That's your leader!
Do you know
that you're secretly following Hitler?
Hey guys welcome back to my channel and
today we're going to be talking about
The Wave... So I was introduced to The Wave
in my sophomore year of high school and
we had to watch it for our dystopian
unit to see how easy it was to get
caught up in groupthink and it has
stayed in the back of my mind ever since.
Even though it's ideology is everywhere,
in the end it says fuck Nazis, and I'm
all for that, especially in the current
political climate. So without further ado,
let's dive into The Wave. Part one The
Third Wave Experiment. So for those of
you who don't know what The Wave is, it
was originally an experiment conducted
in high school in Palo Alto, California
in 1967 by the then 25 year old history
teacher Ron Jones.
It was then re-enacted in a 1981
after-school special on ABC, but for this
part I'm specifically going to be
talking about the experiment. Jones was
inspired to create this experiment after
one of his students asked him how could
non Nazi Germans deny knowledge of the
Holocaust. Did you all put your ears to
that question? Steve would you say that
again for us all? That's a history
question Steve! Thank you. Yes, how could
the Germans behave as they did after the
war, claim they knew they knew nothing of
the Holocaust, did not take part? So
basically he created this club called
The Wave which was an allegory for
Hitler Youth, which doesn't really go on
to explain how non Nazi Germans were
complicit in the Holocaust since
everyone in The Wave
truly believes in what they're doing, but
if we start to question this it
all falls apart. So he created The Wave
as kind of a movement in the school and
he did this by you know instilling
groupthink and instilling discipline in
them in order to get them in line and go
along with whatever The Wave said. He
wrote power through discipline
on the board and made them go through
various drills in order to make them act
more efficiently. They had to sit with a
certain posture, they had to call him by
name before answering questions, they had
to stand when answering questions. "Mr.
Ross!" "That's correct." And you might be
thinking what does this have to do with
Nazism? But trust me we're getting there.
After this one-day experiment he was
planning to go into class the next day
and give a normal lesson you know and
also maybe explain how groupthink and
mob mentality can make people think that
war crimes don't exist.
You know actually answering the question
rather than putting them through an
experiment, but when he came in the next
day he saw everybody sitting the way
that he had told them to you know, really
taking this power through discipline
thing seriously, so he decided to keep up
the experiment and he himself said that
he got a little power trip out of this. "I
betrayed myself. I betrayed my students. I
placed them in danger. We dropped into a
place of great darkness. All of us the
students and myself we'd given up our
freedom for the thought of being
superior to others. It was a terrible
feeling and it haunts us today." And of
course he did, he already had a position
of power as a teacher and now he was
just using more of that power. So they
created slogans a salute similar to that
of the Nazis, a rule saying that small
groups couldn't be formed within The
Wave, they formed an ideology against
democracy, and in the end the students
became assholes. Jones gave some students
leadership positions within The Wave and
told them to recruit others, and they
started to push this anti-democratic
rhetoric down other students throats.
Violence ensued, but there were also
other students in the school that wanted
to join The Wave, and in the end there
were around a hundred or more students
really into this Wave ideology of anti
democracy. As the days passed
Jones realized that he was getting a bit
of an ego and his wife also wanted him
to end the experiment.
500 parents supported a boycott to
remove him as a teacher and in a 1967
school paper
his fifth period senior government class
kidnapped him and threatened to give
speeches about democracy to his Wave
students, so it was time to pull the plug
on this thing. On the fifth day Ron Jones
turned to his class and said that they
were actually part of his anti fascist
experiment to show how Germans could
possibly deny the Holocaust, and like the
Germans who denied the Holocaust, they
too never wanted to talk about The Wave
ever again. So did this experiment work?
Honestly, I don't even see the reason why
he conducted it in the first place.
I know there's no such thing as "stupid"
questions, but this question "Why do some
Germans deny the Holocaust?" has a pretty
self-explanatory answer. Like who would
ever own up to knowing about the
Holocaust if they know that they could
have done something about it?
