standing beside Jones. Jones tells him to watch the students' faces closely. Minutes pass. Nothing, nothing happens. The TV's on, minutes pass, there's nothing, nothing's turning on. The students are in a trance watching the television. Eventually one student stands up and yells,

there is no party leader is there. The class turns in shock to look at the student and then looks back at the television. The other 199 students were all silent. Some of them, but some of their posture was relaxing back to normal. Jones turns out the television and says to the students, there is no leader.

There's no such thing as a national youth movement called the third wave. Let me show you your future. Jones turns on a projector right beside the TV and on the wall images and a film flash on the wall of Hitler, Nazi rallies, third Reich marching with their trained discipline.

People being put into train cars off to death camps. Jones begins lecturing as this film about the Nazis plays. Are the kids just completely quiet

just watching this? Some of them are, they're completely quiet right now. Eventually they all start break down and crying. Wonderful. No one protests. Everyone's very kind of

feeling bad. As Jones is starting his lecture, the film finishes and freezes the halt on a single written frame that says, everyone must accept the blame. No one can claim they didn't in some way take part. Jones says to the class,

you and I are no better or worse than the German Nazis that we've been studying. You thought you were better than those outside this room. You bargained away your freedom for the comfort of discipline and superiority. We will watch our neighbors be taken away and do nothing. We are just like those Germans.

We would give up our freedom for the chance of being special. Jones then, I think, as you should have expressed his remorse and apologized to the class for all the trauma that he had caused. But he decides to give one kind of

final lecture to kind of, I don't know, trying to smooth things over, which again this has already gone way too far and has made too many bad choices up to this point. But this is the last thing he does for this experiment. Here's a paragraph

from Jones here. Through the experiment the last week, we've all tasted what it was like to live and act under Nazi Germany. We learned what it was like to create a disciplined social environment to build a special society, pledge allegiance to that society, replace reason with rules.

Yes, we would have all made good Germans. We would have put on the uniform and turned our heads as friends and neighbors were cursed then persecuted. We all know in a small way what it feels like to find a hero, to grab a quick solution, to feel strong and in control of destiny.

We know the fear of being left out, the pleasure of doing something right and being rewarded, to be number one, to be right, to be taken to the extreme as we've seen and perhaps felt what those actions will lead to. We each have witnessed something over the past week. We have seen that fascism is not just something

that other people do. No, it's right here in this room. It's in our own personal habits and it's in our way of life. Scratch the surface and it appears something in all of us. We carry it like a disease. The belief that human beings are basically evil and therefore unable to act well towards others. That's what fascism

breeds on. It's the belief a belief that demands a strong leader and discipline to preserve a social order. Which is not a terrible thing. It's a weird thing to say after creating

fascism, but he's not wrong about the thing that he created. Yeah. He finishes up this small talk the same way this all started. He asks the class

if they, like the regular Germans, will claim ignorance and claim non-involvement. Quote, if our enactment of the fascist mentality is complete not one of you will ever admit to being at this final third wave rally. Like the Germans, you will have trouble admitting

to yourself that you've come this far. You will not allow your friends and parents to know that you were willing to give up individual freedom and power for the dictates of this social order and unseen leaders. You can't admit to being manipulated to being a follower. You're accepting the third wave

as your way of life. You won't admit to participating in this madness and you'll probably keep this this day and this rally secret a secret that I will share with you. Which Jones was eventually wrong about. Jones himself wrote about this in semi-detail

about like four years later after meeting a student while shopping who gave him a third wave salute and they kind of got him upset. Then he wrote down like... Oh yeah, he got upset about the fascism that he made. Yeah. Then he wrote an essay about it. But students definitely do talk about it.

We'll hear from some students in a bit. Great. But Jones turned off the projector that still had everyone must accept the blame. No one can claim that they weren't involved or no one can claim that they didn't in some way take part.

So he turns out the projector then he sees Robert who was sobbing as many other students were as well. Jones hugged Robert as he was crying and slowly students left the auditorium. And that's the experiment. So that was what happened.

That was the five day... Sounds like he may have permanently damaged some kids. He did. There's a lot of kids now they're like adults in their 50s and 60s. A lot of people think it was a good experience for them as a kid.

But a lot of people say no, this did an irreversible damage to it. Yeah. It's an interesting experiment and a useful one if you want to study fascism. But it's bad that he did it to small children. Yes. 15 year olds mainly.

