no, i mean this social experiment started by a history teacher in calofornia in 1967
im Intrigued
it’s creepy not so much like paranormal but as in it’s a scary look at human nature. hang on a sec ill explain it
alright so. in 1967, a new history teacher at Cubberly High School in Northern California named Ron Jones was teaching his class about the Holocaust and Hitler’s rise to power. At some point during the lesson, many of his students began to ask why the rest of Germany had stood by and done nothing, and how afterwards they could have said they didn’t know. Many said that they would never allow something like that to happen, but most simply couldn’t understand how the population had allowed it back then. This made Ron curious: what was the answer? Why had so many Germans joined and tolerated the Nazis as their neighbors were dragged away? He realized there was no way of knowing, not without being there, and certainly no way of teaching it – unless, maybe, they could experience something similar.
The next day, Ron came in and began to command his class differently than usual. He had stricter rules, making students stand when asking or answering questions and having them fix their posture. He said it was a lesson on discipline and the phrase “strength through discipline” was written on the board.
The students, shockingly responded positively to the stricter rules; it was as if they had just been waiting for this and wanted more. They worked as a team and answered questions correctly, even sitting quietly until Ron dismissed them at the end of class.
In the next two days, the phrases “strength through community” and “action” appeared on the board. Ron announced to the class that their new rules and ideas were now the cornerstones of the group called the Wave. Their mottos were the three phrases on the board, and he introduced them to a salute (made by curling one’s right hand into the shape of a wave and tapping one’s left shoulder with it). The kids practiced both the motto and the salute that day.
Everything was going well in this experiment: Ron was increasingly seen as an incredibly important leader, the kids were being more well behaved, they were ahead in their studies, all good things, so Ron decided to continue the Wave. In class, he gave the students Wave membership cards, some of which had red x’s on the back. The x’s indicated that those people were to monitor the other members of the Wave and report directly to Ron if someone broke a rule.
Additionally that day, Ron gave the instruction to recruit members to the Wave; all were invited and all were equal in the Wave.
And recruit they did.
Later that week, there were over 200 members of the Wave. The pep rally became an official Wave rally where dozens of new members were sworn in. As the group grew, most everyone joined. However, if someone did not join, they were likely to find themselves very alone and possibly being threatened or hurt by Wave members.
By the 5th day, Ron knew things had spiraled out of control. He had grown into a mythical leader, and the students carried out his orders without hesitation, even if these orders never existed in the first place and were grown from within the Wave. He decided to tell the students that there would be a televised announcement of the Wave’s candidate announcement for the presidential election, and that all members should attend the rally later that day.
When they arrived, the hundreds of students were greeted with a blank screen and Ron. He told them the true nature of the Wave; how it had been born as an experiment that had grown exponentially until he had to end it. The students were shocked, and some even cried. They had all believed in the Wave wholeheartedly after just 5 short days.
The Wave is terrifying because it is real. Not so long ago, a history teacher fresh out from college was able to turn a school into a military state in just 5 days. We as humans are so easily led into fascist dictatorships and we so rarely question what goes on around us. The Wave is a testament to that, and a scary one.
There’s a really great German film of the same name (“Die Welle” – The Wave) based on this experiment – rather than stopping after 5 days however, the teacher lets it continue and things get much, MUCH worse. It’s a terrifying movie, but fascinating too.
Die Welle is an incredibly well done film, fans of Sense8 will recognise Marco being played by the guy who plays Woolfgang.
However it is a deeply disturbing film, just be warned.
Honestly this shit won’t “teach” you anything about the holocaust in PARTICULAR. Like here’s the two immediate reasons why you should know this premise is entirely faulty from the start, and why this film is a waste of time @choking-onholywater:
1.) The fact that Germany had fostered literal centuries of violent (and deadly) antisemitism (and anti-roma sentiment) prior to the Holocaust is not ONCE mentioned in this teacher’s “experiment” – or at least you never mentioned it in your summary.
2.) The teacher assumes that average Germans (aka only Gentile, non-Jewish or non-Roma Germans) all “didn’t know.” This is patently, historically false. Like it’s so false it’s insulting. Germans knew. They were well aware! And they didn’t feel outraged because for non-roma gentile Germans they for the most part A.) didn’t care (as long as it wasn’t them) or B.) actively encouraged or celebrated it it.
