The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will list the White Lives Matter movement as a hate group when the organization releases its updated "hate map" in February, it was announced this week.
"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 center's Intelligence Report, said of the White Lives Matter movement, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Rebecca Barnette, 40, is among the leaders of the White Lives Matter movement and is also vice president of the women's division of the skinhead group Aryan Strikeforce.
"Her background, the rhetoric of the group, the hangers-on of the group are white supremacist," Beirich told the Chronicle. "The only question is how widespread they are, how many chapters there are."
White Lives Matter recently held a protest of the Black Lives Matter movement outside the Houston office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The New York Times reported.
In a video posted on YouTube, a White Lives Matter leader described the group as peaceful protestors "just [like] the guy next door," while criticizing SPLC and calling Black Lives Matter "the largest terrorist organization in America."
The White Lives Matter website rejects the notion that it is a white supremacist organization, saying the group "doesn't advocate the idea that whites should rule over any other group."
"White Lives Matter is a place for people of European decent to learn about the issues that imperil their future and the root causes behind #WhiteGenocide. WhiteLivesMatter.com is primarily focused on ethno-nationalism. 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."
SPLC's decision sparked mixed reactions on Twitter.