Acute Angles: Surmounting The Wave

Dear Rabbi. In your highly articulate essay excoriating the anti-Israel rally on the Sydney Harbour Bridge,  you maintained the 90,000-estimated crowd comprised of,  and I quote,  “radical Muslims, Leftist academics and artists, neo-Marxists, nihilists, anarchists, old-fashioned antisemites, naive youthful idealists and, yes, a sprinkling of self -hating Jews”  I cannot believe that these groups alone accounted for a turnout of almost a hundred thousand. Don’t you fear there were other more mainstream people too and shouldn’t we be very worried?  Yemima M.

Dear Yemima,

You are right. I omitted to mention one very important segment of marchers. I shall call them “The Wave”

Some of my readers may be familiar with the 1981 movie – also published in book form – The Wave, a slightly fictionalised account of an actual experiment that took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California in 1967. History teacher Ron Jones sought an effective way of explaining to his students how the German population could have so easily accepted the evil actions of the Nazi regime prior to and during the Holocaust. He created in his classroom a fictional social movement called The Third Wave. It started innocently enough with a series of disciplinary drills emphasising good posture, razor-sharp responses to questions, martial-like efficiency. He introduced the class to three mottos, or slogans, propagating that inner strength could be acquired through discipline, community and action. The students took to it like fish to water. What was intended to be a one-day experiment stretched to five.  The experiment took on a life of its own and became a movement. As the movement grew, students from across the school joined until its numbers reached in excess of 200.  Membership cards were issued and members evangelised coercively. Those who refused to join were cold-shouldered. Rules were developed and “monitors” were appointed to enforce the rules and report those who were in breach Twenty students did so!  Several became disenchanted and defected, speaking against the movement. These students were threatened and later excluded. Eventually on the fifth day, Jones deadpanned that they were actually part of a national movement and that their leader would be revealed in a televised address at an assembly that afternoon from which non-members would be barred,  At the assembly, the television was switched to a blank channel and then – when the suspense had reached its peak – curtains were drawn to reveal … Adolph Hitler on a big screen, screaming to the masses.  “There is your leader!” exclaimed Jones. The students were shocked beyond measure and Jones ended the experiment by saying “you would all have made good Nazis!” admitting that he himself had been caught up in the fervour and finishing with a powerful exhortation of how easily fascistic behaviour can seep even into a normative society.

The hallmarks  of not only fascism but any authoritarian ideology are uniformity, fanatical activism, intolerance of dissent, bellicosity, shallowness of thinking, rejection of individual thought or analysis, sloganism and open hostility towards a common enemy.  All these were features which manifested in The Wave experiment – and all these are features of the “Free Palestine” movement that masterminded the march.

One of the classroom students in The Wave, Robert Billings, is a loner. His appearance is scruffy, his attitude is lackadaisical and apathetic and he walks in the shadow of his brilliant older brother who had duxed the school. But during the experiment, he is reborn. He laps up the rules eagerly and becomes a leader and eventually an informer. Suddenly he is a Somebody.

Yes, Yemima, in addition to the groups I mentioned, I am certain there were many Robert Billingses at the march.  Loners  disenfranchised, anchorless, lonely, with borderline personality disorder, desperately seeking to be part of something Big. The march against Israel fulfilled their needs to a tee. Slogans.  Banners. Uniformity. Shallowness. No shades of grey.  A refusal to analyse. A common cause. A common  enemy.  Bingo!

Sadly the Free Palestine movement is not a classroom experiment. And there was no Ron Jones to shock the marchers into reality. Tragically,  Australia, in miserable company with Canada, the UK, France and most European countries  have no leadership worthy of the name.

But let us not despair. Thankfully, like fads and fashions, premiers come and premiers go, and sometimes real leaders emerge and take their place.   Even absent true leadership, most faddish movements which are based on sheker (falsehood) run their course and die.  We can but pray that The Wave will soon crash mightily and be replaced by a new, benign wave of Torah-aligned morality and true ethical values.

Let us ride the wave.  With the help of G-D, we will surmount it!