The Nazi salute endures as a popular neo-Nazi calling card.
By Aaron Sull, World Israel News
A high school class of Brazilian teenagers was photographed giving the Nazi salute to a classmate running for class representative, reports the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
According to the report, a photo of 11 students aged 16 to 17 enrolled at Saint Mary School in Brazil giving the Nazi salute was posted Wednesday on Instagram.
“He promises to be the new Fuhrer of the grade on this journey towards building a new and innovative Reich,” the Instagram post said, followed by hashtags with the words “Aryan” and “fourth Reich.”
The Instagram account and post has since been deleted, reported Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper as cited by JTA.
“We apologize to all those who were offended,” a statement by Saint Mary School read on Thursday. “Our school does not support any behavior that goes against Christian and ethical values and in relation to valuing life and respecting all races, peoples and beliefs.”
The Nazi salute endures as a popular neo-Nazi calling card and is shorthand for anti-Semitism, racism, and white supremacy.
This is not the first time that high school students using the Nazi salute have been reported.
Last summer, an eight-second video of students from Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, California appeared online, which showed the high-schoolers making the Nazi salute and singing a Nazi song.
The song in the video was written by German composer Herms Niel during Hitler’s rise to power, which was often played to fire up Nazi soldiers during World War II. Niel was a member of the Nazi party who served as a bandleader at Hitler’s notorious Nuremberg rallies.
In 2018, a group of Wisconson high school students was photographed using the Nazi salute just before their junior prom. It went viral after it was uploaded to Twitter by the self-described “parody account” @GoBaraboo, with the caption, “We even got the black kid to throw it up #BarabooProud.”