Editor's note: This update cites another unofficial NPS Twitter feed, and outlines how the NPS Arrowhead logo can be used.
This national park Twitter feed ain't rogue. It might better be viewed as "the resistance."
After a former employee at Badlands National Park in South Dakota fed a short series of climate-change related tweets that were quickly taken down, a collection of active National Park Service employees has banded together to launch AltUSNatParkService (@AltNatParkSer) on Twitter, a feed those behind it bill as, "The Unofficial 'Resistance' team of U.S. National Park Service. Not taxpayer subsidised! Come for rugged scenery, fossil beds, 89 million acres of landscape."
Among the initial tweets were:
Can't wait for President Trump to call us FAKE NEWS. You can take our official twitter, but you'll never take our free time!
All Americans should review .@NASA's Images of Change to see how climate change is affecting our planet http://climate.nasa.gov/images-of-change?id=594#594-three-gorges-dam-bri... …
We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We'll fight climate change denial
This account should not have to exist & we are sorry for any problems we are causing our colleagues. But we didn't start this. #resist
These four tweets were quickly removed from Badlands National Park's twitter feed on Tuesday.
The account quickly gained more than 440,000 followers.
As to the Badlands situation, that park's Twitter feed on Tuesday contained three climate-change related tweets and one noting the Park Service's mandate to preserve landscapes and their natural resources.
"Several tweets posted on the Badlands National Park's Twitter account today were posted by a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park's account. The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised," a Park Service official said. "At this time, National Park Service social media managers are encouraged to continue the use of Twitter to post information relating to public safety and park information, with the exception of content related to national policy issues."
Another Twitter channel with a similar bent, NatlParksUnderground (@NatParkUndrgrnd) also has surfaced. Among its initial tweets was one that said, "We encourage all agencies under the gag order of the Trump administration to go #underground, get the info out, and resist, resist, #resist."
National Park Service officials in Washington declined to comment on the two sites. However, the first might run into trouble for its use of the NPS Arrowhead logo.
Agency regulations specific that, "(U)nder no circumstances is the Arrowhead symbol to be employed in any manner which would malign or denigrate the NPS or its employees. No reproduction of the symbol is permitted which in any way changes the wording or design elements found therein. The use of the symbol on souvenirs or other items or merchandise presented for sale to the public by private enterprise operating either within or outside of areas of the National Park System will not be authorized. The symbol will not be authorized for use in a manner that would imply endorsement by the Service of a product, service, or enterprise which the Service has no authority to endorse."
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Gleichschaltung
plural
Gleichschaltungen
\-,tung@n, -t@ng-\
: the act, process, or policy of achieving rigid and total coordination and uniformity (as in politics, culture, communication) by forcibly repressing or eliminating independence and freedom of thought, action, or expression : forced reduction to a common level : forced standardization or assimilation <brutal Gleichschaltung by police methods> <the political Gleichschaltung of a reluctant adult population
Tonight, Drumpf strategy advisor Steve Bannon is urging loyal Drumpfians to stop reading reports in the media. He urges them to use the upcoming White House website and various forms of social media so their information "is not filtered."
This just appeared in Salt Lake's Deseret News :
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865671955/Fierce-BLM-critic-Mike-Noel...
2 tiny updates.
1: Most of the altNPS sites have updated their artwork away from the NPS visual identity arrowhead.
https://twitter.com/AltNatParkSer has a nice version with a brown tree and howling wolf instead of the bison.
https://twitter.com/MordorNPS has another version
2: The plot on the official BandlandsNPS twitter account thickens somewhat. @AltNatParkSer noted that the official BadlandsNPS account had been tweeting climate and climate change facts for months. I went to https://twitter.com/BadlandsNPS to confirm it for myself. Yep, climate change posts (often tied in to other events), mixed right in with their posts of wildlife, fossils, scenery, Native Americans, honoring Veterans Day, Presidents Garfield & Lincoln & Truman & TR, bat week, and various announcements and retweets of fossil friday content. I scrolled back to confirm they were tweeting about climate change before the election, not just the inaguration. I only made it as far as a 9 Oct 2016 tweet on the global carbon cycle, mostly because I kept slowing down to look at the gorgeous pics and read the posts. I now see a reason for parks to have active offical twitter feeds! Posts on other topics have resumed (through Jan 24; no tweets since then), but not climate or climate change.
To all of you wannabe German historians out there. I assume this is the article you're talking about:
https://qz.com/895436/gleichschaltung-the-german-word-that-perfectly-enc...
"Perfectly encapsulates," is it? No, the only thing perfectly encapsulated here is ignorance of the historical record. This is already a summation of an article in Der Spiegel. Was that only six paragraphs, too? Six paragraphs and everyone is now an expert on the rise of Nazi Germany?
If you want to compare Trump to Hitler, fine. But that would take at least six books. Nor has President Trump's side of the comparison even been written yet, unless you happen to think his children are Goerbels, Goering, and Himmler
Seriously, if any of you wants to be taken seriously, you should be reading more than a single source. Trump is so unlike Adolph Hitler the parallel itself is insulting. Hitler commandeered the German state, killing thousands of people in the process--then millions after he had taken control. If Trump were Hitler, everyone on this site would be dead by now. Trump would be erasing that $12 billion parks backlog by putting all of us to work in slave labor camps.
Do you see any of that around? Any brown shirts? Any SS? Surviving Hitler, my family in Germany lived a true terrorist state. You mean President Trump has an army of his own? Standing with him in front of the cameras, I see some lovely young people, not SS.
But yes, the media, shortcutting history, has turned everything into a mockery. Get that story out! Get people angry. You sell more newspapers that way. In the past, my colleagues and I have debated this long into the night, and now you see why most historians have a healthy mistrust of any media. Did it really happen that way? Who says? The reporter from Der Spiegel writing a story on deadline? What does he or she know about German history, either?
Hitler is nothing to joke about. As a nation, we are already divided enough without mocking the historical record. It takes ten years to write a good work of history, and even then they are imperfect. Fine, you don't like Donald Trump, and it may turn out that neither do we all. But he didn't steal the election. Hillary Clinton lost it. And in this spiteful "article" we find another reason why.
Keep it up!! Hurrah for altUSNPS! And as for Washington overlords, I have a single finger more powerful than the lot of you. I use it to vote with.
I have never been more proud of the National Park Service! Thank you for all that you do and keep up the good work!
Meanwhile, the communications office at the NPS headquarters scrambles to create an action plan. I believe this is the same office that got rid of a few contracts to promote citizen journalism and have park employees run their web/social media. I wish somebody would take ownership for once and level the playing field. However, I have a feeling the leadership will turn a blind eye, just like they did when Mike Caldwell swindled almost 20K in federal funds. Had that been a maintenance employee, interpreter, or an mechanic. We all know where they would be. I doubt they would be a working in a reassigned role while reporting to their superintendent as special assistant.