One reads today in the Journal Sentinel that the Baraboo school district condemns a photo showing a large group of students giving Nazi salute:
A photo posted on social media of dozens of Baraboo High School students giving a Nazi salute has drawn condemnation from the school district.
Tweets say the photo shows the entire male class of either 2018 or 2019 giving the salute. Some students are believed to be giving a white power salute as well.
The photo was taken last spring.
On Twitter, Jules Suzdaltsev provides the photo and context:
The photo of students doing salutes is the Class of 2019, not 2018, and was taken during their junior prom. Here is a higher resolution photo (which was apparently taken by one of the parents, and is on the parent’s website as part of their collective prom photos.)
We should not be surprised: these students did not come upon their gestures spontaneously, as though from a group reflex. It is from older men and women in their community, and others far beyond, that they have grown to be so unacculturated.
Unacculturated, truly: alien to the American democratic political tradition.
There were surely parents, a photographer (obviously), neighbors, teachers, and even administrators who must have known. (Suzdaltsev’s reporting on Twitter makes this probable in all cases.)
It is often falsely said of immigrants that they cannot properly acculturate into the American tradition. It may be truly said of some native-born adults in Baraboo that they have not properly acculturated into the American tradition, having left their own children susceptible to an immoral and gutter ideology.
Trumpism enticed this into the open, and we can expect to discover much more of this before Trumpism meets its end.