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Trump tweet, political divisions fuel rising discourse about new U.S. civil war

29 October 2019 17:03 (UTC +04:00)

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, APA reports citing Reuters.

“It would be all guerrilla warfare, not this open field-style kind of thing,” he said, gesturing at the reenactment of the 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek in Middletown, Virginia, earlier this month. “I would probably be an officer in that effort.”

Piercy, 62, is one of the motorcycle riders known as the “mechanized cavalry” of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which has an estimated 30,000 members and describes itself as a “non-political heritage organization” that preserves the history and legacy of soldiers in the pro-slavery Confederacy in the 1861-1865 Civil War.

He is also a fierce supporter of President Donald Trump.

As Democrats push to impeach Trump and controversy rages over whether to remove monuments to Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Piercy warned a new civil war is brewing.

“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.”

“#CivilWar2” trended on Twitter in September after Trump quoted a pastor in a Twitter post saying it would “cause a Civil War like fracture” in the United States if he were removed from office.

The next day, the right-wing Oath Keepers militia affirmed Trump’s tweet in its own Twitter post: “This is the truth. This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859.”

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.