Like I don't think you need to be part
of a fascist experiment to understand
that. However I don't think we should put
all the blame on the students because a
lot of kids wonder this, including myself,
so honestly the blame should be on the
teacher for putting their students
through this, but again if we start to
question this it all falls apart, so
let's just ignore the hypotheticals. It
happened and it is what it is. And I'm
not even going to go into if this was a
good experiment or not because Ron Jones
himself has said that he regrets doing
The Wave and putting him and his
students through this traumatic
experience. So instead I'm going to be
talking about the wave as in the 1981
after-school special on ABC. Part 2 The
Wave is something?? And before I start I
want to give Ron Jones credit for at
least giving his Wave an ideology, which
was anti democracy, because The Wave in
the after-school special has no ideology, 
which is why it is a confusing, yet very
funny trainwreck.
"Everybody wear blue shirts! Bring banners
and signs!" And that is because real Nazis
and real German citizens upheld an
ideology whether they were active or
complicit in that. It wasn't just that
they supported Hitler because he was a
charismatic speaker, but they also
believed that killing marginalized
groups such as Jewish people, biracial
people, Roma people, gay, and trans people was
okay. The film never once mentions
democracy or anti democracy. They do use
the word fascism at the end, but it's
like one time. "Fascism isn't something
those other people did." And because The
Wave doesn't have an ideology in the
film, we don't know why it's bad. In the
film it seems like The Wave is bad
because it's crushing individualism.
"That's exactly why I'm not going. Let
them make up their own minds about The
Wave, they're individuals." And in the
universe of the film you can't be in a
group and an individual at the same time.
"But you're supposed to be learning
history, not how to be part of a group!"
When in real life that's clearly
possible. The Wave only focuses on
members of The Wave, which doesn't really
make sense, because as the film points
out, only 10% of German citizens were
also part of the Nazi Party. "As a matter
of fact less than 10% of the German
population belonged to the Nazi Party."
And the students question is how NON
Nazi Germans could be complicit in the
Holocaust, not Nazis. But by only showing
students who were in The Wave and caught
up in the rhetoric, and who are supposed
to be allegories for Nazis, there's still
no real answer to the student's question.
It would have been more interesting to
see students who weren't part of The
Wave, but also didn't speak out against
The Wave, who saw The Wave bullying kids,
but didn't do anything, and then at the
end of the movie they should have
questioned those students and asked them
why didn't they do anything, but the
whole school is either for The Wave or
against it, so there's no really
moral gray area
in the film. The only person that kind of
questions The Wave is the teacher
because he knows what he's doing is
wrong but he also doesn't know how to
stop it.
"I can't stop now they'd be left hanging
they'd be confused, they wouldn't have
learned a thing." "Well let them be confused." "No I
can't do that! I'm a teacher I have
responsibilities to them. I have to push
them until they get the point!" So the
experiment as seen in the film doesn't
even have an answer to its own question.
So before I go more in-depth into the
film I want to talk about how The Wave
codes of language. They use the word
"group" to mean either fascism or
communism because the film conflates the
two. "Now community is that bond between
people who work and struggle together."
And they use "individualism" to mean
"democracy". "It just doesn't sound like the
right thing for you. Laurie, sweetheart, we
raised you to be an individual." However
it's impossible to have this
individualistic democracy that The Wave
champions under a system like capitalism
which they also live under as they are
in the United States. This is because
capitalism makes you so worried about
surviving that you can't pursue
individualistic wants, so everything that
The Wave is fighting for, like individual
freedom, freedom of thought, free thought,
is moot under capitalism. It cannot exist
in a country like America because that
promise of democracy and individualism
is dead on arrival.
So the film starts like every
other movie with the high school class
filled with adults and a Gene Wilder
impersonator talking about the Holocaust.
So the students wonder how some Germans
could possibly deny the Holocaust and
rather than talk about how everything in
the Holocaust was legal, the teacher
decides to go on his little power trip
and put them through The
Wave experiment. "I'm teaching these kids
the most important lesson of their lives!"
So the next day the teacher writes
strength through discipline on the board
and all that, puts them through drills,
but what I want to know is how none of
the students picked up on this. They were
just learning about Nazis ideology, 
iconography, and not one of the students
realizes that he's doing a purposeful
experiment to show them the dangers of
groupthink. He starts making them stand
and address him before answering
questions, but in the U.S. in the past
this was normal school protocol and it
wasn't seen as a gateway into fascism.
