A Black influencer went undercover with White Lives Matter - this is what she learned

A TikTok star is waging a private war on “White Lives Matter” Facebook groups, and she appears to be winning.

Denise Bradley, who goes by “Aunt Karen” on TikTok, says she’s infiltrated two such groups and then sabotaged them from the inside. Her tactics include inviting huge numbers of her followers to join the groups, flooding them with messages about “unity” and “positivity,” and creating multiple profiles for herself so the groups have trouble banishing her.

But her most effective stratagem, the 32-year-old activist says, is exposing the groups’ discussions to the outside world. In a TikTok video that went viral, Ms Bradley shared screenshots of some of the racist posts in “White Lives Matter 2.0,” and encouraged others to join her mission.

“We gotta take this group down,” the TikTokker told her 1.4 million followers.

By Ms Bradley’s estimate, at least 100 of her followers then joined the group. And once the “White Lives Matter” members realized outsiders were reading their posts, she says, they started leaving the group in droves.

“What I wanted to ultimately do was disband the group,” Ms Bradley told The Independent. “Make them so uncomfortable that the group is no longer valid – no one feels safe in the group.”

By this measure, Ms Bradley has had considerable success. According to Facebook, both of the groups she joined, “White Lives Matter” and “White Lives Matter 2.0,” have been removed from the platform.

White Lives Matter is a designated hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, although Facebook communities that adopt the phrase are not necessarily affiliated with it.

open image in gallery

“White Lives Matter, a racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter, is a neo-Nazi group that is growing into a movement as more and more white supremacist groups take up its slogans and tactics,” the SPLC says.

It’s unclear whether the pages Ms Bradley sabotaged are connected in any way to that organization. But the messages its members have posted are clearly racist.

In one screenshot that Ms Bradley shared on TikTok, a member of the group “White Lives Matter 2.0” posted a photo of the actor Michael B Jordan wearing a Superman costume.

“I’m terrified where this will go!!” the member writes. “Yes Superman is now black.”

And Ms Bradley remembers plenty of other examples.

“One person posted, ‘My son is 15 years old, he’s dating a Black girl, and I want to know how to tell him you don’t mix with N-words,” she recalled.

The TikTokker also said members portrayed George Floyd as a monkey, called Black people dirty and violent, and posted numerous racist cartoons. And once the members realized what Ms Bradley had done, she says, they directed their venom at her, calling her a “monkey” and other slurs.

All of this begs the question of why these groups were allowed to exist on Facebook in the first place.

“For them to have a ‘White Lives Matter’ group, and the terrible things that they would say – I was just so surprised,” Ms Bradley said. “It’s really shocking.”

Facebook has recently come under intense criticism for such content. Whistleblower Frances Haugen accused the company of permitting and even amplifying hateful posts in order to maximize profits.

open image in gallery

“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Ms Haugen told 60 Minutes. “And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.”

On Thursday, Facebook told The Independent that it works every day to police violations of its Community Standards, which include rules against hate speech. The company also pointed out that it has removed both of the groups Ms Bradley exposed.

But Ms Bradley says her work is far from over. There are still more than a dozen “White Lives Matter” groups on Facebook not to mention other racist groups that don’t use that specific phrase.

Ms Bradley’s goal, she says, is “to get people to see that there’s so much hate that is still here.”

“There is racism happening,” she says. “I expose racism, I expose homophobia, transphobia – all of this – because I want people to see it.”