So now we're left wondering why was the experiment so effective? Especially for being only five days. Now I do think Jones had a pretty solid understanding of fascism in some ways and he actually explains a lot of it well. This is a quote from Jones.

You have to understand the times there was a radical... No, sorry. There was racial integration taking place in the high school for the first time. And that threw the school kind of upside down. And all of the young men were facing the draft when they graduated.

I was basically promising I can make you safe again. This was written before Trump ran. So the whole... Yeah. A good thing to think of was the whole I can make you safe again thing. Multiple students...

Yeah. Multiple students bring up Vietnam as a heavy contributing factor for why they fell into this. Especially bought into the whole national movement thing. And as well, of course, Jones had a lot of natural charisma

and strength as a leader. This is a quote from a student. A big reason I went along with it was my trust for Jones. And I was just beginning to feel bitter about Vietnam. And the experiment seemed like we could change the government responsible for hurting us. There was a feeling that something really remarkable

was going to happen going on throughout the whole country. And the movement was going to change politics, change the structure of the school. The combination of everything just made it happen. And a lot of the men who talk about what it was like in the experiment bring up the fear of Vietnam

being a pretty heavy factor for why they bought into the whole national movement. Yeah, you're growing up into a world that seems dangerous and unhealthy for you. And so you embrace a strong man

in a hope that he can bring things back to an imagined past that you barely remember from your childhood. Yeah. Yep, okay. The other thing that Jones makes a note of is who really thrived under the wave. It's those people like Robert,

the ones that neither excelled in school nor caused much trouble. Quoting Jones, I was accustomed to two very intelligent girls and the troublemakers in the back of the room. But what the wave generated was a major rule for the great majority who stayed quiet and barely got through school.

I realized that as a teacher I had probably ignored them for the most part. And all of a sudden this great massive energy took place and they were all brilliant in their own way. That were neither really good at school nor terrible. Just as people kind of barely

getting by. In another interview, Jones says it was the middle group that became energized. They became the winners for a brief moment. And that's the thing that's also the two things that come up the most often when reading about this from students and other teachers and the principal

was one being Vietnam, oh yes also Jones being very charismatic. The other one was like it gave this middle group that were kind of being ignored at the time release something to do and that's what they really latched on to. Yeah, the next

step I did after doing all the research for the third wave stuff was just doing a brief reentry into fascist studies to kind of see if I can pick up any other similarities between what Jones did and what

these people talk about as being the traits or passions of fascism. So I was looking at Robert Paxton's work for the underlying passions. Yeah, an author of Anatomy of Fascism which is one of the best academic treatments of the subject.

Yeah, and almost every passion he has, his theory is that fascism is caused by these feelings that we have in humans and then that causes us to do different actions. And all the passions that he

talks about that kind of cause fascism to happen are all present in some degree for the third wave. We obviously had the supremacy of the group which is one of the traits. The Vietnam War was definitely the overwhelming crisis that traditional solutions couldn't fix for a lot of the men

at least there. For all the teenagers who were facing the draft and who didn't want to go. There was a little bit of group victimization with the warring poster wars but not as much. We definitely had an authority of the male leader

which was Jones. We definitely had superiority of the leader's words over abstract and universal reason in his announcement of the third wave like rally and Jones even says during his final lecture that in times of uncertainty it's easy to replace

reason with rules. So yeah, it's like this thing that we replace our natural logical thought process with this undying devotion to this leader no matter how crazy things they say is that you still believe it because they're offering you something in exchange

which of course we can also tie it to the president and stuff. In terms of the love of violence the violence was minimal but it was definitely there. There were fistfights on the hallways they beat up that school reporter if I call it minimal.

It could have been worse I think. It could have been what happened in Nazi Germany. From the perspective of this being a high school history class I don't know how much worse it realistically could have been. You're right. In terms of a high school history class

there were five days there was a lot of violence. The other two passions that Paxton talks about are dread of the groups decline in their corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism and the need for closer integration

into a pure community. This is where things get a little bit more complicated because a defining aspect of fascism is that it's self-contradictory and ideologically inconsistent and the way that I often see that surface in fascism is that how fascism is both heavily individualistic

and heavily group oriented and community driven as we see from a community chance and stuff. But I think part of how this works is that the idea of community and the idea of being

in this special group basically gives you the opportunity to pursue being an individual hero. It's this fake support system that lets you be this individual person. It's the same thing we see with the proud boys and with these other sort of like...

