Incredible. Heavily armed white nationalists can enjoy playing soldier at a National Park but a Methodist pastor in a Black Lived Matter T-Shirt is a danger to himself and others. This is what this country has come to?
In any event, when I saw the Gettysburg “Antifa” post I suspected it was a hoax. I called the purported organizer and never got a response. The Washington Post today describes the hoax in detail. What is not known is who was really behind it and what his or her motive was. Here is what the Post says about the person who supposedly organized the “Antifa” event:
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.
It is not always clear who has made these false claims and why, whether they seek to advance a political agenda, antagonize people with whom they disagree or achieve some other goal.
Social media companies have in recent weeks shut down a handful of fake accounts created by white supremacist groups posing as antifa operatives in a bid to undermine peaceful protests.
The Post examined real estate, court and voter records, as well as other public documents, but could find no such person.
Officials at Facebook and Twitter shut down the Left Behind USA pages last week after The Post inquired about the accounts, saying the person behind them had manipulated the platform by creating multiple accounts with overlapping content in an effort to amplify their messaging. The officials declined to identify the other accounts.
An official at Facebook said the person appeared to be operating the accounts from inside the United States. After the accounts were shut down, The Post was no longer able to contact the person who was claiming to be Jeffs.
But fears of the antifa-sponsored protest had already taken root.
Macky Marker, a member of a Delaware militia called First State Pathfinders, posted a YouTube video calling on militiamen to go to Gettysburg. “If you plan on coming, I would plan on coming full battle-rattle … to be fully, 100 percent prepared to defend yourself and whoever you come with,” Marker said in the video.
Left Behind USA popped up on Twitter in February, advancing far-left ideas in a torrent of crude memes and graphics that decried capitalism, called for an end to police and advocated a moratorium on rent. The account attacked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as a “rapist” and accused him of supporting racist criminal justice laws.
The anonymous person controlling the account described himself in various posts as a laid-off graphic designer, a former Uber driver and a disc jockey. He wrote that he was living off food stamps and sleeping on a friend’s couch.
In May, the person sent out an urgent request for gas money on Left Behind USA’s Twitter account. He was stranded, the person wrote, with his roommate’s car while returning from a trip to Ohio to attend his grandfather’s funeral. He said his grandfather, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who had worked in Youngstown, died on May 28 at age 96.
Jim Burgham, the business manager of the IBEW Local 64 of Youngstown, told The Post that the union, which tracks deaths of current and former members, knew of no such person.
It included a photo of a smiling, bearded man, purportedly Jeffs, and said he was in Beaver Falls, Pa. Using a reverse image search, The Post found that the photo on the stock photo website depositphotos.com.
The Left Behind USA Facebook page was created June 2. When The Post initially sought an interview in mid-June, the person controlling the Facebook page responded in a message: “I don’t prefer to talk to conservative media sources.”
The person later identified himself as 39-year-old Jeffs and provided several details about his background. “I have been politically active since I was old enough to vote and have voted Democratic in every presidential and midterm election that I’ve been able to,” the person wrote in a private Facebook message to The Post.
Election officials in Iowa’s Polk County told The Post that no one by the name Alan Jeffs has ever been registered to vote in the state, according to a database search. Officials in Pennsylvania said there was no one by that name on that state’s active or inactive voter rolls, either.
Two media publications quoted Alan Jeffs this spring, citing another of his Twitter accounts that supported former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The Christian Science Monitor found in an analysis of social media data that Jeffs’s Twitter account, @Bernieorelse, stood out for its frequent and aggressive posts against former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.
“Twitter is the real world now, even more than it was four years ago,” the Christian Science Monitor quoted Jeffs as saying in March.
In April, a student-run news website at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism quoted Jeffs in a story about the Democratic presidential nomination. Jeffs said he lived just outside Pittsburgh.
“I’m fed up with the Democrats forcing centrist candidates upon us,” he said.
That same month, his social media account @Bernieorelse was suspended by Twitter. A spokesman told The Post the account violated the platform’s rules but declined to elaborate.
On June 11, Left Behind USA posted an image on its Facebook page that seemed designed to agitate.
Around an illustration of a U.S. flag aflame, it announced: “Antifa presents: 4th of July Flag Burning To Peacefully Protest For Abolishing Police Nationwide.”
“No Bikers, Militias Or Other So-Called Patriots,” it said. “Children Welcome – Antifa Face-Painting”
A Facebook page called Central PA Antifa quickly denounced the event as fake, likening it to a hoax in Gettysburg three years ago.
In 2017, rumors of an antifa event at the national park prompted a large group of armed militia members to show up. They encountered no one from antifa, but one of the armed militia members accidentally shot himself in the leg with a revolver.
On June 22, the far-right website Gateway Pundit published a story claiming that “Antifa domestic terrorists are planning to desecrate the Gettysburg National Cemetery and set the American Flag ablaze on Independence Day.”
Local newspapers also picked up the story.