Yeah it was annoying back then, but it
doesn't turn someone into a Nazi. It does
put the students in a different mindset
but is it really that bad? It's not like
he's teaching them that certain races
need to be exterminated for them to be
happy. So they do the drills and you'll
be happy to know that they at least
acknowledge that gay people died during
the Holocaust. "Who died in the death
camps?" "Mr. Ross Jews, G*psies, and
homosexuals." Afterwards everyone is so
surprised at how happy they feel to be
part of a community, how they're being so
much more productive, how they're more
organized, and in the beginning The Wave
isn't really that bad, it's not framed as
an anti-democratic organization, but
rather an anti individualistic or a pro
community organization, and to me that's
just not that bad, but the movie frames
it as if these small things like
discipline or being organized or being
part of a group will somehow lead to
fascism. Like it's all fun and games now
until you become a Nazi! "But you're
supposed to be learning history not how
to be part of a group!" Like sure it's all
fun and games now, but the movie just
does that in order to show how easy it
is to become...EVIL! So like in real life the
teacher comes in and sees all his
students the next day you know really
taking this strength through discipline
thing seriously. So he too abandoned his
lesson plans and you know jumps right
into The Wave. But this made me think
that he really didn't think out this
whole Wave thing, and yeah he admitted
that in the movie and in real life, but
then it's like...is he really even trying
to answer a student's question at this
point? Like I thought he was going to do
the experiment, and before the first
class ended explain what he was doing.
But it turns out that he never was
planning to explain it, at least in the
movie, and in real life he also didn't
come in the next day or in the same
class when he first did the experiment and  explain what he was doing. You know,
trying to answer the student's question.
So it makes me think like, was this even
a student's questions?? So on the
second day the teacher goes along with
it and again there's no real ideology to
The Wave except that Wavers are better
than non Wavers, but like of course they
are?? They're more disciplined, getting
better grades, they finally stopped
bullying Robert for being a loner...
"It's really working! Even Robert
Walkins, you know, the class creep. He's
even a part of the group now!" A little
self-esteem is good for the class.
"Mr. Ross has just found a really great
way to get everybody to learn something,
even the slow kids are keeping up." And this 
even helps eliminate bullying, as the
"class creep", Robert, is finally welcomed
into the fold, but later in the movie
this is seen as bad because he becomes
the most brainwashed.
"Mr. Ross for the first time I feel like
I'm part of something great!"
"Mr. Ross, what does it mean? It's a secret
code isn't it?" Robert thinks that he's
part of something great when in reality
the loner kid is usually very
anti-establishment, and yeah the army can
turn around
you know "bad eggs", but there's nothing
about Robert that makes him creepy or
weird. And what's the saying about bully
victims? It's saying that they deserve
what they get. This is the price we pay
for living under democracy slash
capitalism and not living under a
fascist or Nazi our communist hell
scape. The film actually has a very
anti-communist agenda, which isn't
surprising because cold war, but in the
original experiment The Wave was clearly
an allegory for fascists and for Nazis,
but in the film, because they're also
trying to bring in communism, it makes
the whole thing very very confusing. So
on the second day there's a lot of
communist talk amongst the Wavers, and
therefore it's framed as bad because The
Wave is bad. "Now community is that bond
between people who work and struggle
together. Building a barn with your
neighbors.
It's feeling that you're a part of
something that's more important than
yourself!" Like honestly this doesn't
sound that bad and I don't think
anything he's saying is inherently evil.
I would have loved for my fellow
students to stop bullying me and see me
as a fellow student with a common
struggle of doing homework getting into
college, rather than competing with me
under a democratic or capitalistic power
structure. Part III, The Wave and Allegory.
So The Wave desperately wants to be an
allegory for Hitler Youth. "Take a look at
your future!"
