As made evident by the last election cycle, the alt-right is nothing but poison.

Those who make up the alt-right are leftover types looking for some place to belong. Racism binds them together in a sick brotherhood. They are proponents of a singularly white heritage and promote a “pure” America, one where whites dominate.

They are nothing but racists.

Like most racists, they are hung up on their skin color as the defining factor of their hate-filled lives. It’s sad and pathetic, really, until such a mindset turns into actual aggression and desire to limit others, or worse, hurt them.

On Friday, alt-right white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville for their “Unite the Right” rally, centered around protesting the city’s decision to remove a Robert E. Lee statue from a park. Of course, their hate is much larger than a statue in Anytown, USA. It’s the kind of hate which seemed like a good idea to cowardly, impressionable minds as they carried their tiki torches in the dark, battling off Virginia mosquitoes more than fighting some sort of ideological battle.

On Saturday, they were met with counter-protesters of the anti-fa, Black Lives Matter, or a general anti-racist variety. As one might expect, the situation turned violent. Before Heather Heyer was mowed down by a car driven by a domestic terrorist named James Alex Fields, people were already bleeding from much less minor – but no less hateful – clashes.

In the wake of the bloodshed and murder, who do we blame? Should we pinpoint a media which salivates over potential newsworthy events? Should we point to a Democratic party who hates Middle America, where most of these racist thugs originate? Should we point to a president who isn’t willing to call out white supremacy as a problem on his favorite platform, Twitter?

No, we must blame the alt-right. 

If we’re honest with ourselves, they’ve been the problem for a while. Their ranks swelled and with it, they propelled one specific candidate toward the GOP nomination. We must recognize this fact, and point to it when these types of tragedies occur. I hope they won’t again, but they will. Have you checked the racial temperature in America?

Even more so than before the election, the crumbling American Right is at a defining moment. Either its members (of which I am no longer one) will denounce what it sees as a representation of the whole, or it will remain silent, watch those FOX News roundtables, shake its collective head at that “bad news out of Charlottesville”, and continue on its cowardly way.

There were too many hot takes to count on Saturday, in the wake of the tragedy that brought Heather Heyer’s death, but former RedState writer Dan McLaughlin, who is currently at National Review, was spot-on.

Remember: the Alt-Right wants to destroy mainstream conservatism & religious Christianity, not ally with us. They're the enemy.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) August 12, 2017

The alt-right IS the enemy.

They are not only the enemy of conservatism and Christianity, they are the enemy of the American people. Declaring this does not negate the other poisonous tribes which also represent a threat to regular Americans, but their representative didn’t ram a vehicle into a crowd of people in Charlottesville, did they?

We must speak up, since we have a president who won’t immediately talk of the specific white supremacist hate which has long invaded the ranks of his supporters.

Charlottesville happened because racists chose to gather and one of its member took it upon himself to express that hate through murder. It’s unacceptable, it isn’t conservatism, and this is not what makes America great.

If the Right refuses to clean house and bleach out these continued sins, it deserves to crumble.