A Pennsylvania county commissioner recently called for Confederate statues at Gettysburg National Park to be removed, then deleted the online post due to major criticism.
“The only thing I could think of to do was, okay, I’ll just take it down. I actually unpublished my page for a little bit. Next week, I’ll probably bring it back up,” said Adams County Commissioner Marty Qually (D).
Qually claimed he was not trying to erase history but pointed to what happened when counterprotesters showed up at Gettysburg over the Independence Day weekend in response to online rumors about an Antifa flag burning.
Friday, ABC 27 provided screenshots of what appeared to be the commissioner’s since-deleted Facebook post.
It read:
Today, armed racist morons have come to our community responding to an obvious flag burning hoax. These racists have come to protect the confederate monuments, a made up situation which our local law enforcement had well in hand. They are walking in our community with semi-automatic weapons and confederate flags. Our local law enforcement doesn’t need the expense or the risk.
If this is the cost of having confederate monuments in Gettysburg and if this is the lesson we are to learn, then I’m out of the middle of the road. Take the confederate statues down. Our economy cannot survive a pandemic and a morondemic at the same time.
“We cannot allow our county to become a holiday destination for hate, racism, and false patriotism,” he wrote, adding that among them were “clear white supremacists, Klan members, coming to protect our monuments.”
Qually said he removed the post because it got so many comments and became difficult to monitor.
Later, State Rep. Dan Moul (R) of Adams County commented that “Those people who carry those symbols of hate have no place here. Don’t bring your hate here. That’s not what this town’s all about.”
However, Moul added that Qually’s call to bring down the Confederate monuments at Gettysburg was “insanity.”
“If you wipe our history away, we are bound to repeat it. And, that’s a place we never want to go again in this country,” he contined.
After receiving so much criticism, Qually said Thursday that the removal should only be a last resort.
“If we can’t educate the public to the point where people aren’t driving from eight hours away to come here to protect [statues], then I think we have to look at their removal as an option,” Qually noted.
“I don’t know that there’s enough education in the world to get them to understand they’re harming our local economy,” he concluded.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.