The potential to revolutionize our society is present in our children, if we will only tap into it.

by Kevin Alfred Strom and Jeff Hilton (American Dissident Voices broadcast for April 30, 2006 listen to the broadcast)

BACK IN 1967 a very strange thing happened in a high school history classroom in California. Something amazing. Something that turned the then-emerging “me generation” on its head — and showed us how we could have a real youth revolution, a White youth revolution, instead of the synthetic destruction-of-youth revolution we got instead. Something that was intended to be a “lesson against hate” — but which quickly turned into a demonstration of something quite different indeed.

To tell you about this amazing event, first I’m going to turn the microphone over to long-time public school teacher and National Vanguard writer Dr. Jeff Hilton who will tell us the very compelling story of The Third Wave. Then I’ll return and reveal to you some of the very surprising facts that have come to light since Mr. Hilton recorded his talk. Dr. Hilton begins by telling us that students naturally seek out real leadership, inspiring ideals, true discipline, and rational order — though those are things that they all too seldom receive from our school system today:

‘I’ve come to realize that these kids are really searching for something. They’re searching for order. The potential for this was brought out very very graphically by something called The Third Wave that happened in California’s Cubberly High School. Some of you may have heard about it. There was a TV program about it that essentially said “Oh no, this can’t happen in a liberal high school.” But it did.

‘It happened at Cubberly High School in Palo Alto, California. Remember, this was the height of the “do your own thing” Haight-Ashbury movement — you know, Janis Joplin and that kind of stuff… Big Brother and the Holding Company. That crazy Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were running around with their yellow bus, sipping LSD, and all that “groovy” stuff… the Doors, et cetera.’

‘And a man by the name of Ron Jones was a liberal teacher out there in Palo Alto. They didn’t believe in bells and they didn’t believe in textbooks. But they were talking about “the Holocaust” nonetheless.

‘This was on a Friday afternoon. And Mr. Jones, the teacher, was asked “Well, listen, Mr. Jones, if they really killed six million Jews, why was it that the German people just stood around and did nothing? I mean, they could have seen the trains, they could have seen the smoke, the bones… I mean, they could have seen something. Why didn’t they try to stop it?” And Jones didn’t know. You know, being a good liberal, the lobotomized front part of his brain just shut off when he heard that. He didn’t have an answer.

‘So what he decided to do after he went home that day was to show these kids how easy it is to become a cog in a totalitarian machine. Supposedly, I mean — this was his outlook.

‘On Monday morning he came into his classroom and began his experiment. Remember, these are 10th graders — about 14 years old, probably. All White. All affluent. And all freaky — with the long hair and all the rest of it.

‘He started off by saying, “Now kids, what I’m going to do for the first time is I’m going to lecture.” And they all reacted by saying things like “Lecture? Man, that’s not cool.”

‘So he replied “No, I’m just going to talk to you… about The Beauty of Discipline and Strength Through Discipline.

‘”Now look: Athletes have to work hard, don’t they, in order to run a nine-second hundred? How about a dedicated scientist? You know that scientist has to work really, really hard in order to develop that new idea. How about a ballet dancer perfecting his or her movements?

‘”Listen: I think what we ought to do, as I talk about Strength Through Discipline, is sit properly. Now everybody in this class” — and they were slouched over terribly — “just sit up straight. Now doesn’t that feel better?”

‘He said “Now put your hands out to the front of the desk. Isn’t that more comfortable? Now put your feet flat on the floor, instead of trying to kick your neighbor. Doesn’t that feel better? Can’t you think better? Aren’t you better reposed that way?”

‘And he said “Strength Through Discipline is going to take self training, through control, into the power of the will.”

‘He said “That’s the ultimate triumph that we can have: power through the will.”

‘And he went on to demonstrate that through a simple seating exercise. He had everyone line up against the wall and then quickly return to their seats, in the same position. And everyone kind of liked it. I quote him: “It was strange how quickly the students took to the uniform code of behavior. I began to wonder just how far they could be pushed. Was this display of obedience a momentary game we were all playing, or was it something else? Was the desire for discipline and uniformity a natural need?” — I’ll tell Mr. Jones right now, it is, as a teacher, I can see it –“Was it a societal instinct we hide within our franchise restaurants and TV programming?”

‘So, on the next day, Tuesday, he came in and he said “You know, we can not only gain Strength Through Discipline in ourselves, but we can also gain Strength Through Discipline within our community.” And he talked about Community as a bond between individuals who work and struggle together: It’s raising a barn with your neighbors. It’s feeling you’re a part of something that is beyond yourself. A movement. A team.

‘”And it’s funny, you know,” Mr. Jones said, “but learning became crisp and attentive.” Soon everyone in the class began popping up with answers to questions. The involvement level increased — from a few who had always contributed, to the entire class.

