Yollo, everybody. Today we're talking about Christians blurring fascist lions. There's an
article at Religious and Religion News dot com by Karen Swallow titled for too many
Christians, the lions between dominionism, nationalism, and fascism are blurred, and
the author is concerned that people are taking their Christian and maybe a little too
far, and that maybe not only that, but that the people that are
part of it are kind of going along for the ride and not really thinking
critically about what their leaders are telling them to do. Cynthia, Yeah,
this is interesting. Specifically, one of the things that Karen mentioned was the
Wave experiment. Aaron, I know that you you know, did a little
diving into the wave experiment. You want to explain or to talk to our
audience about specifically what that was. Yeah. Sure. So there was a
teacher, I think it was I think it was high school, Yeah,
where his class was very confused, like how could people go along with the
Nazi Party in Germany? How can people didn't stand up stand up against it?
And so he started a little experiment, you know, he started them
one day, uh, you know, writing a slogan on the wall.
But he was it was said strength through discipline, and he gave some rules
about how you're supposed to stand up straight and be quiet, how you're supposed
to behave and and some other you know, strict rules. Well, by
the next day he showed up a class and I guess these students took it
very seriously, and they were they were they were even though it wasn't supposed
to happen next day and he didn't ask them too. They were still standing
up straight and following the rules, and so that the teacher kind of took
it a little bit further. And it was this point I was starting to
think, Um, somebody needs to have a talk with the teacher, because
I think he took this maybe a little too far. But then the second
day is when you know, he rolled. He put on another slogan on
the board. This time I think it was strength through community. And and
then he gave this movement a name called the third wave, which is a
reference to in surfing. He was a surfer, and in reference in surf,
servers believe that the every third wave is the most powerful wave. Not
sure that's true or not. He created a salute similar to the Nazi salute,
kind of uncomfortable, and then they were supposed to class members were supposed
to salute each other, and they had to recruit their friends. And the
third day he had another slogan, strength through action, and I believe that's
the day when he recruited. He silently recruited people to start informing on their
students right where ever, to put their head down, and he randomly chose
some students to be basically the Gestapo, the secret police, and those those
members could accuse anybody of anything, and at the start of the class,
the teacher would say, well, this so and so has been accused of
such and such, and the class had to vote on whether or not the
charges were true and things like that, and this got taken really, really
far. And at one point one of the students follow was acting as a
bodyguard to teacher who walked into the teachers lodges and the teachers were like,
dude, get out of here. You're a student, and they replied,
I'm not a student, I'm a bodyguard. So these students they really this
is over three days, and finally on the fourth day he had an assembly
where he brought everybody together and he said there was going to be a national
broadcast where this third wave was actually gonna be rolled out across the country and
people were going to be a part of it. And it turns out that's
when he revealed that this has all been something he just made up, wasn't
real. And I'm not sure how he made the point to his students,
rough if they kind of figured out themselves that, oh, we were wondering
why things happened like this in Nazi Germany, and we kind of felt susceptible
to them ourselves. We didn't really stand up when all this this this fascist
rhetoric and behavior and authoritarism was going on in our classroom. So point to
take it, man, Yeah, I don't know when I was reading about
the experiment and I was seeing like this happened on day one, this happened
on day two, and then like how in less than one week this whole
experiment blew up to actually show how fascism worked. So taking this particular point
about the wave experience and even some I don't know if there's like a certain
findings or observations, Um, I'm curious to know from I'm gonna ask tale
and I want to and then you Aaron, how do you see that specifically
in let's just say, like the American politics, and how specifically about like
I don't know if I can say like Crystal fascists or Krystal nationalists are behaving.
