At a rally in Madison Square Garden, former President Donald Trump’s campaign unveiled the America he seeks to restore. The night evoked a chilling resemblance to the 1939 “Pro-America Rally” held by Nazi sympathizers at the same venue in the months leading up to World War II. 

The content of the rally left no room for ambiguity — this election is a referendum on the moral fortitude of white America.

In case you missed it, Tucker Carlson thanked Trump for “liberating” his followers from hiding their worldview and accused Vice President Kamala Harris of having a “low IQ.”  Another speaker waved a crucifix, calling Harris “the antichrist.” An alleged comedian insulted Puerto Rico, calling it “a floating pile of garbage” and Elon Musk donned a “Make America Great Again” hat in the Fraktur font used to brand Hitler’s Third Reich.

Talks of “slaughtering these other people” — presumably Trump’s so-called “enemies from within” — underscored the pace at which white Christian nationalism is gaining ground. 

The word count is too limited to unpack the deeply troubling dog whistles evident in these remarks. They remind us that while the Republican Party may be changing demographically with the overall composition of the country, its rhetoric remains inseparable from its white supremacist roots.

Conservatives are waging war on the historical narratives that can help us understand the moment we find ourselves in. When we look to the past, it is clear that white people have repeatedly failed to act in such a way that white supremacy is considered their problem to solve. Three vignettes come to mind:

In 1898, Black suffragist Mary Church Terrell coined “lifting as we climb” to describe a vision for intersectionality in the fight for women’s voting rights. Her call went largely unanswered. The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, but it took fifty more years for Black women to gain equal access to the ballot.

During key periods of economic growth in the 20th Century, white people made their racism material through racial covenants — land restrictions that prevented non-white people from selling and owning homes. When it was not possible to enforce these restrictions by law, white people turned to mob violence or joined terrorist organizations like the Klu Klux Klan to do their bidding.

In 1965, a white Unitarian minister named James Reeb was murdered by white supremacists in Selma, Alabama, for supporting Black voting rights.

News of his death gripped the nation, but instead of reckoning with the violence that transpired, the town’s white residents accused Black activists of killing Reeb to make a “white martyr.” Despite eyewitnesses and a jury trial, no one was held accountable.

So, what does this have to do with the election?

In key civil rights battles, white Americans often choose to safeguard their place as the dominant group instead of taking an active part in dismantling the hatred that animates white supremacy.

The 2024 election offers a pivotal chance to break from that tradition.

The white person is central to the Republican base — even if they are not aligned with the ideology individually. For this reason, it should not be a white person’s conscience around one issue or another that forces a woman to carry her rapist’s baby or die because she cannot receive proper medical care, abets the mass deportation of immigrant families, erodes public schools, guts DEI initiatives, bans Queer people from public life and destroys transgender healthcare, ruins the remains our environment, sustains the conservative Supreme Court super-majority or, unbelievably, heightens the genocide in Gaza.

It may seem more ideologically pure to vote third-party or not at all, but we cannot ignore the reality of who bears the heavier burden of consequences when fascist conservatives win.

The America we inherit deeply contradicts modern progressive sensibilities, yet change is the one constant our fragile democracy allows. Reducing its founding spirit to the most perverse interpretations — allowing patriotism to continue to be synonymous with white supremacy — conclusively prevents us from ever existing differently.

Let’s heed the lessons of history, letting our most egregious betrayals of human dignity inform our new standard of care for one another.

If you are white and remain undecided or are considering staying home, it’s not too late to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and move.

Kelly Rogers is a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily, an undergraduate urban studies student in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society and a researcher at Mapping Prejudice.