‘He decided on Tuesday to create a class salute. The salute was a cupped hand — now to us in the Midwest, that doesn’t mean anything… it’s like you’re catching a fly ball or something. But on the West Coast, it has a meaning of waves coming into a beach. And these kids were surfer kids. They hung around Redondo Beach and Muscle Beach and Topanga Canyon and places like that.

‘So Jones showed them the salute and he told them that “The Third Wave is always the hardest wave to hit the beach. And that’s the one that the surfers like to catch. The Third Wave. So we’ll be the Third Wave. We’ll be the strongest wave to hit this beach. Waves travel in chains. They go together. We’ll be the third, the strongest, of all the waves.”

‘You know, colored folks have this “hand jive” stuff which they use as a kind of greeting. It breeds community and compatibility for them to go down the street slapping palms and doing whatever they do. So Jones was giving something like that to these White kids in his World History class. They would walk down the halls of their school, giving the Third Wave salute to their other class members. Now they didn’t give that salute to everybody in the school, just the members of their own class.

‘On Wednesday, Jones issued identification cards with The Third Wave on them. He lectured on The Meaning of Action. He said “I explained how discipline and community were meaningless without action. I discussed the beauty of taking full responsibility for one’s actions; of believing so thoroughly in yourself and your community and your family” — and your race, though he didn’t say that — “that you’ll do anything to preserve, protect, or extend that being.”

‘”I stressed how hard work in alliance with others would allow accelerated learning and accomplishment — and it did in the classroom. Performance and academic skills were significantly improved. They were learning more. And they liked it. And they took part in it.”

‘Wednesday night the rabbi called when Jones got home. He said “Mr. Jones, what are you doing to my kids? I’ve had many conversations with parents, and they don’t like this… what is it? …this Third Wave thing. It looks like a Nazi salute.” Jones said, “Now listen, Finkelbaum, I’m just messing with their minds. I’m going to stomp on them. All I’m doing is just showing them how easy it is to become a Fascist.”

‘”Ah, very good Mr. Jones,” the rabbi replied, “It’s a very good example of this Nazi Fascism. Thank you very much.” And he hung up. So he had the rabbi in his pocket.

‘But Jones didn’t know what to do with this. He didn’t understand that he had gotten the groundswell. He had touched a nerve in the Whites. He had explained that you had to have discipline through community; he’d issued the ID cards; performance was significantly improved by Wednesday. And it started to snowball on him.

‘Thursday he talked about pride. He said “Pride is more than banners or salutes. Pride is something no one can take from you. Pride is knowing that you’re the best. And it can’t be destroyed.” I’ll quote him: “In slow, melodic tones I explained that what was behind the Third Wave wasn’t an experiment or classroom activity — it was far more important than that. The Third Wave is a nationwide program” — now remember, he’s telling this to his students — “to find students who are willing to fight for political change in this country. That’s right: This activity we’ve been doing hasn’t been practice for the real thing. It is the real thing. Across the country, teachers like myself have been recruiting and training youth capable of showing pride and action. We can change the destiny of this nation.” He told this to these kids. “We can bring in a new sense of order, community, pride, and action. A new purpose. Everything rests with you and your willingness to take a stand.”

‘And he told that to those kids. A week before, if he’d done that, he would have been booted out of class.

‘On Friday he said “What’s going to happen is we’re going to go to the auditorium, and we’ll meet the national leader. The national leader will be on television. We’ll see him on television and we tell us exactly what to do.” On Friday, there wasn’t a set left in the auditorium. And here’s what happened.

‘Jones made a very big issue out of taking the TV set — it was a portable TV set — and plugging it in to the auditorium’s AV system, and just letting it sit there, turned on but with no signal. He had tuned it between channels, and all you could see was fuzzy snow on the screen. And he just left it there, and closed the kids up in the auditorium.

‘After about five minutes, a girl shrieked out: “There’s no leader!” And she started to cry. And the entire audience started to cry and yell. And they broke up the TV set. They almost, to use the vernacular, trashed the place.

‘What Jones did, I think, was despicable. He played with the most basic thoughts and emotions of these 14- and 15-year-old kids.

‘But we can still take heart at what Jones did at the beginning. Because, believe me, that potential is within most White kids, especially with busing and integration. So that’s the Third Wave.’

In 1972 — that is, five years after the experiment — Jones published one version of these events in an article in The Whole Earth Catalog, which has been reprinted several times. The story’s also been retold, even by Jones himself, in slightly different versions and in different venues. Recent research indicates that the event did indeed happen, though Jones apparently embellished it a bit to make for a better story. The entire movement supposedly blossomed in just five days — which seems a bit farfetched. And some of the embellishments that Jones and colleagues have added in recent years — including “secret police,” trials, and “enforcer gangs” — make the five-day time frame even less likely. Nevertheless, the testimony of students indicate the experiment did take place and — most significantly to us — did result in an astonishing and positive response from the White students organized, disciplined, and inspired to work for the good of their community.

