Denise Bradley, A Black TikToker who is revered as “Aunt Karen” on TikTok, said that she is infiltrating Facebook groups that contain “White Lives Matter” and other white supremacy rhetoric in an attempt to expose the racist tropes and get those pages removed.
“So I have this “White Lives Matter” group that I secretly infiltrated, but now they know I’m in there. But what they don’t know is that I have four profiles in there—they kicked out one of my profiles, but there’s a ton more. And all of you guys that are helping infiltrate this group, I love you,” said Bradley in a video that has now been viewed 242,400 times at the time of writing.
“We have to take this group down,” she continued while showing pictures of some of the things mentioned in the group. Some of the posts included a post about someone being worried about Michael B. Jordan in a Superman costume to someone trying to find out everything about her identity, even calling her “sub-form of a human.”
@auntkaren0 #greenscreen I’m watching you! #racist #karen #awareness #conservative #blacklivesmatter #trump #biden #StudentSectionSauce
In conversation with Indy100, Bradley had this to say about being inside the groups: “Infiltrating these groups allowed me to get a better understanding of the deep-seeded racism that lives in white America. Every post made was rooted in hatred. At the heart of it all, skin colour was their only excuse for it. They held people of colour (particularly Black people) in such low regard. To them, we’re the root of all problem[s].”
She also noted that at times she felt “depressed at times” while other moments she laughed so she wouldn’t be “suspected as an outsider.” But “fitting in with hate, only creates more of it. The group needed to be disbanded.”
Making them public to my following was the only way I knew how,” she added.
Bradley mentioned in the video that she was a member of a White Lives Matter 2.0 group, but the page was taken down within a day of her video going live.
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On Tuesday, Facebook told The Daily Dotthat the platform had banned the White Lives Matter 2.0 group after reviewing remarks for violating the platform’s community rules.
Despite the removal of White Lives Matter 2.0, groups of identical messaging advocating the “White Lives Matter” slogan can still be found on Facebook.
The Facebook groups spew anti-Black content, including referring to African Americans as “lazy,” a stereotype maintained against them that exploits community statistics of welfare and joblessness against them while ignoring the underlying oppression that leads to such issues.
The level of radical content carried by the groups varies. Some are more moderate, advocating for “all lives matter” as a kind of racial fairness, to blue lives matter for police officers.
The Black Lives Matter movement, named after the protest slogan, emerged in response to police killings of African-Americans such as Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Bradley displayed a few more photographs from the “White Lives Matter 2.0” group in a follow-up video posted on Oct. 15.
@auntkaren0 #greenscreen #IKnowWhatYouDid #racism #alllivesmatter #blacklivesmatter #biden #trump2020 #awareness #viral #conservative #liberal #tdwhbwwh
According to one post, characters from Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club have requested fans to donate to Black Lives Matter and The Trevor Project, a group dedicated to preventing LGBTQ+ adolescent suicide.
Stars from the program have utilized their personal social media channels to promote Black Lives Matter and point their followers to resources.
Facebook’s community guidelines note that pages will face removal for “language that incites or facilitates serious violence.”
Despite the outlandish nature of the remarks, Bradley claims she is undeterred in her quest to dismantle bigotry.
“Once my followers started to join the group and report posts, the admins in the group quickly fell into a panic. Membership dropped by the dozens.”