Yeah, it's the same thing with the police. If you look at the warrior training they do it's both like, no, you have to help other officers when in like a moment you can't question them it's part of this very community driven thing but also they're training to be the individual warrior sitting on a rooftop with their cape flying in the wind.

It's both of those aspects. The good old fashioned cult of the hero that is kind of central to American culture because it's very easy to market because you can sell people body armor and all the gear that they need to make themselves into a hero

but then they don't have anybody to fight and kill because that's what we say heroes do so they start going out into the streets and finding people to do it too. Yeah, it's great. It's very good. Speaking of cult of the hero which is the other kind of main scholar of fascism which Umberto Eco

one of his 14 traits of fascism is the cult of the hero. Yep. And then the next after I looked into Paxton the other I looked over Umberto Eco's 14 traits and tied a few of them pretty clearly. Some of them don't fit as perfect because of how

small and young the third wave was. Like it didn't, you know a lot of Paxton's trait and a lot of them Eco's traits are for like actual political parties which they didn't quite get to but you can definitely see the seeds being planted there. Yeah.

Of course we have the cult of tradition with the third waves emphasis on creating discipline and creating those traditions themselves. Rejection of modernism and going back to the old strict teaching style and away from the loose modern style of the late 60s and the style that like Jones was really into

which is like you know the very loose experimental thing. The cult of action for action's sake was basically the focus of the whole day remember the whole straight through action day? Yes. So that definitely happened. Disagreement was absolutely treason as people were banished to the library for just you know

and as Jones mentions there were appeals to social frustration with the new racial integration in the school and the looming draft. Jones writes of fascism quote fascism is always a possibility because it's so simple and people are frustrated. They lose their jobs, their dignity, their sense of worth

and someone comes along and says hey I've got this answer. So the rest of the rest of Iberdeco's traits like the fear of difference, obsession with the plot between me being strong and weak, contempt for the weak, life as warfare, machismo and weaponry, selective populism and Newspeak

again those get into a little specifically they do those get a little too specifically into national politics to make really easy comparisons to the third wave but I can definitely see the seeds being planted there with like Jones talking about the third wave like national party and stuff. I think those would have absolutely developed very quickly.

Especially I think you can even you know machismo and weaponry to some degree with like the whole car club and the bodyguards themselves and there was definitely a little bit of Newspeak going on. Now Jones does regret doing the experiment

as he says in almost every interview when he talks about it saying it was way too dangerous and way too damaging. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But he still recommends people actually study and learn from it since it did happen

you may as well focus on it but he does he does he does regret doing it. In fact reading a book on the waves actually required reading in Germany for like all schools they're required to read a whole book about the waves

because Germany actually cares about not fostering a culture of fascism. Yeah. It's just a fun little circle there from learning about Germany and their world history class. You fucked up so badly that Germany decided

to make what you did a cautionary tale about fascism. Like a required thing for school. Yeah. That's good to be in a teacher. Congratulations. You did it. Many students look back on the experiment as a positive learning experience.

One student who became a filmmaker made a whole documentary on the topic and interviewed a lot of students. But there are many many students and a lot of parents who are very upset at Jones for the experiment and thought it was way too damaging for their young psychies.

Oh no way. Yeah, so big shock. Two years after the experiment ended Jones was denied tenure at the school and was fired. Wow. That took too long.

But here's kind of the twist. Jones was fired under pressure from the conservative parents conservative school board who accused Jones of indoctrinating students into radical leftism instead of just teaching them. He was fired for being a socialist and he was fired for his links

to his anti-war activism. Oh. So not for recreating Naziism. He wasn't fired for the experiment. He was fired for being a political activist and quote unquote indoctrinating students until being like leftists. Yeah.

There were actually huge student protests that Jones was being fired because he was still by far the most popular teacher in the school. God, all of this is so bad. All of this bodes so ill for the human condition. Awesome. Fantastic. I...

Oh. Like the thing he should have gotten fired for is the fascist experiment. Was making a concentration camp in the library or maybe when his body guards were beating people. He shouldn't have been fired for turning kids into commies.

But like not by experiment. I mean, I would say this. He should have been fired for turning children into... Into fascists. Into anything really. Like you shouldn't be ideologically brainwashing children either way. Yeah. But the communism wasn't the problem.

