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Two things can be true: White supremacy is an ugly, evil ideology that rarely rears its head. But when it does, the consequences are often deadly. It took 22 innocent lives in El Paso, Texas, and it will take more if allowed to fester.

This is why many conservatives have called on Trump and the GOP to condemn it in the strongest terms possible. It might not be an everyday evil, but it is a dangerous one. Tucker Carlson seems to disagree. In a monologue last night, Carlson alleged that “the whole [white supremacy issue] is a lie.”

“If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns of problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably,” he said. “It’s actually not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium.”

“This is a country where the average person is getting poorer, where the suicide rate is spiking — ‘white supremacy, that’s the problem’ — this is a hoax,” Carlson continued. “Just like the Russia hoax, it’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.”

I understand and even share some of Carlson’s concerns. The Left has taken isolated incidents like El Paso and used them to label roughly half of all Americans as racists who encourage white supremacism, even if they don’t openly sympathize with it. The liberal media was all too eager to join in the feeding frenzy. Smear enough Republicans with baseless accusations, and the result is a rant like Carlson’s.

Carlson is right that white supremacism is not the widespread threat the Left wants it to be. Few Americans harbor genuine hatred and animosity toward different ethnicities, and thank God for that. Those who do rarely lash out as the El Paso shooter did. In fact, a report by California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that there was a “significant national decrease” in hate crimes during the first half of 2018. For now, white supremacists remain fringe actors who lack credence and organization.

But they’re becoming bolder. In a manifesto investigators believe the El Paso shooter wrote, the mass murderer admits he hated immigrants long before Trump entered the White House, but then refers to mass immigration as an “invasion,” a term the president has, in fact, used to support his administration’s hard-line policies. To suggest Trump is somehow responsible for the shooter’s crime, as the Left and media have done, is ridiculous. But conservatives need to face the facts: Trump is a powerful man with the ability to inspire. And it just so happens that a group of isolated, hateful bigots have latched onto him as the inspiration they’ve been looking for.

Again, this isn’t Trump’s fault or that of his supporters’. No one but the El Paso shooter is responsible for the hate he produced. But there is an undeniable trend here: the El Paso shooting, the Gilroy shooting less than a week before, and before that, shootings in a San Diego synagogue, a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque; all within the past few months and all connected to white supremacy.

This isn’t a “hoax.” This is real. And it is our responsibility to disassociate conservatism from this hateful ideology, and then destroy it. Carlson and others on the Right are hesitant to agree to the latter, in part, because rooting out white supremacists would require the government to be more aggressive in its supervision of and investigation into these kinds of crimes. Allowing intelligence agencies, the same ones that lost much of the GOP’s trust during the Russian collusion investigation, to determine what does and what does not qualify as white supremacist rhetoric or activity is a line Carlson and many others aren’t willing to cross. Again, this is an understandable concern.

But what’s the alternative? Do we do nothing and hope white supremacy remains isolated and uncoordinated? That’s a risk no reasonable person should be willing to take. Lives depend on it. We must stand up as a unified movement and make it clear that there is no room for hatred and bigotry in the GOP, conservatism, or the U.S.

We must discourage this evil from reappearing. Do not give these monsters the credibility they seek, and also don’t give them the devil’s victory by pretending they don’t exist.