ANGRY MOB

Right-Wing Militias Found No Antifa Event at Gettysburg—So Harassed a Man in Cemetery Instead

Police escorted the man out of the Gettysburg National Cemetery where he had been visiting the grave of an ancestor.

Right-wing militias flocked to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on Saturday in response to online advertising of a fake antifa flag burning event. The event, which was purportedly meant to happen at the Gettysburg National Cemetery, was exposed as an obvious hoax by The Daily Beast, police and other officials last week. Still, hundreds of bikers and militia members arrived armed Saturday to the cemetery and the nearby statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Though they found no antifa event, a biker at the statue shouted that he’d received a phone call about some nefarious activity in the cemetery so the crowd rushed to converge on a single man wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt.

The man told The Washington Post he was a pastor visiting his ancestors’ graves. He filmed himself being harassed by the mob, who lobbed homophobic slurs at him, threatened to beat him up, and called Black Lives Matter a terrorist group. Police arrived and encouraged the man to leave the park. “For his own safety, federal law enforcement made the decision to remove him, and he was escorted out of the cemetery,” said Gettysburg National Military Park acting public affairs officer Jason Martz.