Now we'll storry. Yeah, sure, I'll ask the Latino cartoon what
he thinks about the USA politics. If you want something interesting, No,
no, we don't want to know. We don't want to know, Okay,
So I to learn about this the Wave thing experiment. I learned something
interesting. There was another wave in twenty o eight, and I had to
check this. They one from nineteen eighty one was actually a mini movie for
TV. Something interesting that I learned, And I decided to check how the
movie can compare to nowadays USA politics, and I probably would what happened after
the end of Obama's administration, and you know why, there is a pot
There were some published movements that appeared in the movie The Wave. It delves
into the lure of authoritarism and how published movement can emerge. Similarly, in
the political landscape of the United States, there were some instances of pubulist movements
that started gaining traction, and suddenly there was an orange guy in the Oval
office. It was weird. And then you start checking about more things that
happened, such as polarization and this division, polarization and division between the country,
reaction to change those lessons about vigils that Aaron said, well, we
have talked about some stuff that are like, okay, this is all right,
but they happened under this democratic government in the USA. And then what
really worries me is that, as Aaron said, suddenly the teacher had a
bodyguard protecting him. Students kind of form mea coats around him. And I
have talked about the coat to Trump before, how dangerous it is, how
it was getting out of control, and how it nowadays it keeps going on
and apparently they want to, you know, they one certain guy back in
power. Another important thing that I could compare between the movie and the USA
are the appeals to authority. I don't know, but that guy that I
was mentioning now is being investigated, research and there are specific codes that are
ready to take guns and start shooting people if this guy goes to jail because
of the crimes that he committed. And all of this is based on a
sense of unity and belonging because they believe that they are victims and they are
part of this big group, and actually they are turning into a big group,
and they are very susceptible to group thinking, and they create this ask
versus the mentality. So the whole country that is not part of their code
is against them, and they follow this very charismatic leader. Once again,
charismatic leadership part of the movie, part of what happens in the USA,
sadly, and all of these create recipe for disaster. And if you remember
in the end of course, things got out of control at school, didn't
didn't You guys had like an attack in the capital because of something like this
that got out of control because a certain guy who lost didn't want you didn't
watch up said that he lost. Vaguely, I remember something happening around in
January. Do you think it was the six six comes to mind? Yeah,
yeah, love man like to begin twenty twenty one, something like that.
I can't remember a little because I was still kind of skinny, so
you know, I remember that time a little well, it was a little
hullabalue, little scuffle. We always remember our skinniest times, man. Man.
The deep irony, the deep irony of being a human being is that
we are social and deep and tribal at the same time. Yeah, you
would think that social creatures, it wouldn't matter. Let's talk, get together,
let's be Why can't we more like panobos? Right, they just get
together, have a good time, have sex, have good time. But
no, not not we are we social, but we're super super tribal.
And we formed these groups and we and we and we hate everybody that's not
part of our group and we demonize them and we and we can do and
we're capable of doing terrible things. This wave experiment is not an isolated incident.
There was the Stanford prison experiment where the some Standford researchers puts up some
students in charge of other people's guards, and other people were assigned to be
prisoners, and they were kind of going through the motions of being and prisoners
and guards, and they had to stop the experiment because the guards were doing
things that they were out of control. And then there's another teacher. There's
a Frontline PBS documentary called A Class Divided that you can fund on YouTube about
a teacher who's trying to illustrate the how terrible racism is and she chose to
use eye color. Yeah, and so and so if you had if you
had brown eyes, you couldn't know. You couldn't you didn't have certain privileges.
And she would say really derogatory things about about people with brown eye all
those brown eye peoples, they're not as smart, all those brown peels.
They don't deserve this. And it didn't in this case, it didn't get
out of hand, but it really kind of opened the eyes as some of
the students like, it's not cool just because I have brown eyes that,
uh, you think this about me? And some of the kids these are
like this is elementary middle school kids. These are young kids, and they
were saying things like, yeah, because she was saying bad things about me,
I started to think that those bad things were true. Yeah, I
think that I think that actually was. She was disparaging blue eyes. So
she separated people who have brown eyes blue eyes. Yeah, and the blue
eyed people were like the terrible you know, horrible people, and she disparaged
them. And then afterwards, you know, she's like, how do you
really feel like She's like, oh, man, I started to believe what
she said, but it's she's like, oh, those blue eyed people like
it sounds like it seemed to like she really believed what she was saying that
it was quite chilling, you you know. And it's kind of funny because,
like I think that uh, recently, um, I forgot specifically what
the rally was called, but Trump was invited to a to address a certain
rally. I think it was like this moment, you know, the moment
is now rally something like that. Don't don't get me the long end.
