White Lives Matter-extremists aim to normalize racism, awaken "racial awareness": report

The extremists behind racist texts projected on the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam over New Year’s are aiming to normalize racism and awaken a “racial awareness” by proclaiming the “superiority” of the “white race.” NOS reported this after infiltrating the extremists’ Telegram channel and watching their communications for a few days.

The members of the Telegram channel make little effort to disguise their extremist ideology, according to NOS. Slogans like “White Lives Matter,” and “Zwarte Piet did nothing wrong,” and “happily white 2023” are common. Their manifesto states that they strive for a country where at least 99 percent of its inhabitants are white. Other people can only temporarily enter if their presence is “for the benefit of the Whites,” like tourists.

The Dutch White Lives Matter group only consists of about 1,300 members, almost half of whom joined after the projections on the Erasmus Bridge. It is a “daughter group” of an international extremist group with less than 16,000 members. According to NOS, the Dutch manifesto is primarily a translation of the global group’s English manifesto.

The group says in its manifesto that it aims to create its all-white country “in a legal and peaceful manner.” But according to Willemijn Kadijk, a researcher into extremism, “you can’t get a country with only white people without violating other people’s rights.”

“Peaceful actions are, of course, always better than violence, but this kind of message is a concrete rot that can eventually cause problems,” Kadijk said to NOS. “They’re trying to form a group in society that is large enough to eventually carry out their racist views.”

Kadijk stressed that there are fundamental differences between the Black Lives Matter movement and this group. “Black Lives Matter emerged as an emancipation movement, while White Lives Matter comes from the extreme right. It has an inseparable image of the enemy,” he explained. According to the researcher, this type of right-wing extremism thrives on the belief that there is “a so-called threat to the white race, and they feel they have to defend themselves against it.”

The Public Prosecution Service (OM) launched a criminal investigation into the group following the projections on the Erasmus Bridge.