I was at the sad white supremacists gathering. It didn't fool me. Their movement is rising. Don't be fooled by the sad display of two dozen white supremacists in front of the White House. Racists are on the rise in our country.

Caleb Ecarma | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Unite the Right D.C. rally draws low attendance The 2018 Unite the Right rally held in Washington, D.C. had only a few dozen participants and was largely drowned out by counterprotesters.

One year ago, I personally witnessed hundreds of white supremacists descend on the small college town of Charlottesville, Virginia. I saw the pain and suffering inflicted on that community, which ultimately resulted in a neo-Nazi murdering anti-racism activist Heather Heyer.

A handful of the same white supremacists attempted to replicate the same impressive turnout at a park in front of the White House on Sunday — a rally billed as the sequel to last year's deadly "Unite the Right." Instead, only a couple dozen sad-looking racists actually showed up, while over a thousand anti-racist counterprotesters rallied on the other side of Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.

White supremacist organizer Jason Kessler — who also planned last year's Charlottesville debacle — brought his ragtag group of racists to supposedly defend "white civil rights," but embarrassingly began his speech by immediately admitting it was a "weird and imperfect" flop.

The national news media covering the event quickly latched onto this fact, declaring victory for the massive anti-racist protest and defeat for the white supremacists.

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Conservatives who wish to distance themselves from racists also declared victory by suggesting that because so few white supremacists showed up to "Unite the Right 2," President Donald Trump is not actually emboldening their cause as so many have accurately claimed.

This analysis fails to see what is actually happening with white supremacy in America.

Don't be fooled, racists are on the rise

So few racists showed up in Washington, D.C. yesterday, not because they know their movement is losing, but because the rally's organizer, Jason Kessler, spent the last year burning bridges with nearly every part of the alt-right and larger white supremacist movement. His personal issues resulted in large-scale infighting within the community and many leaders telling their followers not to attend the event.

Nazi drama aside, in the year since the killing of Heather Heyer, Americans have actually witnessed the growth of white supremacy.

While covering the Charlottesville rally last year, I interviewed alt-right online personality James Allsup and he told me that if "cosmopolitan elites" don't change their behavior toward white people, then incidents like last year's deadly white supremacist rally "will continue" happening.

Last month, Allsup was elected to a local Republican Party office in Washington State — and he's not an anomaly.

According to The Nation, 17 candidates tied to various factions of the white supremacist movement ran or are running for elected positions in 2018 — most of them as Republicans.

On top of that, neo-Confederate Corey Stewart — who has explicit ties to white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville — is the GOP nominee in Virginia's U.S. Senate race. Predictably, Trump was quick to endorse him in his race against Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

White supremacists are also seeing their views mainstreamed on the No. 1 cable news show in America.

Fox News provides a platform for hate

Last week, Fox News host Laura Ingraham decried "massive demographic changes" and added, "The America that we know and love doesn't exist anymore" because of those demographic changes. Ingraham's screed on race in America was so racist that a white supremacist attending Unite the Right 2, who would only identify himself as Parker, praised the Fox News segment and said that Ingraham is right about him feeling like "a minority in the same neighborhood I grew up in."

Likewise, Tucker Carlson, a primetime Fox News host, has also made attacking changing racial demographics in the U.S. a staple of his highly rated show on the president's favorite channel.

Americans have seen Trump take brutal action in support of this white anxiety complex, as his infamous family separation border policy was used as a deterrent to ensure that migrants fleeing violence in their home countries do not attempt to enter the U.S.

On top of all of this, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted with the University of Virginia, 39 percent agreed that "white people are currently under attack in this country," while 31 percent said they strongly or somewhat agree that America has to "protect and preserve its White European heritage." (Oddly enough, 89 percent of respondents also said "all races should be treated equally.")

So don't let the sad display of two dozen white supremacists waddling around in front of the White House on Sunday fool you into believing we no longer live in a racist country — the white supremacist movement is still on the rise in America.

Caleb Ecarma is a reporter for Mediaite.com covering right-wing media and far-right extremism in America. You can follow him on Twitter: @calebecarma.