Dr. Hilton, in his talk, was relying for most of his information on one of Jones’s own versions of events. The Third Wave story has even been made into a young adult novel and film. It’s Jones’s main claim to fame, and, I think, its success is only partly due to the compelling story — part also has to be due to the “anti-hate” aspect which the media and the Jewish supremacists find very useful indeed.

(ILLUSTRATION: A promotional picture of Ron Jones. The creator of the Third Wave experiment, Jones has all the aspects of a carnival showman and faker. But, in the process of lying, he stumbled onto something very important.)

Jones, in fact, after being fired from the high school and working for years as a Special Olympics sports coach and PE director, has been in the process of making something of a career out of his decades-old experiment. A recent video blurb blubbers: “…churches, temples and Jewish organizations nationwide have used this video to stimulate discussions on past religious persecutions, and reconcile and heal present displays of racism….”

In the process of self-promotion, Jones has recently told us he’s half-Jewish — “[t]he child of an interfaith marriage.” His official biography states: “Jones whose mother was Jewish, was not raised a Jew. His parents celebrated Christmas, ‘but we went to synagogue whenever the relatives came to town or for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs,’ he said. He credits his Jewish grandmother with influencing his interest in storytelling. ‘What I remember most about Jewish life is the dinner table and listening to her stories.'”

Philosopher Lyle Burkhead gives one possible explanation for Jones’s project: the inculcation of guilt in Whites — and the utilization of preexisting guilt in that task. He explains: “Most people have an uneasy feeling that they are guilty about something, but they aren’t sure what it is. It’s there, but they don’t want to bring it into full consciousness and identify it. Mr. Jones plays on that hidden guilt. That’s what gives the story its energy. He reframes our vague feeling of guilt and tells us we are secretly harboring hostile thoughts about the Jews, and we are in denial about it. There is no way to challenge this, except to acknowledge the feelings we really do feel guilty about, which would involve bringing things into consciousness that we don’t want to think about. So we accept his accusation, and pass it on to our children. Well done, Mr. Jones. Freud would be proud. Not to mention your grandmother.”

Burkhead — who has come to respect the Holocaust revisionists — adds:

‘There are reasons for questioning whether the most notorious part of the Holocaust happened, i.e., the gas chambers. Nevertheless everyone, including the revisionists, acknowledges the obvious fact that the Holocaust, in a general sense, did happen. Jews were rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps, where many of them died…. This is not in dispute.

‘What I do want to dispute is the alleged causal link. If we lead disciplined, purposeful lives, then we are going to end up killing Jews. If we find strength in discipline, strength in community, and strength in action, then we are going to end up killing Jews. If we “share fully in life,” as in the Wave… then we will end up killing Jews. That’s what we are supposed to believe. It’s not true.

‘In fact it’s so obviously absurd that I wonder how anyone could believe it. I also wonder why some people want us to believe it. Why is this so important to them? That’s the real puzzle.

‘Wait a minute… is it possible that I’m missing something here? Is it conceivable that they could be right after all? If we try to establish the Kingdom of God in our minds, and in our communities, then we will inevitably have to fight the Jews…?’

It looks to me like Burkhead and biocentric philosopher Steven Romer should get together, if they haven’t already.

When Ron Jones, the perennial storyteller and admitted hoaxer, tells us that he’s part-Jewish (something he never mentioned when the Wave story originally came out) in almost the same breath as he admits he’s been hired by and squired by (all over the world) several leading Jewish supremacist groups, I have to admit I am skeptical. But it may be true. In the end that doesn’t matter, because the real lesson of The Third Wave isn’t to be found in any “evils of fascism” homily.

The real lesson is that Jones tapped into something that White people need, especially White students in their formative teen years: a sense of community, of unity, of excellence, of peoplehood. Jones gave those children what Pepsi and Giorgio Armani and GQ and MTV can never give them. Even if Jones is a charlatan — even if he’s a one-trick pony working the crumb end of the Jewish supremacist theatre circuit — it doesn’t matter. He stumbled on something important, despite himself. Something that we as a people used to know, but have forgotten in these days of consumerism and racial death. It’s our job as men and women inspired with a vision of a future for White people to give back to our people, especially our young people, the feeling of purpose and of being part of something great, something eternal, that those kids in Jones’s class had for such a short time before he ground their dreams into dirt. We need to do it much better — and we can. We need to do it for real — and we can. And we need to do it on a much larger scale — and we can. Let us begin today.