There are Nazis in Baraboo, WI, according to social media virtue signalers. After all, there’s a picture floating around the internet of Baraboo High School boys performing a Nazi Sieg Heil salute. And you know that if it’s on the internet, it’s got to be true.

In May, a photographer took a picture of 60 high school boys from Baraboo High on the town’s court house steps prior to their prom. Small town kids taking a picture before the big dance — nothing to see here. Happens all across America every spring.

Then someone from a parody Twitter account called @GoBaraboo pulled the image off the photographer’s website and posted it with the caption “We even got the black kid to throw it up. #BarabooProud.”

Enter Jules Suzdaltsev, a blue check contributor to Vice and The Young Turks, who posted it on his Twitter feed. Suddenly the picture went viral.

If anybody from Baraboo High School in Wisconsin can clue me in on why it appears the entire male class of 2018 is throwing up a Sig Heil during their prom photos – that would be great.

h/t @CarlySidey pic.twitter.com/BL8lDVLMA4

— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) November 12, 2018

And here come the virtue signalers! Damn, there’s Nazis in Wisconsin — we must root them out and save the Republic!

No, no, no, said the photographer, Peter Gust. It’s not a Nazi salute; he asked the boys to wave to their parents:

“I didn’t tell them to salute anything. There was none of that that was taken at that point in time that it was a salute of any kind. It was waving goodbye to their parents (and) having a good time. High five.”

But that’s not what the boy in the upper right corner recalled. Jordan Blue, a student who didn’t put his hand up, said he felt “upset, unsafe, disappointed, and scared.”

“I felt unsafe because I go to school with them, I don’t believe in what they represented and the symbol they shared … they knew it was wrong, but they still did it.”

Even the national media got in on the outrage and went into their best pearl-clutching mode. Moreover, they tried to turn Jordan Blue into a modern-day August Landmesser. 

Now I ask you — if Jordan Blue is such a profile in courage, then why didn’t he tell school officials six months ago?? Never mind, virtue signalers across America are on a roll.

And now the hits just keep on coming for poor Baraboo, WI.

Twitter users claiming to be Baraboo students tweeted to Jules Suzdaltsev about rampant hatred in the high school. A blogger wrote an article entitled, “I went to Baraboo High School and I’m Not Surprised By the Nazi Salute Photo.” Why? Because Baraboo is “Like many suburban or rural Midwest communities, it is also mostly white and Christian. . . ”

Oh, yes. Those knuckle-dragging Midwesterners, every one an evil Christian. And they’re white too — come to think of it, they’re also from Wisconsin. Aren’t they all German or Nordic up there?

Credit: pixels.com.

Even Snopes got in on the act, citing as “true” the claim that students were “performing the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute.”

Meanwhile, the Baraboo School District has gone into damage control, issuing a groveling apology for the “hateful, frightening, and disappointing images.”

“We are so very sorry that the actions of some of our students so understandably and deeply hurt people around the world. . . .”

Never mind that the photographer has denied it. Or that the accusations on the internet are hearsay and not backed up by hard evidence. After all, anyone with an axe to grind can say anything on the internet, and virtue signalers will jump on it.

But the boys are white, the town is small and Christian, and therefore they must be guilty. In fact, Baraboo itself must also be at fault for unchecked bigotry because that’s the way they roll up there.

Now I don’t know if some of those boys were being smart-alecks and making the Nazi salute. Perhaps some of them were, and if so, they certainly deserve criticism — at the local level, not on a hyped-up national platform. But teenage boys acting stupid — gee, let me show you my shocked face.

Frankly, if that’s the case, I find it hard to believe that no one ratted them out before now. Nor do I think it’s credible that a photographer would promote a Nazi salute on his website. So I’m rather doubting there’s a revival of the Hitler Youth in bucolic Wisconsin.

But where does photographer Peter Gust go to get his good name back? What about the boys in the picture who are waving to mom, but now are being called Nazis? How do they clear their names?

Shame on the virtue signalers. They don’t care whom they destroy, as long as they can feel superior to those they despise. Their goal, after all, is not to right a wrong, but to show that they’re morally better than you. Moreover, they never, ever forgive. And when Baraboo dies down, they’ll move on, like a horde of locusts, to some other poor schlub who’s ripe for their condemnation.

Featured image from pixabay.com.