No, and he wasn't doing experiments to lead people into communism. He was just teaching... He was just actually... He was fired for just teaching a history class and actually learning about the labor movement and stuff like that. And conservative parents didn't like that. And the principal says...

The principal says he fired him because he was... The way he was teaching students about radical movements, students were becoming too sympathetic to these racial justice causes and labor rights causes.

So that's why he was fired. The third wave has since been adapted into a few books, an 80s TV film, a focus of multiple documentaries, one of which being made by a student. They made a whole German live-action film on it, and a German TV show, because again, they care about this in Germany.

And Jones also wrote a musical based off the third wave. They don't... Great. So... And since... Jones has spent his time... I mean, after in the 70s, he became a very... He had a brief stint of being a punk rocker.

Which is just fun. Great. And then he became, just to go writer, written about 30 books, including some children's books. Oh, good. He should be influencing children's minds. He's actually an award-winning author. And he's currently a teacher

for special needs adults in disability schools. And that's the third wave. See, I wouldn't let that guy around kids anymore. No, he's not around kids. He's teaching adults Oh, okay. Well, alright. I don't really want him around adults either.

Yeah, I don't... By all means, he is a very, like, good teacher when he's actually teaching. But as long as he doesn't turn all the adults with special needs into Nazis, then I don't know... It does seem like he did that once and might again.

So, what's your kind of insights? Because, like, you read about fascism on an often basis. Scans. Like, the terrifying thing here is how quickly it happens and how easy it is to get children on board something like that.

Because all you need to do, like, he's right. Like, the thing that he observed is very obvious, which is that when you have... when you create, like, you go into a system that's kind of static, like, you've got this high school, everybody has their places in it, everybody has kind of their places in the social order.

And there's a lot of people who aren't special, who don't do well in school, or athletics, who aren't popular, who are just sort of there. And you provide them with a way that they can be better than everyone. And it's by embracing this new movement. Like, that's the thing

that you do. It's the thing that Trump did, is you had all these people who didn't really have any kind of, like, they... You know, our society has been increasingly stratified. There's an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. And there was a large chunk of people who didn't really have anything to feel

good about. Like, they were struggling at work. They didn't like their jobs. Their education hadn't gotten them anywhere. They were bogged down with debt. And then Trump comes in and says, hey, I'm going to give you a chance. I'm going to, like, make a new thing that you can reinvent

yourself as a part of. Like, that's where all these proud boys came from. It's where a lot of these, like, like, Patriot coalition, Patriot prayer types, they're these people who didn't really have anything to do. And suddenly, fascism gave them a way to

be special in a group of people to attack. Which is what you need. And it's a group of people that's the thing that, you know, separates that from, like, what Bernie Sanders did. Yeah. Is that Trump's solution was regressive. And going back to a fake history.

Whereas, you know, movements in the left usually try to move forwards. Now, when movements on left gain an authoritarian leader and move forward, that still, you know, ends up bad. Because that's what authoritarianism does. But fascism is so insidious in that, you know, it's way more comfortable

to people because it's appealing to this past sense of society. And usually the past isn't as scary as, like, a new thing in the future. That's why a lot of people get hooked on it. Yeah. And you see, what you saw in this experiment was, like, as soon as you get, as soon as

these kids realize, as soon as, like, the people who kind of embrace this, like, start to feel attached to it. Because it's given them a way to be special. It's given them a place. It's given them something to fight for. They will use, without thought, violence to protect it.

Because they can't, they are, like, horrified at the thought of going back to the old order in which they weren't special. In which they didn't have a place. Like, that's the thing that also scares me about what's going to happen in 2021. Like, as

we've been talking about this on Twitter, somebody posted a picture of, like, one of the people heading to DC this weekend for the big Trump rally. And it was, like, it was a guy who had, like, a Spartan helmet that had Trump 2020 on it. It was in blue and red. And he had, like, a Trump 2020 Make Liberals

cry again shirt and, like, board shorts that had Trump's face as Captain America on them. Like, right over the crotch, which was weird. And then a Trump 2020 flag that he was wearing as a cape. And it's, like, yeah, the movement, this fucking fascist movement that Trump created

in the United States, gave this guy something that makes him feel special, that makes him feel like, things can't be going all that well for that dude. Which is not to say that, like, only because, obviously, Trump's voters tended to be higher income, more often than lower income. But, like, he was not happy with things

