BOSTON, UNITED STATES — The Ku Klux Klan is planning a rally to celebrate the election of Donald Trump and, naturally, the Left is losing its shit. They’re calling for the President-Elect to ‘disavow’ the Klan, just as they called for him to disavow David Duke when the former Penultimate Hydra (or whatever the Klan calls its dignitaries these days) endorsed him. Trump resisted doing so for a while, though he ultimately relented.

He was wrong to disavow Duke then and he’d be wrong to disavow the Klan now.

Look: regardless of how many SJWs post videos of themselves sobbing and calling Trump a Nazi, no one really believes he’s racist. Certainly no one believes his pillow-talk with Melania goes: ‘Between us, dear, I really can’t say I hate the idea of lynching black men for ogling white women.’ I know that. You know that. Progressives, in their heart of hearts, know that.

Which means Trump has nothing to disavow, and that’s the end of it. But by distancing himself from the Klan, he gives the impression of proximity. He can’t disown them without first owning them. And why would he have any proximity to the Klan? How could he possibly have owned their racist beliefs? Not because he has even an iota of racism in his past (he doesn’t). No: it’s because he’s an immigration hawk and an assimilationist. And the Left has always maintained that such conservatism is just a baby-step away from full-blown Hitlerism. So conservatives are assumed to secretly harbour racist beliefs unless they can prove otherwise to the media’s satisfaction.

This goes back to our chat about the Alt-Right. After the Trump Revolution, progressives have realized that their old tactic of hurling simple insults like ‘racist’ and ‘xenophobe’ at their opponents won’t work anymore. So they’ve started using more sophisticated slurs: Alt-Right, white nationalist, etc. They don’t try to assassinate your character – they accuse you of ideological extremism.

The new lexicon of political sin will only gain currency if we’re complicit in its proliferation. If we cower in fear every time they spit that nonsensical innuendo at us, we’ll hand back to the Left their power to dictate the parameters of acceptable speech.

If Trump wants to avoid a return to the status quo ante bellum, he’ll refuse to even acknowledge the rally, and any other consortium of wackadoodles held in his honour. He should continue to set an example for conservatives everywhere by staunchly refusing to play the Left’s game. The house always wins. And, anyway, it’s his house now.

Twitter: @mwardav