Editorial: White Lives Matters threatens racial progress

White nationalism has finally gotten the kind of attention it deserves.

On Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center declared White Lives Matter — a white nationalist group that calls itself the opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement — a hate group.

According to its website, the group’s goal is to preserve the white race, insisting, “white genocide is a phenomenon where mass third world immigration, integration by force and 24/7 race mixing propaganda are being promoted in all and only white countries to deliberately turn them nonwhite.”

“We do not live by the code of the nonwhites,” said White Lives Matter co-founder Rebecca Barnette in a post to her followers on vk.com.

After the declaration, Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., told The New York Times that the White Lives Matter group is “against integration [and] immigration” and preaches “standard white supremacist stuff.”

The group is a result of a crude social media meme that exploded into something much bigger. It’s only one of several groups gaining momentum from the alt-right politics of this election cycle and the massive support behind Trump’s campaign. There are now 892 active hate groups in the country — nearly 100 have sprouted up since 2014.

That a third party group like the SPLC has to step in and formally label White Lives Matter — one of several misguided “lives mattering” organizations — a hate group highlights how far such groups have skewed the original inclusivity of Black Lives Matter.

The Black Lives Matter movement was intended to display the injustices that people of color face on a daily basis and to fight police brutality. It’s a plea for an inclusive community that respects the safety and livelihood of its citizens and for America to acknowledge that institutional racism is prevalent in the 21st century. Somehow, the movement has become so distorted and misconstrued from that idea, people now claim they’ve been victimized by its message.

Unlike All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter — groups concerned specifically with pointing out the importance of other groups of people — the White Lives Matter group bills itself as explicitly oppositional to Black Lives Matter. The co-founder has called on white people to “take action” against the federal government, Jews and African-Americans in posts on the website vk.com.

A group that directly calls for violence against others is without hesitation a hate group. Asking your fellow Americans to fight back against citizens of a certain religion, race or background is domestic terrorism.

This isn’t an internet meme. It isn’t something to joke about. White Lives Matter is a serious threat to the United States and the SPLC has made that clear.

All Lives Matter was a petty response to Black Live Matter that called for the inclusion of all people in a movement meant specifically for an oppressed group of people. Blue Lives Matter was about celebrating the police in a time when they deserved criticism and reform, but White Lives Matter is pointedly hateful. While both of these groups missed the point, White Lives Matter took the message one step further — it is not in any way meant to celebrate or include but instead to divide and threaten.

This election has pushed fringe politics into the mainstream and brought out some of the ugliest voices in the American populous. The White Lives Matter supporters are those voices. We are now living in a society where ideologues are celebrities, and racist views are billed as “honest.”

As students, we should be fearless in speaking out against this type of hatred. These polarizing views aren’t part of our democracy, and they do not belong in this country. If we stay silent on this topic, we are being complicit with violence.

Hatred now has a namesake — one that should have never existed.