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Militias flock to Gettysburg to foil supposed flag burning…
Shawn Boburg and Dalton Bennett, The Washington Post July 4, 2020
GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK, PA. – For weeks, a mysterious figure on social media talked up plans for antifa protesters to converge on this historical site on Independence Day to burn American flags, an event that seemed at times to border on the farcical.
“Let’s get together and burn flags in protest of thugs and animals in blue,” the anonymous person behind a Facebook page called Left Behind USA wrote in mid-June. There would be antifa face paint, the person wrote, and organizers would “be giving away free small flags to children to safely throw into the fire.”
As word spread, self-proclaimed militias, bikers, skinheads and far-right groups from outside the state issued a call to action, pledging in online videos and posts to come to Gettysburg to protect the Civil War monuments and the nation’s flag from desecration. Some said they would bring firearms and use force if necessary.
On Saturday afternoon, in the hours before the flag burning was to start, they flooded in by the hundreds – heavily armed and unaware, it seemed, that the mysterious Internet poster was not who the person claimed to be.
Biographical details – some from the person’s Facebook page and others provided to The Washington Post in a series of messages – did not match official records. An image the person once posted on a profile page was a picture of a man taken by a German photographer for a stock photo service.
The episode at Gettysburg is a stark illustration of how shadowy figures on social media have stoked fears about the protests against racial injustice and excessive police force that have swept across the nation since the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25.
Armed vigilantes lined the streets of small Idaho towns last month after false claims circulated online about antifa, a loose collection of activists who oppose fascism and have sometimes embraced property damage and violent protest in recent years. Similar hoaxes have befallen towns in New Jersey, South Dakota and Michigan in recent weeks.
Continue reading: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Militias-flock-to-Gettysburg-to-foil-supposed-15386643.php.
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