Do Better is an op-ed column by writer Lincoln Anthony Blades that debunks fallacies regarding the politics of race, culture, and society — because if we all knew better, we'd do better.

One year ago, armed white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the "alt-right" descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally, which escalated into a vicious act of terror when a white supremacist deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring 19 people and killing 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer.

In the year since then, despite widespread bipartisan condemnation of the violence that occured, more white nationalist candidates are running for office than the United States has seen in decades. The events in Charlottesville served as a touchstone in race relations, revealing the truly problematic consequences of embracing the Trump administration’s mainstreaming of extremist rhetoric, allowing white racialized resentment to seep into the nation’s professional political discourse and become a visible part of America’s modern political structure.

In the immediate weeks after the violence on August 12, 2017, a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in conjunction with the University of Virginia Center for Politics discovered that the most people in the U.S. oppose white supremacists. The poll revealed that 89% of respondents believed "all races should be treated equally," and 70% “strongly agreed” that people of different races should be allowed to live wherever they choose. Both of those beliefs reject the core principles of the ideology on display in Charlottesville.

Yet that same poll revealed that many of the respondents who ostensibly opposed white supremacists actually shared white supremacist beliefs: 39% of respondents strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that “white people are currently under attack in this country, and 31% strongly or somewhat agreed that the country needs to “protect and preserve its White European heritage,” a sentiment repeatedly expressed by Unite the Right protesters, who chanted “You will not replace us!”.

Almost 60% of respondents said Confederate monuments should not be taken down, which aligns with white nationalists’ beliefs once again, as they initiated the Charlottesville rally to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park. And it’s important to note that the poll ended up being very partisan, in that white and black respondents, especially black Democrats and white Republicans, were largely at odds with each other. So while many white Republicans were claiming they had a fondness for diversity and equality, their actual points of view appeared to indicate an affinity for white nationalist rhetoric.

It’s that ideological support that has resulted in street-level racists becoming full-fledged politicians.

According to a May 2018 article in The Nation, this election season, depending on one’s definition, there are anywhere from nine to 17 “white supremacist and far-right militia leaders” running for House and Senate seats, governorships, and state legislatures.

James Allsup, who marched in Charlottesville and belongs to a “pro-white” group, is now an elected official representing the Republican Party in Washington State after running in an uncontested race, according to The Daily Beast. Another candidate, Corey Stewart, had support from a Unite the Right organizer and centered his campaign around defending the Confederacy, and in the wake of Heyer’s death, he called Republicans “weak” for condemning the white nationalist marchers. He just won Virginia’s Republican Senate primary.

"This is the first time in decades that we're seeing this many racist candidates campaigning at the national level," Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, tells Teen Vogue. And she's right. According to the SPLC, In November, there will be more white nationalists running for state and federal office than we’ve witnessed since the Jim Crow era. In fact, Trump himself not only praised Stewart for his primary victory but is currently backing him in his upcoming campaign run against incumbent Tim Kaine.

"This increase in alt-right and white nationalist candidates is most certainly driven by the fact that Trump won,” Beirich says. This isn't because an influx of white nationalists chose to opportunistically “hijack” the Republican Party, but rather because the party cultivated the exact environment needed for the alt-right to thrive socially and politically, including the Trump administration’s inclusion of figures like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. The embrace of this extremism amongst conservatives of all stripes has also influenced youth to embrace and perpetuate intolerance: The rise of young white supremacists since Charlottesville has been linked to the rise of “male supremacists,” who embrace antifeminist rhetoric that creates pathways to racism, anti-Semitism, and broad hatred of minority groups, according to the SPLC.