Guess what guys? If your explanation of “how the holocaust happened” doesn’t immediately and primarily begin with “centuries of entrenched/systemic antisemitism and anti-roma violence,” then your explanation doesn’t actually explain the Holocaust, all it does it explain behaviors of large groups subjected to peer pressure.
Let me just repeat: If you’re not studying or learning about antisemitism and anti-roma sentiment as a primary factor for the Holocaust, then you’re not really learning about how the Holocaust happened.
And let me tell you, it seems scary to think “oh people didn’t know, people can be fooled or ignorant and led to terribleness like a fascist regime,” but the true fucking horror is knowing that people knew very well what was going on.
Germany in the third Reich wasn’t “surprised” by the existence of death camps and the Final Solution.
The warning signs for the Holocaust weren’t just “increased rules and regulations” or “slogans and salutes.” The Germans weren’t just eager teenagers or school children, they weren’t unaware or ignorant. They hated Jewish people violently. That’s it! That’s the answer. They didn’t have a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 just because they wanted to “follow the rules” guys. They had it because they hated Jews.
Like you need to understand that this is the most asinine and useless way to teach the holocaust, because the quote unquote warning signs were clear as fucking day, and yes, that means German gentiles ignored or supported it.
A sampling of actual warning signs (Just Jewish specific, I could go on forever):
April 25th, 1933: Law Against Overcrowding of Public Schools and Universities targets Jewish students by restricting the number of Jewish students in public schools.
October 4th – Non-Aryan people are banned from Journalism positions.
Pause to note: this is all before Hitler technically becomes President of Germany in 1934, and then subsequently becomes dictator.
1935:
September 15th –Nuremberg Race laws, which “consisted of two pieces of legislation: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.”
[Note: August 1st opens the Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany.]
1937:
July 15 – Buchenwald Camp opens.
Nov. 8th – Antisemitic art exhibition put on by Government at the library of the German Museum in Munich.
1938:
Germany “annexes” Austria in March.
By August, “A new German law requires Jews bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin to adopt an additional name: “Israel” for men and “Sara” for women.”
On October 5th, all German-Jewish passports are declared invalid: “The Reich Ministry of the Interior invalidates all German passports held by Jews. Jews must surrender their old passports, which will become valid only after the letter “J” has been stamped on them.”
November 9th, German occupied Austria – Kristallnacht. “In a nationwide pogrom called Kristallnacht, members of the Nazi Party and other Nazi formations burn synagogues, loot Jewish homes and businesses, and kill at least 91 Jews.”
November 12th: A new German decree closes all Jewish-owned businesses.
Like hey guys? By this point, Germany hadn’t yet invaded Poland. Germany hadn’t begun to systematically establish Jewish ghettos. (This happens in 1939.) Mobile-killing units targeted Jewish communities in 1941. That fall, they introduced gas vans. 1941 was when Operation Reinhard was implemented, and if you don’t know what that is, take a look.
This movie doesn’t sound terribly helpful when it doesn’t address that like, for six whole years, German gentiles didn’t mind systematically targeting Jewish Germans in the name of the law.
It’s not helpful if the warning signs aren’t like “utterly dehumanizing a group of people and also murdering 91 of them.”
If you want an actual take on the rising “waves” of antisemitism that led to the Holocaust, operation reinhard, the final solution, etc, then please read something about the Holocaust specifically. My recommendation as a good starting point is Victor Klemperer’s journal, published in English asI will Bear Witness: A diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941. (The second half covers 1942-1945).Victor occupied a unique position in Nazi germany – he was an ethnically Jewish man, but had converted to Christianity and married an “ayran” woman, which kept him “safe” for much longer than other German Jews, until he too becomes targeted. He was also a Professor, at the time. His journals chronicle the loss of his rights, his property, the reactions of gentile germans around him, the fear and tension that grows.
The fact that people were willing to look the other way.
You know those hilarious “cowardly Knock Out” moments, where we see KO screaming hysterically and ducking for cover in the face of something that may or may not be an actual threat?
Those don’t begin, in the show, until after he’s run over by a train on a mission immediately following Breakdown’s death.
That’s not cowardice, that’s trauma, pass it on.
i don’t think it’s the train. he seemed mostly annoyed by it… i think it has more to do with megatron abusing him as a replacement for starscream
I don’t know how to explain to goyim that calling out anti-Semitism is not about hurt feelings or crocodile tears and everything to do with the fear of history repeating itself in the form of angry mobs hellbent on attacking Jewish people.
