It will get a little warm this weekend in Gettysburg. Officials are bracing for protests coinciding with the 154th anniversary of the Civil War battle July 1 through 3.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and two other groups have been issued special use permits for Saturday in a section of the battlefield just north of Gen. George Meade’s Headquarters.

“We make accommodations for people who want to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said Katie Lawhon, a spokeswoman for Gettysburg National Military Park.

The permitted groups are expected to square off with groups of anarchists that are planning to burn Confederate flags, according to a flurry of posts on social media. Anarchists, being what they are, don’t apply for permits to assemble.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports officials also anticipate demonstrations opposing President Donald Trump’s administration. At leaste one anarchist group is threatening to desecrate Civil War graves — a threat likely to excite extremists from the opposite end of the political spectrum to show up, too.

What’s shameful is the objective: demonstrators want to disrupt a re-enactment of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, regarded by many historians as the turning point in the Civil War as well as a watershed moment in the history of the American people.

Nobody knows or cares more about the details of the Civil war than the re-enactors. Authenticity is what they’re all about.

Civil War re-enactors from the Maryland Sons of Confederate Veterans have a permit to march on Saturday starting at 10 a.m. from the North Carolina Memorial to the Veterans Memorial, where they will hold a ceremony.

This year’s anniversary coincides with a growing movement to remove Confederate symbols from public spaces — indeed, to strike down opposing views on many topics that don’t fit the template of a prevailing on-campus socialistic philosophy.

There are no plans — yet — to change any of the 1,300 monuments on the park grounds, but the same can’t be said elsewhere:

n In St. Louis, a controversial Confederate monument is set to be removed from a city park and placed in storage until it a permanent location can be found in a Civil War museum, battlefield or cemetery.

n In New Orleans, statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis, and one dedicated to those who opposed Reconstruction — were removed from public viewing.

n In Orlando, a statue depicting “Johnny Reb” is being relocated from a city park to a section of a local cemetery dedicated to Confederate Veterans.

The removal of these statues is a self-defeating gesture. The Civil War proved once and for all the inferiority of economic and political regimes sustained by slavery. Any statue or reenactment depicting either or both sides of the war ultimately exposes this great moral flaw of the antebellum South. This truth can’t be hidden.

But truth can be muddied. Expect some of the weekend reporting from Gettysburg to be a little warped by conflicting issues.

Because of overlapping protests, and the limits of television news, pro-Trump demonstrators will be painted as racists, klansmen and neo-Nazis, when all they intended to do was defend veterans’ graves from desecration by anarchists.

The anti-Confederacy movement will gain momentum. Cherished Gettysburg memorials will be threatened. And the anarchists will have won — unless a discerning public can see the protests for what they truly are.