MIDDLETOWN — Sporting a Confederate flag shirt near a field clouded by cannon smoke, where blue- and gray-clad soldiers reenacted a Civil War battle from 155 years ago, Larry Caldwell Piercy, Jr. said he sees a new war looming in the United States — and a role for himself in any fighting.
“You look into rural areas, and we’re not seen, but there’s a lot of us that’ll come out of these hills if it keeps getting worse. Probably every Sons of Confederate Veterans member out there.” The Sons of Confederate Veterans, which limits membership to men with Civil War veteran ancestors, is not seeking to secede from the nation or to revive slavery, both Southern causes in the 1861-1865 Civil War.
Mary McCord, who led the Justice Department’s national security division from 2016 until May 2017, noted the response from the Oath Keepers and other pro-Trump armed groups, and said members of the U.S. militia movement have shown they are ready to take action based on the president’s comments.
Violent rhetoric about an impending civil war is on the rise, said J.J. MacNab, a fellow specializing in anti-government extremism at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “It used to be just the militia guys saying this stuff, and now it’s gone totally mainstream,” she said. Trump’s supporters at the Cedar Creek reenactment said Democratic opposition to the president had inflamed old rifts in U.S. society and pushed some to extreme positions.
Dave Clarke, who manned a table distributing Sons of Confederate Veterans literature and merchandise at the reenactment, said violent white supremacists had misappropriated the Confederate flag, and that he had faith in the U.S. system of government to resolve differences peacefully.
It won’t last long if it happens.
He's a very divisive person.
Democrats started the first one, and by failing to accept the legitimacy of their 2016 loss, they're fixing to start the second one.
Pretty desperate NP