Make America Great Again is a patriotic slogan that President Trump uses. It’s no different than phrases like “America the Beautiful” or “Let Freedom Ring.” But because it has become associated with Trump and Republicans, the left has developed an irrational hatred of it. The left is committing acts of violence against conservatives merely for wearing a MAGA hat. The hat doesn’t even say Donald Trump or Republican on it. It’s fairly tame free speech. But the left has become increasingly intolerant of free speech in recent years.

And while acts of violence are committed against conservatives wearing MAGA hats, the left is trying to pretend that the violence is going the other way. Actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to fake a hate crime against him, and told police they were wearing MAGA hats.

It’s gotten so bad that the left now equates MAGA with white nationalism. Even though there is no association whatsoever, the left is trying to convince people there is a correlation. Plenty of black people wear MAGA gear. If it really was a racist slogan, minorities wouldn’t display it. It’s a clever tactic by the left to equate all of conservatism with white nationalism. If they can convince people that the slogan is racist, then they can convince them to stop displaying it, ruining a very successful campaign slogan that helped Trump get elected president.

So far, the left may be having some success, since people are now afraid to wear MAGA hats in the large blue cities. It seems like every few days there’s another report of a MAGA hat wearer getting attacked.

This is frightening, because it is a sign the left is moving away from a civilized society. Conducting violence to shut down the opposing side exercising their right to free speech — and relatively tame speech at that — is the beginning of a descent into either anarchy or totalitarianism, depending on how much control the left gets over government. There is a reason why the right to free speech is the First Amendment to our Constitution, because it is that important. The left is badly trampling over the Constitution.

The left doesn’t really believe the MAGA slogan is that bad. But they know if they repeat over and over again that it is associated with white nationalism, that some people will start to believe it. “The hat and the MAGA acronym have really become shorthand for this white nationalist movement,” claims Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and an expert on the far right.

But regular conservatives during the presidential campaign wore MAGA hats. Regular conservatives today still wear MAGA hats — go to a Trump campaign rally and they’re everywhere. Black hip-hop artist Kanye West, one of the most influential musicians in the country, has worn one. Just because a handful of racists support something doesn’t make it racist. Notably, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Will Quigg endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, but the left and their comrades in the mainstream media didn’t then claim Clinton was a white nationalist. They hardly even reported it.

The left also lumps Trump in with white nationalists — even though those on the left were great friends with Trump before he ran for president. They act as if he suddenly became a white nationalist when he ran for president as a Republican (Trump was a Democrat for most of his adult life). Speaking about white nationalists, Amira Elghawaby, a human rights advocate and board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said, “It gives them credibility that if this is from the president of the United States, then it must be all right to have those views.”

But where has Trump promoted white nationalism? The instances the left cites are hardly examples of white nationalism. One article in The Atlantic, entitled “Trump’s White-Nationalist Pipeline,” features a photo of white nationalist leader Jason Kessler posing with a flag outside the fence in front of the White House. This is grasping at straws. Kessler could easily be posing like that in front of anyone’s house. It says nothing about Trump’s viewpoints. The left claims Trump hasn’t denounced white nationalists enough — yet Fox News ran a compilation of video clips of Trump repeatedly denouncing David Duke and white nationalists.

In fact, in 1986, Trump received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in celebration of “patriotism, tolerance, brotherhood and diversity.” He posed for a picture with fellow recipients, including Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali.

The best ammunition conservatives have to fight back against false accusations equating MAGA with white nationalism is to call the left out on their real, flagrant racism, such as aggressively promoting welfare, which disproportionately leaves blacks and other minorities impoverished; supporting anti-Semitic politicians like Louis Farrakhan and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.); referring to conservative blacks using the n-word. The left uses Alinskyite tactics, which include lying, so the right will always have to work twice as hard to defeat them, but it can be done. Eventually most people are going to realize that everyone on the right can’t be a white nationalist. It’s a lie.