This town of fewer than 8,000 people grew alarmed. Residents flooded authorities with calls. Local officials pledged to mobilize the town’s entire 20-person police department and bring in others from bordering towns to protect homes, businesses and statues.
Soon, militia groups were vowing to protect the town as well.
“Multiple local residents in Gettysburg PA have contacted us with HEAVY concerns about the terrorist organization ANTIFA holding a flag burning event in their town,” a group that calls itself the Pennsylvania State Militia posted on its Facebook page June 23. The group said it would mobilize its “county response team” as “a deterrent against the enemy forces.”
Other Facebook groups called Patriots Against Treason, Defend Our Flag and Nation, Protect Our Flag and Battlefield from Being Destroyed quickly formed and announced they also would send people to Gettysburg.
Bill Wolfe, a Gettysburg resident and member of a private Facebook group called III% United Patriots of Pennsylvania, said in an interview that the flag-burning event represented an “ongoing attack on American heritage and culture.”
Antifa’s activities, he said, were part of a decades-long campaign by the Communist Party to take over the country.
Last week, the person who identified himself as Jeffs told The Post in a private message sent through Twitter that he expected “500 to 600” people to attend the flag-burning event. “We have mobilized groups from all over the area,” he wrote.
“We believe in open carry and plan to do so at this event,” he added, a reference to the practice of openly carrying firearms in public.
Twitter suspended the account two days later.
But even more outlandish rumors about the protest were circulating.
A separate Facebook post that circulated widely warned that antifa protesters were planning on “MURDERING White people and BURNING DOWN Suburbs” after the Gettysburg flag burning event. It cited a “controlled unclassified law enforcement bulletin.”
In the final days of June, local police publicly said that the post was false.
What is not false is that the local police removed. What is also not false is that a lot of white “Civil War Buffs” have been posting photos of the armed militiamen thanking them for “Protecting Our History.”
Sad.
Quite frankly, if your “Heritage” needs to be defended by the KKK…
You can Watch the Video of Pastor Somes being threatened by the militiamen here.
Looks like the Gravy Seals have arrived! Meal Team Six is go!
This is solid investigative reporting. Thank you for the work you do.
It would be helpful if the photos could be enlarged.
First off Eye witness in the cemetery all day so the guy in the BLM shirt walking around the cemetery for 3 hrs no one bothered him he kept walking near groups of people til he decided to shoulder bump a biker group at the gate. That’s when he started mouthing off and bikers surrounded him. Police stepped in to escort him out. Please do real research. Fake news!! You are the reason there is a disease in the mind of the public.
You can watch video of what happened at the link below. Which of the racists and homophobes is you Ruth?
https://thereconstructionera.com/watch-video-of-armed-militiamen-confronting-pastor-wearing-black-lives-matter-shirt-at-gettysburg/
Events in 2020 raise many questions about long gun open carry laws in the United States.
There is no question. Shall not be infringed.
Let’s find out their names, addresses and places of employment.
I was there and interacted with the “minister” who claimed he was an organizer for BLM. He claimed they have no leadership, also claims he has a blog. Said his ancestor was a Confederate buried in the cemetery, last name Aker. BLM has well established Marxist leadership. This man did not identify himself as a minister.
Trad, in response to your comment that “This man did not identify himself as a minister” you are obviously lying. Either you are were not there or you are lying about what was said. I posted video of the Gettysburg cemetery mobbing of the pastor. You can find it here. Anyone watching the video can see that you are lying. At the 25 second mark he clearly says “I’m actually a pastor.” He later says he is a Methodist at which time members of the armed mob begin calling him “gay,” “gay motherfucker,” and threatened to beat him up.
BTW, if you were really at the cemetery, as you claim, which of the racists and homophobes were you?
Do they really bury confederate soldiers at the Gettysburg National Cemetery? I thought it was just for US Army troops. How did you interact? What does that mean? Unions have well established Marxist roots along with the minimum wage, social security and medicare. For many people who flip their lids over BLM, any black organization that does not profess sincere gratitude for being tolerated in America are to be hated.
Some Confederates were accidentally buried there in the past, but removed upon better identification. There’s one guy in there who may be a Confederate, but he’s assumed to be the only one. Initially, no troops of color were buried there until the last century.
You are such a fool. Do some research so as not to perpetuate the lies.
This is a very informative blog and I appreciate the effort that goes into putting it together, finding all these resources so that those who are interested can access them easily. I think it’s done in a spirit of generosity. Thanks, Pat Young!
Thanks Carmel Suttor.
It’s possible this was a setup to make the Republicans and conservatives look bad. Keep defending the Real History of the United States and the statues. Do you want to erase the real history and replace it with their own distorted version of it. Also these people are domestic terrorists and every lie and manipulation and especially the billions of dollars in damage and rioting proves that. And just like with any other domestic terrorist organization of course they call themselves a movement. I’m not against things changing so they could better be fit for everybody. But I’m not going to support a domestic terrorist organization either.