But the actual things that make a Nazi
aren't discipline or community, but a
belief in the Aryan race and fear of the
other. Though The Wave cultivates fear
of the other by believing that The Wave
is superior, we don't know why non
Wavers are bad. In real life it was
because The Wave wanted to spread
anti-democracy rhetoric and those
against The Wave obviously got in the
way of that, but in the film they don't
pose this as an anti democracy versus
democracy debate, but rather an anti
individualist versus individualist
debate, and in reality that's not how
Hitler or even Trump rose to power. They
rose to power by fear mongering, by
pointing to an "other" and saying that all
your problems will be solved if we just
eliminate them. The teacher in the film
never does that. The teacher never points
to non Wavers in the school and says
"This is why the schools going to shit!", 
but rather it happens by itself. In the
film, like in real life, The Wave has 
student leaders go after students who
are not in The Wave and enact violence
upon them. And maybe that does say
something about how power reveals rather
than it corrupts, and maybe it does say
something about how Nazism and fascism
spread. It's not that the film is bad, it's
just that it had to go farther than it
did, but for what it is it's OK. In fact, I
think that it's a really interesting
time capsule to see how pro-American and
pro-democracy we were during the Cold
War, while also blissfully ignoring that
genocide happened right here in America
under a "democracy". *cough* capitalist oligarchy *cough*
They do talk about how America was built
by groups, or gasp even worse, communities!!
"This country was built by people who
were part of a group. The Pilgrims,
Founding Fathers" *cough* slave owners *cough* So like
that's good. They do try to have these
talks about how communism can be
beneficial, like how they're getting
better grades, how even the "slow" kids are
keeping up, but in the end, communism and
community can
not exist with individualism and
democracy in the world of the film. The
film paints life as black and white with
no room for discipline and individuality
or community and being an individual,
when clearly both are possible. But by
the end of the film there is a good
message and that is to take individual
responsibility for your actions
and to not blindly follow a group. "You
traded your freedom for the luxury of
feeling superior. You accepted the
group's will over your own convictions
no matter who you heard." But that too
also becomes problematic. For a while
Nazis and German citizens were just seen
as sheeps of Hitler or brainwashed
victims, when in reality they were all
individuals who chose to uphold this
racist ideology and not do anything. And
that's the real scary part about them.
Not that they didn't have a mind of
their own and they were just blindly
following a group, but that they did have
minds of their own and this is what they
chose to do with their choices. So by the
end of the film, the teacher pulls the
plug on his project tells all his
students that they've been secretly
following Hitler all along and that he's
their real leader. And I'm like are you
really just gonna use Hitler as a
scapegoat? You're really not gonna own up
and say I'm sorry, this is my fault.
I'm sorry for putting you through this
trauma. You're just gonna use Hitler and
be like... "Oh yeah my project was really
smart. Look how stupid you all look!" But no, they're just all blind
followers of Hitler because they wanted
to be more disciplined and part of a
community. If anything The Wave does show
that bullying goes away with a sense of
community because as soon as the rally
is over and The Wave ends, Robert
realizes that he's gonna go back to
being the class creep again. And people
think he's creepy because he's a loner and
he reads comic books and sleeps in class,
but maybe he's not really a monster.
Maybe because you live under capitalism
and democracy you see him as one because
he doesn't want to be part of a group.
And because you don't want to be part of
a groupm ironically you're seen has even
more weird! And this is made even more
ironic considering that Robert was
probably the most individualistic
student out there, but under a democratic
and capitalistic society if you don't
desire to be part of a group then there
must be something wrong with you. And
then Robert himself feels wrong, so it's
like there's no winning for him under
any system. If he's under Nazism and
fascism he makes a good soldier, if he's
under democracy and capitalism he's weak
soft and a loner bullied kid. Stop
vilifying bully victims!! So now that I'm
thinking about this I guess it's okay to
be part of a group under democracy, but
being part of a group under fascism is
bad. Like I just don't get it. Robert is
seen as bad because he's a loner and not
part of any clique under capitalism, but
then when he becomes a leader under
fascism that's also bad.
What is this movie trying to say?? So
part four - Why I stopped worrying and
learned to love The Wave. So after shitting
on the wave for basically this entire
video, I do want to say that I still
think that it's worth watching and that
it's not bad. In fact, I feel like the
wave is more topical than ever now that
white supremacy and neo Nazism is a
thing. The Wave shows us that Nazis are
evil and shouldn't be admired, and that
anyone could become them. Anyone can be
complicit in bullying and in fact some
of the characters are, but they don't do
anything or question their actions and- 
I'm getting off track again I'm sorry.
