Gene Stilp and Steve Corbett are seen burning a combined Confederate and Nazi flag outside the Luzerne County Courthouse in November 2017. Stilp is seeking permits to do it again this week.
Times Leader file photo
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WILKES-BARRE — Activist Gene Stilp is once again seeking permits to burn a series of flags outside of the Luzerne County Courthouse.
Stilp, 70, a native of Wilkes-Barre and currently based in Harrisburg, announced through a press release on Tuesday an intention to burn three flags: a Confederate battle flag, a Russian flag and a Nazi flag, each combined with the campaign flag of President Donald Trump.
Stilp plans to burn the three flags outside of the Luzerne County Courthouse at 11 a.m. on Thursday, before going to the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton at 2 p.m. to burn three more of the flags.
In Stilp’s release, he explains that each of the flags were chosen to symbolize what he sees as major issues in the Trump administration.
“One side is the Trump campaign flag and the other side is the old Russian hammer and sickle flag representing Putin,” Stilp’s release reads. “The combined flag represents Trump’s subservient relationship with Putin. The latest chapter in the Trump-Putin relation is the complete horrendous lack of response by Trump to the horrible Russian blood money bounty paid for the killing of American servicemen.”
Stilp’s release goes on to explain that the Confederate and Nazi flags symbolize what he sees as Trump’s “horrendous support for racism, bigotry, hatred, white supremacy, racial intimidation and ethnic intimidation.”
It isn’t the first time Stilp has sought to hold such a display outside the courthouse.
In 2017, he burned a combined Confederate and Nazi flag outside of a dozen courthouses, including Luzerne County’s, to protest the murder of protester Heather Heyer, who was killed when white supremacist and Neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. rammed his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters gathered in opposition to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.
Stilp was arrested last year when he attempted to remove a brick bearing the name of a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated group from a monument on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre. Stilp was ultimately fined $10 for the attempt, and the monument bearing the name of the group was removed in full.
Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter