Acts of terrorism have been around for a long time in America. It’s part of our nation’s history. Sadly, during the last few months of the GOP primary campaign, those on the Right of the political divide seem to have co-opted the word “terrorist,” permitting its use only in reference to the Muslim world and, more specifically, radicalized Islamists.

This was not the case years ago, when no one disputed that white American-born unibomber Ted Kazinski and Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh were, indeed, terrorists. Although no one cited the word “radicalized,” there was also no arguing among politicians, left and right of center, that these two men committed these acts of terrorism due to their political ideologies.

You’d think that any self-aware individual would easily correlate the relationship between dangerous rhetoric and the rise in hatred, bigotry and racism that, today, has turned into an increasing number of random acts of terrorism. Unfortunately for us, conservatives don’t seem so self-aware. They refuse to call 21-year old Dylann Roof a terrorist for the mass shooting of AME churchgoers in Charleston, SC, just as they refuse to label 59-year old Robert Lewis Dear a terrorist for the bombing of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

It’s time that conservatives call random acts of mass violence committed by white Americans what it is — terrorism; events including even the most recent Coachella mosque bombing and Ohio 7th-grader aiming to shoot a Muslim classmate.