With more cities and states taking down memorials to the treason-in-defense-of-slavery Confederacy, and with the Confederate battle rag being consigned to the lawns of mouthbreathing bigots, we should expect the kind of threatening reaction by hate groups that was exhibited this past weekend on the Gettysburg battlefield. A motley collection of KKK members, right-wing militia types, and freelance racists, including many Trump supporters, gathered at the Gettysburg battlefield, many armed and wearing camo and bulletproof vests. The gathering was ostensibly to "protect" Confederate monuments from "desecration" by the anti-fascist group Antifa, but turned out to to have been largely an excuse to swill beer, shout racist slogans and vent their rage against "libruls." (Antifa says that no such action was ever planned.) Fittingly, one of the nitwits even managed to shoot himself in the leg, because... nitwit.
After the murder of nine African-American parishioners in a Charleston, SC church by Confederate rag-waving racist Dylann Roof in June 2015, an increasing number of jurisdictions have taken action to remove symbols of the racist Confederacy. Those actions have provoked a reaction from racist groups often using the cover of protecting their "heritage," but who want to revive it in a reactionary political sense through undermining voting rights and laws discriminating against minorities. With an ally in the White (Supremacist) House, not to mention much of Congress, these twisted cretins feel emboldened, and they won't be easily or quickly defeated.
(photo: Idiot with Trump t-shirt leads march of bigots. Andy Campbell, Huffington Post)
