Many Americans, especially after this recent election, have become deadened to cries of outrage over actions or beliefs that undermine basic values of fairness and equality.

We’ve become numb to wild accusations that, for example, President Barack Obama is a “tyrant” or “dictator.” Similarly, when we hear President-elect Donald Trump described as a racist and his close advisor Steve Bannon as being a champion for white supremacists, we naturally assume this must be more of the same hyperbole and partisanship.

It is a serious mistake, however, to assume that the alarms raised against Trump and his team are simply more of the same. This is not a partisan matter, as is clear from the fact that prominent Republicans including Mitt Romney, Ana Navarro, and even Paul Ryan (at least before the election) have recognized Trump’s uncomfortably close relationship with racists. It is a matter of seeing the evidence before us and expressing outrage at un-American racism, anti-Semitism, and other bigotry.

Trump paved the way for his presidential campaign by gaining attention as a “birther” who, without evidence, accused the nation’s first black president of not being a real American, and perhaps being a secret Muslim. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it bluntly and accurately: birtherism is racism.

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This was hardly the first time Trump had endorsed racism, but it gained him a national platform and attracted the interest of white nationalists and white supremacists, who flocked to his cause once he began his presidential campaign. Earlier this year, one white supremacist declared “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for Trump.” Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke endorsed Trump.

This is no coincidence. Racists thrilled to Trump’s brash declaration that he would not be bound by political correctness as he hurled slurs and false stereotypes at Latinos, Muslims, blacks, and women. Trump described Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers in the first speech of his campaign and argued a Mexican-American judge’s heritage disqualified him from presiding over a case involving Trump University.

Trump retweeted “fake statistics about black people supposedly murdering whites” (Trump’s “source” was a racist twitter account). He called for a ban on immigration to the United States by Muslims and retweeted dozens of messages from at least 75 white supremacist accounts, including an anti-Semitic imagefeaturing Hillary Clinton, a Star of David and a pile of cash. The Southern Poverty Law center concluded that Trump was “mainstream[ing] white nationalist memes.”

White supremacists took notice. After Trump retweeted the Clinton/Star of David image, the founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer proudly announced “Glorious Leader [Trump] Tweets Hillary Image with Dollars and Jew Star.” The leader of the American Nazi party endorsed Trump, saying his victory would be “a real opportunity for people like white nationalists” to play a more prominent public role in American politics.

“ Trump’s victory has emboldened white nationalists and other racists to come out of the shadows . ”

The American Nazi leader is right. Trump’s victory has emboldened white nationalists and other racists to come out of the shadows and, indeed, take on prominent roles in the White House itself. Bannon, who made Breitbart into a platform for white nationalists and euphemistically describes himself as an “economic nationalist,” is set to take a role as a senior advisor to the president, after serving as CEO of Trump’s campaign.

Trump has nominated Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be his administration’s attorney general. Sessions was rejected by the Senate in 1986 when he was nominated to a federal judgeship after testimony that Sessions had repeatedly referred to a black federal prosecutor as “boy”, called a white civil rights lawyer “a disgrace to his race”, and described the NAACP as “un-American”.

As a senator, Sessions opposed protections for civil rights and earned the praise of Bannon’s Breitbart News site for his opposition to immigration reform. As Ana Navarro puts it, Sessions was “considered too racist to be a judge in [the] 80s, [but now could be] Trump’s AG.” Also, Trump plans to name Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. Flynn has described Islam as a “malignant cancer” and called fear of Muslims “rational.” Flynn has endorsed the work of a white nationalist writer who argues that “diversity is code for white genocide”. Flynn retweeted an anti-Semitic tweet that warned “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.”

Duke has applauded each of these picks for top positions in the Trump administration. Reviewing Trump’s selections, journalist Jonathan Chait concluded that Trump is “building [a] team of racists.” This is not hyperbole, it is the reality unfolding before our eyes.

None of this is set in stone. Donald Trump was elected president, not king. I am confident that most Americans want no more of racism, white nationalism, the KKK, or the American Nazi party. But these voices are poised to play a central role in the Trump administration. This can be stopped if people speak out and members of Congress take action. If we are silent, the white nationalists who cheered Trump on and worked to elect him will be vindicated as their champions take a seat at the center of American power.

Chris Edelson is an assistant professor of government in American University’s School of Public Affairs. His latest book,Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security, was published in May 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Press.