before Trump. Trump gave him something to feel like a part of and something to struggle against. This vague idea of the left of liberals. So he has an enemy and he has a purpose. And he's not going to just, like, you know, it's the thing that, it's the problem

that the teacher had with the wave, is that, like, well, now that you've built this thing, how do you go back? You can't just stop it all of a sudden. Yeah, it's going to fuck these people up. And they're either going to wind up weeping, which is the best case scenario, or getting violent. Yeah. And, you know, the week after the wave happened,

they basically sent, in his class the week later, it was basically just a week full of therapy. Yeah. That was what he did. He did not, they didn't, like, just move on to Russia. It's like, no, like, they spent a whole week basically doing therapy because they were all, you know, very messed up. Yeah.

I mean, we could use some of that here, but it won't happen. Instead, they'll just buy more guns, which is why ammunition is sold out. But they could buy 4,000 rounds of blanks by accident. There was that guy on 4chan who bought 45,000, 4500 rounds of 5.45 by 39

blanks and thought they were real bullets and then was very sad, which is quite funny. He's the best case scenario. He lost money and got useless bullets. Yeah. He lost money and got bullets that he can't use to kill people. Yeah. Yeah. Unless it's Bruce Lee. Sorry. Oh God. Yeah. So that's kind of all I have here on the topic.

Yeah. I'm trying. Yeah. That's kind of, that kind of hits all of the boxes I wanted to talk about. Yep. Well, Garrison, thank you for coming me out. Normally, it's my job to bum other people out. It is great. We'll return to that next week. I'm two for two on

child abuse for my episodes. What's up with the theme, Garrison? Oh, I mean, those are all the best episodes is where children get abused. That's what people come to the show for, is to watch kids be traumatized. Yeah. I mean, it also I guess I'm good for writing that because I am previously

a child. You were a child unlike Sophie and I. Yeah. I thought they came for your sparkling personality, Robert. No, no, they come for the child abuse. But I mean, as someone who was as someone who was like more conservative when I was like 15,

the same age as all of these people, I can I can easily see if I was in this scenario, I would have also absolutely followed suit, which is why when I read this book as a 15 year old, I'm like, oh, wait. Oh, no. There's some problems here, which

eventually, you know, got me to not be conservative anymore and learn more about fascism. Well, that's good. So I guess it's all it's good then that he traumatized those kids. Yeah, because the weird thing about this is like, I read this book as part of a Christian homeschooling curriculum and I don't know

why they included it because everything else was kind of just opposite to this. So I'm not sure why they included this book, but I mean, thanks, I guess they included this book and one book on the history of labor in the 20th century.

And those were the those are the books that got me. I mean, I still had like hundreds of hundreds of other books that were just like conservative propaganda, but they included these these were the only two books that had like a left bent and they and they kind of they got me. They're like, oh, wow, this was a new thing that's different from everything

else I was reading and was kind of more interesting and made more sense. Yeah, I don't know. They should if from their perspective, they shouldn't include the book, but I'm very happy they did. So, yeah. Great. Yay.

Well, Garrison, you got anything to plug before we roll out? I guess my Twitter, if you want to see occasional street reporting, occasional probably around stuff. Oh, and my kitten. Yeah. And now also I'll be offering occasional kitten content

for those obliged also soonish. I'll be releasing like a 10 minute short documentary about Portland protests on my YouTube channel, but I've been putting off doing the editing on that for like a month because I'm busy and lazy. So eventually

that'll be out so you can go go to my YouTube as well. But mainly Twitter. Yeah. At Hungry Botai. I guess I should say it. That'd be useful. Or you can just Google my name because that's all you need to do. Yay. Well, everybody, this has been a fun episode

of the podcast. It hasn't. But I had I had a lot of laughs. I'm glad you had a lot of laughs. I'm bummed. I'm going to go to the gym and cry and get COVID. Don't act like that's different from yesterday. Yeah. Anyway,

thanks for listening to the podcast, everybody. Now go find a high school class to radicalize and then haphazardly de-radicalize for questionable academic benefit. Zoom bomb them and turn them all into fascists.

Yeah. Zoom bomb them in the Nazis. Or find a kitten and give it love. The kitten is asleep in my lap now. Oh my God. His little heads just hanging over my hand. Bloody. That's the episode's done.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside cover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot

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Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on

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