White Lives Matter, a white nationalist group that opposes the Black Lives Matter movement, has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps track of extremist groups in the nation, the New York Times reports.
“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,” Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC in Montgomery, Ala., told the Times. “They’re against integration, immigration. This is standard white supremacist stuff.”
"White Lives Matter is a place for people of European decent [sic] to learn about the issues that imperil their future and the root causes behind #WhiteGenocide. WhiteLivesMatter.com is primarily focused on ethno-nationalism," the About section of the website reads. "It supports breeding practices that improve fitness, opposes dysgenic immigration, and takes a libertarian stance on other right wing gripes that don’t directly turn the population non-White."
The group came under scrutiny after armed members protested outside a Houston NAACP last week, denouncing the civil rights organization's failure to speak out against pro-black organizations like Black Lives Matter.
“We came out here to protest against the NAACP and their failure in speaking out against the atrocities that organizations like Black Lives Matter and other pro-black organizations have caused the attack and killing of white police officers, the burning down of cities and things of that nature,” one protester, Ken Reed, said at the time. “If they’re going to be a civil rights organization and defend their people, they also need to hold their people accountable.”
Members of the group carried Confederate flags as well as "White Lives Matter" signs.
Beirich told the Times that the number of white supremacist groups in the country has grown in the past year. She attributed that growth to the 2016 presidential campaign, which has been steeped with racially charged incidents.
“Certainly we’ve got people who are much more energized in a way that didn’t exist before, and that’s all because of the presidential campaign,” Beirich said. “Trump has given these people hope they didn’t have before that they could influence politics or that they would at least be listened to.”
Read more at the New York Times.