Peter S. Carmichael, Director of Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College is effectively defending local Gettysburg industry.

What is the local Gettysburg industry? It is the selling of stuff like this.

Click on photos to see the entire photo.

Peter S. Carmichael, Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College has this article.

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/27/civil-war-historian-peter-carmichael-keep-the-statues-focus-on-racial-injustice/

The article shows how clueless Carmichael is and how he is denying the rather clear record on Confederate monuments and their purpose. I am sure the Gettysburg Chamber of Commerce is grateful that he is making this effort. I am sure that Carmichael is not consciously defending these items. I think the Civil War Institute needs to think if they will be relevant by 2030.

When I visited Gettysburg April 2017, the story I was repeatedly told is that a very large fraction of the visitors are from the South and that in 2015 they did a tremendous business in Confederate flag memorabilia. People actually believed the Confederate flag would be banned. However, now the sale of Confederate junk is way down. You have to wonder what type of people would think they urgently needed to buy Confederate flags after the massacre in Charleston, but that is what evidently puts food on many tables in Gettysburg.

Also, that Confederate reenacting is down. The Civil War Sesquicentennial seemed to be the last hurrah.

The city of Gettysburg is already switching to ghosts tours and that seems to be the coming industry. However, it seems to me you could do ghost tours anywhere there were old buildings and gullible people which is most anywhere. Dallas only has one of the two components. Having a ghost in Dallas would be seen as anti-real estate development which is Dallas's highest moral value.

Peter S. Carmichael represents the Civil War historians whose efforts will make the Civil War of little interest to future generations.

Gettysburg College should consider, along with the city of Gettysburg that they owe John Sims an apology.

A Comedy at Gettysburg, but not so funny.

One would have thought that after being played for fools in Houston regarding the Sam Houston statue, right wing crazies would wise up. That is where all sorts of protesters showed up to protect the Sam Houston statue in Houston from a supposed Antifa attack which didn't materialize. It seems that someone pulled a prank to get people riled up.

This is an article about what the protest at the Sam Houston statue.
http://www.chron.com/houston/article/Armed-protesters-at-Hermann-Park-protest-statue-11210583.php

After this you would think that claimed Antifa events made by sketchy sources would be more critically viewed and seen as somewhat dubious.

However there were articles such as this in Breitbart. Reading the article you realize that there isn't really any hard evidence or much evidence at all, but I am sure mentioning Antifa and the Confederacy gets clicks.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/27/leftists-promising-to-desecrate-graves-and-protest-during-154th-anniversary-of-battle-of-gettysburg/

The thing was that Antifa said they had no protest plans at Gettysburg.

https://www.facebook.com/centralpaantifa/?ref=br_rs

Despite that it was fairly obvious that there wasn't likely to be any Antifa protesters and that the sources of information that there were going to be Antifa protests seemed bogus, dozens of "self-described Patriots" came to Gettysburg.

These protesters wore camouflage outfits and carried guns. One of the "Patriots," Benjamin Hornberger, 23 of Shippensburg, PA, managed to shoot himself in the leg. According to reports the accident was due to the flag pole he was carrying resting against his holster.

How families visiting Gettysburg felt with all this happening isn't reported. A stray gun shot by individuals carrying loaded weapons could have hit a child.

This is the article describes what happened.
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/07/patriot_shot_in_leg_gettysburg.html


The event which the Antifa were supposedly going to protest was an event by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Evidently the Park Service gave them a permit to have an event at Gettysburg Park. So much for the so-called "High Ground" of the National Park Service.

I have never known the Antifa people to have much interest fighting neo-Confederacy.

I think that someone, or a small group of individuals, have realized that you can easily fool right wing crazies. After all they think there might be child slave camps on Mars run by NASA. http://www.thedailybeast.com/nasa-denies-that-its-running-a-child-slave-colony-on-mars

You can't make stuff like this up, and how can you parody this type of stuff?

So I think someone has figured that right wing crazies will believe anything and is having fun.

