The pro-Trump internet is abuzz about left-wing “antifa”activists’ nefarious plans for the Gettysburg National Cemetery on July 4—even if no one can quite agree on what’s actually going to happen.
One theory holds that antifa will burn American flags at the Civil War graveyard, while another centers on a nonexistent plan to desecrate soldiers’ graves. In the most extreme version, antifa is plotting to massacre white people nearby after a celebratory flag-burning—a scheme they’ll supposedly pull off by distracting police with the fireworks that have become omnipresent this summer.
Bizarrely, the only event that has actually been advertised is a ridiculously mundane version of the antifa terror story, with activists expected to burn flags while offering family-friendly “antifa face-painting” for kids.
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Nonetheless, right-wing pundits appear to be gearing up to do battle against their antifa bogeymen.
“Antifa domestic terrorists are planning to desecrate the Gettysburg National Cemetery and set the American Flag ablaze on Independence Day,” declared Gateway Pundit writer and Roger Stone protege Jacob Engels, a right-wing personality affiliated with the far-right Proud Boys street-brawling club.
So many rumors are swirling online about antifa’s plans for the Fourth of July that the chief of the Gettysburg Police Department has begged the public to stop calling about Facebook posts they had seen.
The department even had to change its default voicemail after one viral Facebook post, circulated on the site and in screenshots on Twitter, claimed that the department had confirmed the plan to kill white people after the flag-burning. The voicemail urges people to stop calling to alert police to the Facebook post, whose origins police say is “being analyzed by various intelligence sections.”
“There is no truth to that statement,” an anonymous person reads on the department’s voicemail system. “We have no knowledge of the post’s contentions.”
Amid unrest over the police killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd, rumors of purported antifa attacks that never actually materialize have surfaced across the country, from Idaho to the Alamo. Now Gettysburg has become the latest flashpoint in the right’s panic over left-wing protesters, fuelled by social media hoaxes.
The rumors about an antifa flag-burning at Gettysburg this year started with “Left Behind USA,” a mysterious organization with pages on Facebook and Twitter that purports to represent an antifascist group in Pennsylvania. Left Behind USA promoted the event with well-produced graphics, including one with an angry eagle over the words: “Antifa Presents: Anti-Police Brutality Flag Burning.”
Left Behind USA’s promotional materials ask police to stay away from the event. And in what appears to be a dare aimed at various right-wing groups who might show up to counter-protest, the groups says that “no motorcycle groups, militias, or patriots [are] allowed.”
“Only 13 days left until we INVADE Gettysburg and protest police violence in an Independence Day Flag Burning,” the group’s Twitter account declared. “This event is all ages and family friendly.”
Curiously, the purported event’s organizer portrayed the flag-burning as a sort of family antifa carnival, proclaiming that the flag-burners would meet afterwards at a branch of the Perkins restaurant chain to discuss future antifa uprisings. Children at the event would even receive their own tiny flags to burn.
“We’d like to thank some wonderful Antifa artists who will be on hand giving free face-painting to children who attend this event,” one Facebook post reads. “We’ll also be giving away free small flags for children to safely throw into the fire.”
In Twitter direct messages with The Daily Beast, Left Behind USA claimed that its members really would burn flags at Gettysburg on the Fourth of July. The account’s operator declined to comment further, on the grounds that it considered The Daily Beast a “right-wing media outlet.”
A phone number promoted by Left Behind USA, which featured a voicemail message promoting antifa, was linked to a defunct website called “Bernie or Else,” which promoted the idea of supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) refusing to vote for Democratic presidential candidates after Sanders lost the primary.
But an actual antifascist group in Pennsylvania told the York Daily Record that they have no involvement in any flag-burning. In late June, both Facebook and Twitter deleted Left Behind USA’s accounts, citing rules against spam and operating multiple accounts on their platforms. According to both platforms, the account was run within the United States.
“This Event Page was removed when we disabled the account behind it for breaking our rules against maintaining more than one Facebook account,” a Facebook company spokesperson said in a statement.
By the time the accounts were deleted, though, Engels and The Gateway Pundit had picked up on the flag-burning event. Engels’s write-up spread across the right-wing internet. Soon, talk radio hosts across the country were telling their audiences that antifa activists planned to burn flags at Gettysburg.
This isn’t the first time right-wing media outlets have claimed antifa planned to terrorize people at Gettysburg in July. In 2017, Gateway Pundit claimed that antifa planned to desecrate soldiers’ graves. In response, dozens of armed counter-protesters arrived at Gettysburg to defend the graves. But no antifa activists ever showed up, and the only person who was hurt was a would-be grave defender who accidentally shot himself in the leg.
Somehow, the 2020 version of the antifa Gettysburg story has grown even more twisted since Left Behind USA and The Gateway Pundit first put the story out. A Snopes debunking of the flag-burning story found an even more bizarre version put out in June 23 by far-right radio host Hal Turner and echoed in a viral Facebook post that claims antifa plans to use the flag-burning to launch a white genocide.
"ANTIFA is planning to desecrate the Gettysburg National Cemetery by burning flags there on July 4; just before they begin MURDERING White people and BURNING DOWN Suburbs the same day,” the Facebook post reads.
Summer fireworks even make an appearance in this conspiracy theory. In an inverse of the “boompill” conspiracy theory endorsed by some liberals, which holds that the pandemic uptick in illicit fireworks are a pro-police psy-op meant to cover for police violence and destabilize minority communities, the viral Facebook posts about Gettysburg hold that antifa plans to use the fireworks to distract from the sound of “gun fire when they attack white, suburban, neighborhoods.”
It’s not clear if this July 4 will bring a repeat of the 2017 anti-antifa protests. Two groups have obtained permits to gather at Gettysburg on July 4, according to Snopes, but neither of them listed a flag-burning as an activity.
Meanwhile, the Gettysburg police are sick of hearing about the Facebook posts.
“If you are calling to report one of these posts I can assure you that we already know and please don’t call us about those,” Gettysburg police chief Robert W. Glenny, Jr. said in a local TV interview.
