It is hard to imagine how last weekend’s Unite the Right rally in DC, the nervously awaited second coming of the white nationalist group that wreaked havoc in Charlottesville last year, could have been less successful. A paltry few dozen white nationalists (at most) were swamped by masses of anti-racist counter-protestors. Press coverage was often simplified: Here is the so-called alt-right doing exactly what we prophesied—succumbing to in-fighting and political inexperience, fading fast into obscurity.

It’s true that, in failing to produce significant numbers of demonstrators, white nationalists did flunk a basic test of a movement’s might. But trawling through alt-right haunts, like the social media platform Gab, gives a different take on the situation. Accord to some posters, the far-right wasn’t out in force because they didn’t want to be—there’s no profit in being doxed and losing your job. According to others, the event was all a troll to make antifascists—some of whom carried signs with violent messages, got into spats with reporters, and hurled a few eggs—look bad in a public setting. Either way, they seem happy to ignore their detractors and remain within the relative safety and anonymity of their digital domain.

So why is the alt-right, a media-savvy and optics-conscious group, so relaxed about this very public flop? It’s because white nationalists, it seems, may see success differently.

Determining the success of a particular social movement is a tricky, subjective business. The simplest metric, the one that movements like March for Our Lives are going for, is reforming policy in a given area. Proving your numbers is what gives movements the leverage to petition leaders, hire lawyers, and call for legislative change more effectively. The second is slightly more diffuse—it involves creating enough cultural change to shift social norms, like the American Civil Right movement did and movements like #MeToo or Black Lives Matter seek to. To be sure, white nationalists would love to succeed at either of these options. But there is a third door to success, and that’s the one white nationalism has typically marched through: the continued survival of the movement’s ideas. In other words, persistence.

Over the past few decades, the American far-right has gone underground. Many extremist leaders have instructed their followers to pull away from open confrontation, like rallies, and tweak their aesthetics so they can better infiltrate the mainstream. (Think: skinheads growing their hair out to get better jobs, or David Duke swapping Klansmen’s robes for suits.) In these periods of strategic obscurity, white nationalists have maintained and continued to spread their ideas in ways that seldom make headlines: at small local groups, at underground music venues, and, increasingly, online.

But what is the point of this secrecy? How could they possibly see muttering hate speech in a basement to the tune of Oi! as winning? “If you accept a few premises about the world, it starts to make sense,” says Robert Futrell, coauthor of American Swastika: Inside the US White Power Movement’s Hidden Space of Hate. “Some people believe we’re destined for a race war, and that if that is the case, then all the enlightened group needs to do is prepare and wait and then take over.”

That doesn’t mean that these small underground groups won’t try to ignite a larger movement. “Occasionally leaders will call for ‘lone-wolf actors’ who hope that by massacring people they’ll spark things off,” says Futrell. (That’s exactly what Dylann Roof hoped would happen when he killed the black congregation of a Charleston church.) But because these groups are loosely held coalitions of ideas, not everyone is explicitly waiting for the same race war. Some are waiting for the second Civil War. Some are waiting for a slightly more subtle cue: the right politician taking power.

Enter Donald Trump, and out from the shadows come hundreds of clean-cut white supremacists in polo shirts. Last summer was as close to a sympathetic moment as the movement has seen in decades, and despite Trump’s insistence that the Charlottesville rally included “very fine people,” that moment was gone in day. The first Unite the Right rally did not go to plan. Fights broke out, dozens of rally participants were doxed, some lost their jobs, the leaders are being sued, and someone murdered a peaceful protester. Yes, it was newsworthy. Yes, it might have emboldened some to join. But it also demonstrated the risks of openly supporting such a controversial group— the kind of national moment that imperils a group’s ability to persist.

All of this has come together to significantly change the alt-right zeitgeist over the course of the last year. “First it was all for the lulz, and they were congratulating each other on tricking people,” says Caroline Sinders, who studies online harassment and activism. “Now they’re talking about themselves with what feels like concern. ‘Did you see those people got outed?’” That’s trickled over to their online behavior at large. You can’t participate in the movement without a strong online presence, but leaders have become much more proactive about posting guides about where and when members should post photos or how to use VPNs.

It’s tempting to see that secrecy as cowardice or the poor turnout at Unite the Right 2 as buffoonish disorganization. But the group’s deflection—that the alt-right never intended to attend the Unite the Right rally in force—is easy to corroborate. The organizer, Jason Kessler, is practically an alt-right pariah for opening the movement up to backlash by hosting public events at the wrong moment. “There’s a really open disavowal of the event from the majority of the white nationalist movement,” says Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “I’ve seen a lot of people saying ‘It’s not worth it,’ or ‘We can’t count on the police to do their jobs. It’s not a safe situation.’” That isn’t stupid—that’s savvy. So too is focusing on the bad behavior of antifascists. Anything that minimizes their threat in the eyes of the average person, especially if it increases the perceived threat of their opposition, is a good PR move.

Charlottesville was a single bold blip in a long history of white nationalists strategically staying out of the public eye. And their confidence, while fleeting, wasn’t misguided: A recent study showed that some 11 million white Americans identify strongly with their whiteness and feel victimized for it, which makes them susceptible to white nationalist ideas if they don’t espouse them already. Thinking of American white nationalism as a few wacked-out simpletons fails to grasp the range of people that ideology represents, and the even broader swathe they hope it might appeal to. Last weekend’s rally wasn’t a failure to maintain Charlottesville’s momentum. It was a return to the subterranean status quo.