By James Williams

When Americans picture white supremacy, the image is often a hooded Klansman or a mob of alt-right marchers waving torches. But white supremacy in America has never been confined to burning crosses or swastika tattoos. It wears two faces: one loud and violent, the other polite and institutional. To fight it honestly, we must confront both conservative extremism and liberal complicity.

In today’s America, most organized white supremacist groups — from Ku Klux Klan remnants and neo-Nazis to Proud Boys and “alt-right” networks — find their home on the far right. They openly reject immigration, multiculturalism, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights. Their conspiracy theories, like the “Great Replacement,” stoke fear and paranoia. Their violence has been deadly: Charleston, Pittsburgh, Buffalo — each a reminder that hate metastasizes into murder. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw this kind of hatred clearly when he wrote, “Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission.” That contempt is alive today, which is why federal agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security continue to rank white supremacist extremism as the leading domestic terror threat.

But it would be dishonest to stop at conservatives. White supremacy is not just about violent mobs — it is also about the status quo, preserved and reproduced in institutions that often vote blue. Some of the most segregated cities are in liberal states like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Police budgets swell, schools remain unequal, and “diversity” often masks leadership that remains overwhelmingly white. Dr. King warned of this hypocrisy in his Letter from Birmingham Jail when he said, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block… is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice.” James Baldwin echoed the same truth in plain language: “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”

Malcolm X sharpened the contrast further. “In America, you have liberals and conservatives. The whites are divided into these two groups. The Negro, however, is usually identified as either a Democrat or a Republican. But it’s the same game — two sides of the same coin. One may talk sweet, the other talks rough, but both are after the same thing.” His warning remains relevant as liberals cloak themselves in progressive rhetoric while maintaining systems that protect white dominance. As he famously put it, “The difference between the liberal and the conservative is that the conservative is like the wolf, the liberal is like the fox. Both will eat you — only the fox will smile while he does it.”

I know this from personal experience. I grew up in a UAW household where my father’s politics became my own. That meant Democrat. After a Catholic school education, I drifted toward the Republican Party, becoming a ward leader and running for office, though I never felt fully at home. I agreed with liberals on too many issues, and the GOP’s culture of exclusion never sat right with me. So I returned to the Democrats, my father’s party, though he himself was a conservative-leaning Democrat. Even then, I could not find a home. Running for office as both a Republican and a Democrat, I realized that the problem was never just the party label. It was the system. The racism that was blatant and in-your-face in the GOP was also alive in the Democrats, only embedded in institutions, polished, and hidden under the language of progress.

At the end of the day, the one thing all white supremacists have in common is that they are white, and that is where the problem truly rests. Too many white men, whether liberal or conservative, feel entitled to hold on to what they see as their rightful power. That sense of entitlement is what fuels both the conservative wolf and the liberal fox. The wolf bares its teeth, while the fox hides behind a smile. But both operate from the same foundation: protecting whiteness as the center of power.

The truth is that conservatives and liberals both bear responsibility. On the right, extremist movements must be confronted as the dangerous terrorist networks they are. On the left, leaders must move beyond symbolic diversity campaigns and tackle the deeper structural inequities they too often leave untouched. James Baldwin’s reminder still applies: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” White supremacy in America is not a relic of the past. It is a living system that adapts, whether through far-right violence or liberal inertia. If we only confront one face of it, the other continues to thrive in plain sight.

White supremacy wears two faces. On the right, it is loud, violent, and openly hostile. On the left, it is quiet, systemic, and resistant to real change. The right uses brute force; the left uses velvet gloves. Both are dangerous. Both are destructive. And both are two sides of the same racist coin.