So just trust me when I say this - I like The Wave. 
I think as a kid you wonder
who could have done these things and you
know it's people like us.
"Nazism brought to you by people like you!"
As a kid that's a powerful message, but
as an adult in 2019 I'm kind of sick of
this whole "evil is banal" thing. Like
let's make evil evil again. Let's make it
terrible. :et's make it something that we
would never do or normalize because "Oh
yeah I'd probably do that if I was in
that situation."
NO, let's actually think about this and
be like "No. I wouldn't do that. I
wouldn't succumb to the banality of evil.
Evil is terrifying. Evil it's horrible
and I'm not evil and I wouldn't do that.
I would stand up for injustice." And I
think if we change this mindset of "evil
is banal to evil is terrible and not
normal" it would help us fight against it
when we see it.
So part five... You're secretly following
Hitler and you didn't even know it, did
you? So there's a few movies that have
this "you're secretly following Hitler"
twist, but The Wave is the only one
that does it well because it actually
makes sense.
In the 2007 mess that is Freedom Writers, 
the teacher drops this bomb that says
that the gangs of color, who are
disenfranchised in society, are basically
Nazis.
"Alright, alright, so what you're saying is if the Latinos weren't here or the Cambodians
or the blacks
or the whites or whoever "they" are. If
they weren't here everything would be
better for you isn't that right?"
"Right...It starts with the drawing like
this."
And it's like..wHaT?
"You don't know nothing."
Like wouldn't have been awkward
if there was a skinhead in the class? So
next we have Game of Thrones, whose
ending was that Danny was secretly
Hitler all along and you cheered her on too!
"Look how stupid you all look for liking
and taking part in her evil deeds of...
killing slave masters??" Yeah you really
showed us... So this trope only makes sense
in The Wave honestly because The Wave is
clearly set up as an allegory for Hitler
Youth, Nazism, fascism, communism, whatever
evil thing that America hates at the
time, and so yeah it makes sense that
Hitler would be their leader, maybe not
in the sense of real life with the
teacher, but in the sense you know that
this is an allegory, this is art, and yeah
you know it's a pretty big punch in the
gut when you first see it, especially if
you're a kid. So part six - JoJo
Rabbit exists and I hate it. So why is
The Wave it's still important today? Well
like I said before, Nazism and
white supremacy is still real and still
flowing through the veins of America, so
that's why it's still so important
because it at least shows that Nazism
and fascism or whatever is still evil.
Hitler is still a bad person. And now
that we have this other movie JoJo 
Rabbit, a coming-of-age story about a
Hitler Youth Child realizing that Jewish
people aren't the scum of the earth because
this one makes me feel things that I
shouldn't, it's just like why??? Why do we
need this? Why do we need to sympathize
with Nazis? Honestly and I know it's just
the trailer, and today
it's really hard to judge movies by
their trailer, and you shouldn't judge
them when we buy a trailer bla bla bla,
but I still think that the trailer
itself can just be bad. Even
though Nazis probably can't take this
movie and reappropriate it, it's still
like...is this really the movie we need
right now? Like a sympathetic Hitler
Youth Boy? Like where the whole cast is
white because no one knows that biracial
people died in the Holocaust. And this is
really the only reason why Holocaust
movies even do well, and that's because they
exist in this bubble where people of
color "didn't exist", so it's like this
white utopia where white people can be
the heroes and the villains. So it's just
like really stupid how this movie is
gonna exist and how you know, it's so
"edgy" and people think that you know it
"has something to say". I know didn't come
out yet, but sorry I'm not planning to
see it. I really don't think that this is
the movie we need right now honestly, and
yeah you know movies aren't gonna always
be what we need, maybe this is the movie
we deserve, but like whatever. You know
fuck this movie. That's why The Wave is
awesome because it says fuck Nazis, we
don't like you, we don't want to be you,
we don't empathize with you, and
that's why we need to continue to watch
The Wave, even though it's ideology it's
really all over the place, it still
important because it says fuck Nazis.
