It’s an old story with the same tragic ending. From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the Oscar-nominated film Wicked, the presence of an outsider becomes a convenient monster to blame our anxieties and fears. Hysteria and violence against the innocent is sure to follow. These stories are compelling and enduring, not just for the dramatic tales they create, but because they remind us of our past and present realities.

The perception that people of a different cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, or sexual orientation are a threat to the social order is nothing new. A look back at the horrors of the expansionistic ambitions, systemic ethnic cleansing, and genocide led by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party incited the most studied campaigns of state-sponsored violence in modern times. The Holocaust was a real event in history that was responsible for the deaths of six million Jews. It amounted to a staggering persecution of one-third the Jewish population worldwide.

The perception that people of a different cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, or sexual orientation are a threat to the social order is nothing new.

Today, there is a growing resurgence of the ideological principles that brought the world to war. Before Hitler took power, there had already been a campaign underway of nationalism, self-preservation, distrust, antisemitism, and racism. The trends in today’s political environment are reflected in historical precedent. In Germany, the AfD Party represents a growing influential extremist socio-political movement that openly shares neo-Nazi sentiments, apologetics, and Holocaust-denial and revisionism. Similar beliefs are emerging in other global democracies, including the United States embodied by the MAGA movement.

Most alarming is a direct link between these two emerging movements that continue to amplify their distinct, yet shared, ideological principles. Recently, Donald Trump’s handpicked billionaire consultant Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, made headlines by his comments at an AfD Party event. Musk’s statements parroted beliefs and ideas that create fictional monsters and make the world more anxious, unstable, and divisive—not less. Comments such as, “…multiculturalism dilutes everything,” and “there is too much focus on past guilt,” (a reference that can only be interpreted as Holocaust-denialism) are well-understood as xenophobic, racist, and antisemitic.

Free speech rights protect individuals like Musk to openly share their ideas and beliefs, regardless of how radical or disliked they may be. The same is true for us. As an informed progressive society, it’s our right and responsibility to compassionately converse with, educate, and inspire a more hopeful vision for tomorrow to friends and neighbors. Today’s emboldened extreme right-wing ideas are frighteningly all too familiar to students of history. Shifts and corrections are inevitable in any free society, but their tragic outcomes are not predetermined. Hope is still alive for the world and our marginalized, oppressed, and suffering neighbors.

As an informed progressive society, it’s our right and responsibility to compassionately converse with, educate, and inspire a more hopeful vision for tomorrow to friends and neighbors.

The solution to easing fears of monsters hiding under the bed is simply to turn the lights on. Unsettling noises and lurking figures in shadows are often revealed as misunderstood enemies. Compassion and love will cultivate the conditions for openness, peaceful coexistence, and the pursuit of a shared reality. In the same way, diversity does not dilute, but enhances, beautifies, and creates a better tomorrow for everyone.

Believing the worst of others is how monsters are made. Believing the best is how legends are born.