I don’t know how to explain that I am not calling Jay-Z out because I want to silence Black artists; I’m calling him out because I’m genuinely afraid that his false accusation about Jews owning all the property in America will result in people across the nation blaming Jews for the evils of the world and then inciting pogroms (violent mob attacks) against Jewish people.
I don’t know how to explain that I’m not calling out CDM because I don’t care about the liberation of Palestinians; I’m calling them out because I’m worried that if we allow non-Jews to police our beliefs and define for us what our ancient symbols mean, that it could ultimately lead to any displays of public Jewishness being deemed questionable or offensive, which could eventually end in violence against any Jews who are openly Jewish at public events.
I don’t know how to explain to goyim that nearly every Jewish person in the world either grew up with a relative who had to flee their home in the middle of the night because of this type of violence, or they actually experienced this trauma themselves. I don’t know how to tell them that this is an ingrained trauma in almost every existing Jewish family, and that it has been repeated every few generations across the globe since we entered the Diaspora nearly 2,000 years ago.
I don’t know how to explain that when people say almost the exact types of things that were shouted at my relatives by white Russian nationalists as they burned their villages to the ground that it doesn’t matter if you say you’re a progressive or an anti-racist, or you’re also marginalized in some way, because all I hear are the same words people have said to Jews for centuries before physically assaulting them, and I’m worried you’re going to eventually going to assault me, too.
I don’t know how to explain that if goyim read our history they might understand that we Jews have been used as scapegoats for the world’s evils everywhere on the planet from Lithuania to Ethiopia, and that regardless of our standing in society or our level of assimilation, that it’s always ended with our expulsion or murder or both.
I don’t know how to explain that I’m not trying to be petty or “take up space in the movement,” or draw attention away from other causes, but that I’m only asking for you to examine your words and actions now, while I still hope there’s time to pull out the seeds of anti-Semitism that have been planted, because I am literally afraid that if I don’t, you or somebody like you will ultimately be at my doorstep shouting “It’s their fault! Get them! Kill the Jews!”
I don’t know how to explain that I’m afraid you might believe the vitriol behind your words one day enough to kill me.
me and my (female!) friend were talking about our dream careers & so, and she said she hopes her husband’s job will be enough to support their family because “it’s not a woman’s place to work outside” so I jokingly said – “well, next you’ll say it’s not a woman’s place to learn to read & write either” and she actually said “ oh no, she should so that her husband won’t find talking to her boring”. when I tried to tell her that a woman should have worth even without a husband I got a lecture on what “a failure of a woman” I am, and how “foolish and childish” I sound and… I just had to leave before I blew up. I thought I knew her! literally what. the. hell. girl….
So I’ve had a little bee in my bonnet over the non-Jews who refuse to accept that Jewishness is more than just being a person who follows Judaism as a faith. Who deny that Jewishness is also about ethnicity. And I could talk about where Jews came from, and our insular communities and bloodline traditions that connect us all the way back to before we were forced out into the diaspora, but a lot of people overlook that.
Instead, I’m going to do something different.
This is for everyone to reblog if they’d like to show that Jews have never just been “white people” or random people that followed Judaism. I present to you the historical antisemitism that very few either know about or want to acknowledge.
“Gentiles only.”
“It is hereby represented that the makers and signers of this lease are of Aryan descent and the lessee does hereby agree that he or she/and/or they will not ask to sublet this apartment to anyone of Semitic descent.”
[Link for easier reading.] TL:DR; the secretary of the golf club denied that there was a sign that said Jewish players were banned at the entrance – and that the signs were only in the locker room and the office. The signs read: “After June 20th this club will be operated for Gentile patronage only.”
“Privileges of the swimming pool are extended only to approved gentiles.”
“Gentiles only.”
“Gentiles only” and “Members & guests limited to gentiles of North European ancestry.”
This is just a small selection.
It wasn’t “Christians only.” It was antisemitism due to us being seen as a separate – and unwanted – ethnicity.
This is exactly why I say that the “But being Jewish is just about religion!” arguments are both moot and hurtful.
Antisemitism may have started because of religious in-fighting, but the majority of antisemitism hasn’t been like that for a long, long time. And just because some non-Jews find it hard to wrap their heads around Jewishness being about ethnicity too, that doesn’t mean that our ethnicity magically disappears.
Antisemitic non-Jews were the ones that enforced how different and separate we both were and still are. And we’re not going to allow non-Jews to strip us of our identity just because we happen to look a certain way today – black, white, Asian, Arab or whatever else. It’s just not going to happen.
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