Extremism experts and law enforcement alike thought the brutality seen at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 might signal the beginning of the end for white supremacist movements across the U.S. Instead, hate and white supremacy have been allowed to thrive.

Since throngs of white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered in Charlottesville for an extremism rally that left one woman dead and dozens of others injured, some participants have faced jail time or lost their jobs. By 2018, even the FBI characterized white supremacist extremism as a just a “medium threat” and said related organizations would fizzle out through “attrition,” leaving only “small cells and lone offenders,” according to leaked documents obtained by The Young Turks.

Yet as certain hate groups dissolved or retreated from public thanks to ongoing efforts by activists and journalists, other white supremacist movements have grown online ― and received a boost from far-right talking heads, news outlets like Fox News, and even the president of the United States. Only now, two years after the rally in Charlottesville, are some people in power starting to acknowledge that domestic terror and white supremacy are problems.

Acknowledging A Problem

White supremacists have carried out numerous attacks across the globe since that deadly weekend in Charlottesville, often with support or endorsement from their peers online. The killing of a gay Jewish college student in January 2018 was cheered on by a violent neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division, to which the alleged killer subscribed. And after a white supremacist shot and killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, people on the message board 4chan celebrated by crafting conspiracy theories and hoaxes to further victimize the students.

Domestic extremists, most of whom are white supremacists, killed at least 50 people in the U.S. in 2018 alone, and since Charlottesville have been tied to a long list of massacres, including those in Pittsburgh; Santa Fe, Texas; Poway, California; Tallahassee, Florida; Jeffersontown, Kentucky; and Aztec, New Mexico.

The frequency of white supremacist attacks has forced Congress — or, at least, the Democratic-led House ― to acknowledge the problem by holding committee hearings on hate, white supremacy and domestic terror, but lawmakers have struggled to put any changes in place that can actually combat the problem. The first such hearing didn’t take place until April of this year, and it was derailed by conservatives questioning whether white supremacist violence was even an issue.