White Lives Matter has significant ties to neo-Nazi groups
White Lives Matter will be listed as a hate group when the Southern Poverty Law Center releases its annual "Hate Map" in February, owing in large parts to the small movement's neo-Nazi ties.
White Lives Matter, whose members recently waved Confederate flags in small numbers outside the NAACP office in Houston, Texas, is not thought to have a large following, but the rhetoric of its members has been violent enough for the SPLC to take notice.
"Its main activists, to put it plainly, are unvarnished white supremacists," the SPLC's Sarah Viets writes on the SPLC's website.
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Like a lot of movements, leadership and hierarchy are not easily defined, but a 40-year-old woman from Tennessee is arguably the movement's most visible adherent.
Rebecca Barnette, who says on her VKontakte profile that she is a co-founder of the movement, is a neo-Nazi with significant roles in neo-Nazi organizations.
She is involved in running a website and Facebook page for White Lives Matter, according to the SPLC, while leading the women's division of the United States' largest neo-Nazi organization, the National Socialist Movement. Barnette is also the women's division vice president of the skinhead organization Aryan Strikeforce.
She has advocated for a North American nation of only white people, and has made calls for unity among white nationalists, many of whom have affiliations with various groups.
"When are Americans going to wake up and stop 'embracing' the enemy and welcoming this diversity crap into your homes?" Barnette wrote on her VKontakte profile in July. Several of her posts end with "Sieg Heil," a Nazi solute.
Her VKontakte profile picture shows a swastika in the background.
Barnette has organized several small counter-protests around Black Lives Matter events, and White Lives Matter fliers have been found with the phrase, “It’s Not Racist to Love Your People."
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Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
