Campaigners to list White Lives Matter as a hate group

The telegraph — White Lives Matter, an organisation set up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, is to be listed as a race hate group by campaigners. The Southern Poverty Law Centre  said it will include the organisation when it produces its hate map next February.

“I can’t speak to how many chapters will be listed, but it’s clear that the leadership of the group, the ends of the group — it’s just a flat-out white supremacist group,” Heidi Beirich, director of the centre’s Intelligence Report told the Houston Chronicle. “The ideology behind it, the racist leaders, everything about it is racist.

According to the centre one of the White Lives Matter’s key activists is Rebecca Barnette. “Her background, the rhetoric of the group, the hangers-on of the group are white supremacist,” Ms Beirich added. “The only question is how widespread they are, how many chapters there are.”

Ms Barnette is listed on the website of the American white supremacist National Socialist Movement’s website as the head of its women’s division. She also emerged as an organiser of a White Lives Matter rally in Buffalo, New York, last month.

“White Lives Matter will be hosting an event for like minded folk to gather peacefully and discuss the issues we face and work towards solutions to make it a greater safer whiter world for our future generations,” wrote Rebecca Barnette, an NSM member from Tennessee who helped organise the event.

The Black Lives Matter protests started following a series of police shootings of unarmed African Americans, with some of the demonstrations ending in violence.