White Lives Matter Has Been Declared a Hate Group
By LIAM STACK
AUG. 30, 2016
nytimes.com
Demonstrators gathered with a White Lives Matter sign in front of the N.A.A.C.P. office in Houston last week.CreditDarla Guillen/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press.
A white nationalist group called White Lives Matter, which calls itself an opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement, has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks extremist groups in the United States.
“The White Lives Matter website says their movement is dedicated to the preservation of the white race. That tells you all you need to know,” said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “They’re against integration, immigration. This is standard white supremacist stuff.”
The group, which grew out of a social media meme, argues that white Americans are victims of a genocide caused by factors like the immigration of nonwhite people and marriage between white Christians and nonwhites or Jews, Ms. Beirich said. The law center’s designation is meant to draw attention to and increase scrutiny of the group’s activities.
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On Vk.com, Ms. Barnette defended the group, writing that its members were unfairly labeled "domestic terrorists.” In other posts she argued that white women represent “the elite of the human species.” She also shared Nazi memes and frequently used racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs.
“We do not live by the code of the nonwhites,” she wrote in one post calling for her followers to take action against the federal government, Jews and African-Americans. “Our forefathers built the nation that is being allowed to be destroyed.” Later she added, “I wish Hitler were here alive and well today.” |
