Joe Biden is officially the 46th President of the United States, and it seems like every one in this country who is to the left of white supremecists is celebrating a victory against the bigoted administration Donald Trump has carved out during the last 4 years.

Many Democrats are going even further and saying Biden’s win in the election is a symbolic win rendering White Supremacy completely powerless now that Trump is gone. For anyone old enough to form critical thinking skills, this is a bit ridiculous to say the least.

Trump may seem like some movie villain that once you defeat, the world will return back to a state of pure bliss, but he is more a symptom of a disease Republicans fed, while Democrats ignored.

In the 1970s and 80s, we had Republican presidents such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan repackage White Supremacy from a Klan robe to a suit and tie. While White Supremacists have always held office in America, the Southern Strategy used by the aforementioned presidents made people feel less guilty voting for a racist, as long as they kept it quiet.

Democrats may have not been explicitly racist like most modern Republicans, but they didn’t fight back hard enough on systemic racism. Clinton was the first Democrat to adopt economics similar to troubling figures like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but as part of the supposed “left leaning” party in America.

Clinton was a standard Republican in almost every way. He cut taxes for the rich, sent jobs overseas, opposed gay marriage and continued with American Imperialism in a way that damaged multiple developing nations.

This compromise from Clinton and the other milquetoast Democrats of the era led to less and less acceptance of actual left wing thought, and right wingers knowing they can get away with a lot more if the left wing opponent is saying what they already say.

President Biden has not helped either, as he has been involved in many neoliberal and imperialist movements that only have helped the privileged. The most worrying part of Biden Democrats is hearing people praise a man who worked to uphold busing segregation as a progressive icon.

If we want to defeat right wing extremists, we have to push the overton window left and make their ideas be considered as extreme and divisive as they truly are. If we take one step closer to them, they will always go one step further. Fascists do not believe in compromise. If we want our ideas to win, we have to fight them on every single putrid idea they spew out.