Two high school students from Minnetonka, Minnesota, photographed themselves performing Nazi salutes and holding a dance invitation full of Hitler-themed puns.
“While I do not know whether it was an intentionally hateful message or was created out of ignorance, be assured the students will be disciplined for their actions,” Superintendent Dennis Peterson wrote in an e-mail Friday denouncing the post.
“The larger issue is that we, as a community, must do an even better job of educating students about Hitler and the Holocaust,” he wrote. “While we do units on this in middle school, and we have had several Holocaust survivors speak at MHS, it has apparently not been enough to prevent yesterday’s incident.”
I don’t think it’s the school’s place to discipline students for political speech1 but it’s good that they’ve recognized this sort of “j/k but yeah” giggling Nazism for what it is. In November, the “comedy” Nazi salutes of a high school class in Baraboo, Wi., three hours up the road, were initiallly laughed off as dumb teens not knowing what they were doing, but quickly exposed a school culture tolerant of racism and sexism where students shouted white power slogans in the halls.
1. Instead, school administrators should explain why they never teach children anything about the holocaust or fascism, and start doing it, and then lets see who complains about that.