As amusing as this might seem, and it does seem to be amusing in some ways, these pranks are a dangerous thing to do. Some person is going to show up someplace on some regular type of business and these right wing idiots will get excited and shoot that person and maybe themselves and nearby strangers.

New Orleans gets better! Sons of Confederate Veterans has declared a boycott of New Orleans.

http://www.scv.org/new/new-orleans-louisana-boycott/

New Orleans has gotten even better. The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has declared a boycott if New Orleans. 

I don't think the SCV members contribute much to the New Orleans economy. But I do think that their boycotting it makes New Orleans a more desirable city since because if neo-Confederates are boycotting New Orleans they are not visiting it. 

The only losers in this situations are the racist historical societies which tried to defend the Confederate monuments and they might have a drop off in visitors and they need to lose as much revenue and support as possible. 

This is a new incentive for a city to get rid of Confederate monuments, change names, etc. You might be able to get the Sons of Confederate Veterans to declare a boycott and reduce the number of neo-Confederates in your city. It is a twofer. 

The SCV doesn't realize that most major large cities don't earn a significant, or even much at all of their income from pandering to neo-Confederates. New Orleans isn't Gettysburg. 

I think other cities would be delighted to be boycotted by the SCV. Many states would be delighted to be boycotted by members of the SCV. 

They have white nationalism in the bag.

This was one of the shopping bags from the store at the Gettysburg National Military Park center.

Notice the gray and blue and how it is made to be exactly equal and equivalent. The bag colors represent America and the Confederacy. Then there is the statement, "Our Common Ground."

I have a statement to make to the Gettysburg National Military Park, the National Park Service, and the Gettysburg Foundation. I don't have any common ground with the Confederacy or its principles.

I don't have a common ground with slave holders. Evidently the Park and the Foundation do think that they have a common ground.

If they think it means something about national unity, we have national unity among Americans. The South and the Confederacy is not equivalent. To even assert that it is or imply it is an erasure of African Americans in the South.

This is banal white nationalism, so every day that it hides in plain sight.

The National Park Service talks about a "high ground" but it clearly is just a lot of self-flattering rubbish. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/rthg/intro.htm

Visited white nationalist Park in Pennsylvania

I visited a white nationalist park in a city dedicated to maintaining that interpretation. I spent three days there. Did plenty of pictures and did some video also. Purchased a lot,  I mean bags full of junk showing the mentality of the town and the park management.

What is the essence of the city of Gettysburg I think this picture will suffice to represent the spirit of the town. Lots of Confederate garbage for sale. I wonder how they explain to their families that they earn their living off of pandering to white nationalism. Notice the picture at the top. Unfortunately there is a reflection on it, but it is a print praising American veterans. These merchants who pander to racists have the effrontery to think they are patriotic. CLICK ON PICTURES TO SEE THE ENTIRE PICTURE.

The people who run Gettysburg Military Park are maintaining the white nationalist interpretation in the book store.  Here in the bookstore is a Southern nationalist understanding of geography. The South is made equivalent to the Confederacy. There isn't the use of Union versus Confederacy.

The pandering to neo-Confederates is non-stop. This mug tells us that Lee is "revered." Books on slavery are hidden away in a small section.

I am going to do a video of Gettysburg Park and city.  The park service wonders why there is declining attendance and why there is little minority interest in going to the parks.

Of course one factor is that when driving to a park in a rural setting a minority person would have to worry about cops stopping them. An audiologist here in rural Pennsylvania when visiting her fiances house was stopped a couple blocks before she got there by a police officer who decided to yell at her and tell her to stop lying about being legally in the country.

Even if a minority person decided to visit a park in a rural setting they would find themselves at a park and city with a white nationalist ethos. It should be no surprise why there isn't much interest in the Civil War by African Americans.

One good development is that business is declining. The generation with a white nationalist interpretation of the Civil War is getting old and becoming much less active.

I am going to do a video with the pictures and video I took there.

Perhaps the National Park Service could hire a competent historian that doesn't see history in a white nationalist framework and do its job competently.

What is really amazing is that Civil War historians haven't given the town and park a scathing criticism.