Antifascist After School Special

You might have seen postwar antifascist public service announcement that made the rounds on the internet recently:

America has treated antifascist education the same way it’s treated basically all education on how to not be a monster of a human being: by meekly saying “hey, don’t do that” and expecting that to be enough. Considering the recent events that precipitated this going viral, we could do better.

In 1967 Ron Jones, a California high school teacher, decided to find out how long it would take to get his students on board with fascism. It took about a week. This experiment was dramatized into a cautionary tail and was prominently featured as one of ABC’s After School Specials. Circa 2002 I was in middle school and one of those teachers who is more trope than man showed it to us. I don’t know why I remember watching it but here we are. So, without further ado, I present Alexander Grassoff’s 1981 classic, The Wave:

Being twelve-ish at the time, I certainly didn’t have the best opinions about things and I, like presumably most people, was dismissive. At the time, it seemed unbelievable that nobody noticed that the day after learning about fascism the class suddenly became fascistic. The irony of saying “that can’t happen here” while watching a true story about people who said the same thing a week before practically goose stepping into a rally didn’t quite dawn on me.

But I suppose no one really takes those after school specials seriously anyway.

Interestingly enough, Ron Jones’s experiment has been dramatized several more times. In 2008, a feature length German film called Die Welle did fairly well for itself.

In 2010, Jones himself staged a musical called The Wave. He wrote it with some of his former students. That same year, the thirteenth season of Arthur debuted an episode titled “The Pride of Lakewood” loosely based on this story and it is fucking wild.

There should be more of this. More antifascist movies and musicals and cartoons. Take the threat of fascism seriously. Dismissiveness got us a president that wants to consider both sides to a Nazi terrorist attack.

And for anyone still saying that it can’t happen here and there’s no need to focus on antifascist education, here are some things to keep you up at night: