On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the global resurgence of white nationalism, the motivating factor behind more than half of this country's extremism-related murders in 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Particularly of interest to lawmakers is the role of the Internet in radicalizing terrorists, including a Maryland Coast Guard lieutenant caught stockpiling weapons in an effort to establish America as a "white homeland"; a Pittsburgh man who killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in October; and an Australian national who gunned down 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand last month. "White nationalism and its proliferation online have real consequences," said committee chair Jerry Nadler in his opening remarks. "Americans have died because of it."

All of this is to say: At least some elected officials are taking these threats seriously, particularly in light of President Donald Trump's dubious assessment after the Christchurch massacre that white supremacists are merely "a small group of people that have very, very serious problems." Even still, the hearing laid bare some of the challenges that make combating white supremacy such a formidable task in the first place: misinformation, whataboutism, and the unwillingness or inability of tech platforms to take meaningful action in response. Both Democrats and Republicans are entitled to invite their own witnesses to testify at congressional hearings. And while Democrats discussed the crisis at length with witnesses from civil rights groups, Facebook, and Google, Republicans handed over much of their allotted time to Turning Point USA personality and noted free-speech grifter Candace Owens.

Owens, last seen walking back comments in which she defended Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany, held court on the alleged discrimination to which she's been subjected because of her political beliefs, her anti-choice ideology, and her support for President Trump. "The hearing today is not about white nationalism or hate crimes," she declared. "It's about fearmongering, power, and control." She opined that Congress should focus instead on "antifa," and in a moment of profoundly unearned confidence alleged that the Southern Strategy—the Republican Party's practice of appealing to racism in order to court white voters in the Deep South—"never happened." (This would be news to the Republican Party, whose chairman publicly apologized for the Southern Strategy in 2005, when Candace Owens was in high school.)

Next to Owens sat Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein, who railed against the alleged anti-Semitism of Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, and against the failure of Democratic leaders to condemn her for it. Klein, who briefly made headlines last year for vociferously defending his use of the term "filthy Arab," also shouted that Beto O'Rourke's characterization of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "racist" should forever disqualify O'Rourke from holding public office. Each time he finished speaking, whichever GOP congressman held the floor would respond by nodding solemnly and thanking him for his testimony.

Perhaps the most compelling illustration of the matter's urgency, in a grimly meta development, came courtesy of the House Judiciary Committee's YouTube channel, which (as usual) offered a livestream of the event. Even as a witness for Google—which owns YouTube—testified about the company's commitment to enforcing community guidelines and cracking down on hate speech, the livestream's comments section was quickly overrun by users advocating for "white self-determination," warning of "white genocide," and calling for "traitors" to be hanged. Mercifully, someone at YouTube disabled the comments feature shortly thereafter; outraged users simply moved their vitriol to other livestreams, some hosted by news outlets and others by white supremacist groups, with chat functionalities that were not similarly encumbered. Members of Congress unfamiliar with online radicalization needed only to watch themselves on an iPhone to see it in action.

In a perhaps telling moment, Ohio Republican Steve Chabot prefaced his remarks by clarifying that he "rejects white supremacy and all forms of hate" before asking Owens to explain "Blexit," a so-called movement for black voters to leave the Democratic Party, which, so far, has not been borne out in statistics. By orchestrating appearances like those of Owens and Klein, Republican representatives transformed the event into a circus, portraying literal terrorist murders, conservative free speech on college campuses, and a black Muslim congresswoman quoting an old Puff Daddy song as equally concerning aspects of the same phenomenon. It is a cynical, age-old political stunt, and the result is a confused, distracted government that knows right-wing extremism is a crisis but nonetheless does nothing to stop it.