Look it up, y'all. He was at a rally. He addressed it,
and and one of the things that he was saying is that, you
know, we're going to basically get rid of the the arsonists, the leftist,
the social de Marxist um, the in the atheist. Yes people us
us, we we gone out of here, you know. And it's and
it's kind of interesting because like I think about, like all of a sudden,
how Trump kind of became Christian per se more so was like, you
know, to help advance a political career. Not necessarily because it is this
something that his disbelief. I don't know, I'm not necessarily in his head,
but I you know, I would conjecture that his lifestyle per se is
antithetical to what Christian lifestyles supposedly supposed to be. And I would and I
would, and because of what my observation is, I would say that you
probably have more in common with the atheist than not, you know. But
at the same time, I think that one of the things that the Wave
Experiment in some of these other experiments possibly discounted a little bit, is or
maybe they kind of showed it's the power of propaganda, you know, Like
you mentioned, Aaron, when Jane Elliott did her blue Eye brown Eye versus
Brown Eye experiment and how she continued to say these disparaging things to the Blue
Eye people and to the point where some of them actually started to believe the
things that she was saying, you know. Or when in the Wave experiment,
when he was constantly emphasizing to them on day one, how to you
know, put themselves in this particular posture, sit up straight, stand up
straight, to the point where they were carrying it over to the next day
because this was constantly being propagated to them. And I think that we can't
completely discount how that happens in this whole area to why these particular fascist sensibilities
coupled with Christian beliefs start to pop up. Um, I'm curious. You
know, what do you guys think about what I just said? Um,
Aaron, I'll start with you and then Teo. Yeah, I'm just wanting
we're even as atheists, we're not immune to stuff like this. We're still
human, right, So how do we innoculate ourselves against these kinds of uh,
these these very um outgoing and uh what's the word. I'm looking for
people that are super charming, charismatic people. You know, we want to
belong so badly and we could, we could easily get sucked into charismatic people.
That's why they're still conars and and people to take advantage of this.
That's why spam works and crank calls work and all that stuff. Because we
want to be long and we don't want to be looked down upon. We
want to be accepted. And I just I don't I'm not I'm not of
human behavior experts, so I don't. I don't know if I have the
answer how we prevent this ourselves from being taken advantage of this way? Tell
do you have any ideas? Yes? And actually, this is one of
the reasons why many atheists who by the way, this applies only to atheists
who used to be hardcore Christians and then they became atheists because they had to
apply a lot of logical thinking and critical thinking skills. Therefore, now they
have more protection against the scamps and against the culti mentality because once that you
start applying critical thinking, you start analyzing the things that surround you before you
just go and accept it. Sorry, this is going to not totally inoculate
you, but you're going to start seeing the red flags. You're going to
start realizing, a, I left religion because I saw these this and these
bad things, and now I'm seeing these this and these other bad things in
here. And all of this comes from education. And actually, I think
that one of the reasons why the Seven Mountains and the education is the most
important part of them all is because when you educate people, you teach them
how to think, not what you think. They inocurate themselves against this group
mentality or not total innocurately, but they are aware of that. So it's
harder for them to just go and blindly accept the things that the majority says
or the charismatic leader sense says. And that's why religious groups attack so much
education. And that's why I think that education is going to be the strongest
point that you people should try to fix over there in the USA, because
I have seen and whenever I come here, I see some new attack.
Education teachers being fired for teaching the truth, teachers being fired for teaching art,
teachers being fired for saying that racism is bad and it's awful that you
cannot teach real historical students because that goes against some feelings. You cannot explain
how science works because that goes against their religion. You cannot talk even about
I don't know, basic staff, such a social behavior because that's progressive,
or sexual education because oh no, the want our children to do things in
the bedroom like no. So I think that you're thinking of fixing in negations
is what the USA should be doing. Because I've said it before, and
I would say it again. You would say, you scare me, you
scare me, I love you, know, Um, it's actually a bit
of the opposite tale. They're teaching you what to think, not how,
and one of the things that, yeah, that is a problem and one
of the things that should be taught in schools. I advocated for it.
Even one of our fellow nonprofits, shout out to Cindy plaza Is, also
pushes this even with her channel, The Path to Reason about how to teach
critical thinking and skepticism, And the reason being is because again, as you
said, it may not completely inoculate you from being conned in certain ways,
but it would definitely create some type of barrier against people trying to push things
onto you that may be not quite true or completely alive. And I think
that one of the things that the Wave experiment and experiments like it that have
been conducted to show how fascism can actually grow even in a considered progressive society,
is because we still have an issue where we are telling our children and
people around us what to think. Even when you're looking at the fourth Estate,
we had whole studios and network sued because they were telling people what to
think and the thing that they were telling people what to think was not true.
And this is where skepticism, critical thinking, freethought, and everything of
in that particular realm needs to be the leading factor in any of these conversations,
because without it, I really believe that fascism will prevail, including in
the land of the free and the home of the brave. But if you,
dear viewer, are brave enough to learn a little bit more or to
watch a little bit more of what the nonprofits have to say about things like air