White Lives Matter Now an Official Hate Group

The Southern Poverty Law Center places the organization alongside the nation's most racist and homophobic groups.

Neal Broverman

Neal Broverman is the Editorial Director, Print of Pride Media, publishers of The Advocate, Out, Out Traveler, and Plus, spending more than 20 years in journalism. He indulges his interest in transportation and urban planning with regular contributions to Los Angeles magazine, and his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He lives in the City of Angels with his husband, children, and their chiweenie.

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Neal Broverman

August 31 2016 3:08 PM EST

August 31 2016 3:12 PM EST

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The nascent White Lives Matter movement -- a racist reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement -- has been dubbed a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks discriminatory groups targeting minorites like gays and African-Americans, described White Lives Matter as working towards the "preservation of the white race." Its designation of White Lives Matter as a hate group came after the center investigated a Nashville chapter of the group run by a woman named Rebecca Barnette.

A leader of a skinhead group called the Aryan Strikeforce and a neo-Nazi organization called the National Socialist Movement, Barnette routinely posts Nazi memes and racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic screeds on social media, according to The New York Times. Barnette has described herself as a cofounder of White Lives Matter.

The hate group was born in response to Black Lives Matter, which advocates against police violence in communities of color. White Lives Matter recently held a protest -- with assault rifles and Confederate flags in tow -- outside the Houston offices of the NAACP, calling for the African-American advocacy group to denounce Black Lives Matter.

The Southern Poverty Law Center uses its "hate group" designation to call attention to organized intolerance. It counta 892 active hate groups in the country -- nearly double the number of such organizations operating in 1999. There are 48 anti-LGBT hate groups operating currently, including organizations like the Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim, Calif., and Liberty Counsel in Orlando.