GLR July-August 2025

Joseph E. Lowndes call the “multicultural far-right,” a growing cohort of minoritized people selectively incorporated into a na tionalist framework. Right-wing leaders are aware of the West’s demographic changes and know they must adapt to survive. Part of their plan is deporting “undesirables” and making West ern nations less hospitable. Another is building a more diverse coalition that incorporates disaffected members of marginal ized groups traditionally associated with liberalism. Angel doesn’t represent all right-wing trans people, but his ideological transformation is in line with common tendencies

medicalist, I have never been a transmedicalist, and I will never be a transmedicalist,” said Wynn, mocking the confessional Mc Carthyite tactics used within the trans community to root out perceived traitors. Angel felt the community unfairly rejected his opinions dur ing the controversy. “Some people within the nonbinary com munities react in anger to anything they feel is a threat,” he complained to Newsweek . “They do not have dialogue; they use scare tactics; they create a mob mentality. In some ways very fascist in thought. They do not like it if you have a different

in transgender far-right politicization. We may better understand the basic trajectory of the transgender right by following Angel’s self-reported experiences of exclu sion, identification, and belonging, E XCLUSION

opinion and will try to shut the conversation down.” These feelings of exclusion only in tensified as he lashed out against the trans women who refused to defend him. Misogyny can be a powerful tool of mo bilization. Angel’s conflict with trans women appears to be a central motivation for his

Many trans people feel abandoned by and alienated from mainstream liberal poli ti cs.

A NGEL ’ S POLITICAL JOURNEY took decades. Typically, the first step on this path is a feeling of social exclusion, such as shun ning or shaming from those on the left. Most right-wing trans people were not born into a far-right milieu but were deeply in fluenced by the harsh policing they experienced in left-wing spaces. As Angel puts it: “People go where their voice is being heard.” As countless restorative justice and abolitionist thinkers have argued, ostracizing dissenters from political communities simply pushes them into new spaces where they can continue their harmful behaviors. Angel’s contentious relationship with the trans community, particularly trans women, goes back many years. He infamously outed Matrix director Lana Wachowski as transgender in a 2006 Rolling Stone interview after his girlfriend left him for her. In 2013, Angel launched a surgery fundraising website that The Advocate described as a “pyramid scheme.” The most promi nent critics of the website, including author Emi Koyama and journalist Parker Molloy, were trans women. He went on to sev eral other industries, including cannabis and sex oils. His repu tation never recovered. In the late 2010s, like many members of the transgender right, Angel began to justify his gender identity using biology. He believes gender dysphoria—distress over the disparity be tween one’s internal sense of gender and sex—is a rare disease that legitimizes his identity, while other trans people who don’t experience dysphoria or require medical interventions are not truly transgender. This is called “transmedicalism” and is gen erally received negatively within the trans community. The be lief in transmedicalism typically excludes nonbinary people and trans youth, who are not deemed worthy or deserving of health care or self-identification. Angel’s tone drastically changed after influential trans woman, video essayist, and cultural critic Natalie Wynn (known by her online handle Contrapoints) briefly featured him as a voice actor in a 2019 video on the philosophy of Western æs thetics. Angel’s association with transmedicalism led to imme diate, overwhelming public shaming, shunning, and disavowal. The video marked one of Angel’s last collaborations with a left wing creator. Wynn did not defend Angel and instead de nounced his beliefs. “Some people have taken my association with [Angel] as evidence that I am secretly a transmedicalist. ... I want to let you all know, first of all, that I am not a trans

right-wing beliefs. Some right-wing ideologues fixate on Jews, some on migrants, others on trans women (among countless other categories). There must be an out-group for the in-group to exist. Most public attacks against trans people are specifically aimed at trans women, who are easy and “fashionable” targets. Trans activist-author Julia Serano named this phenomenon “trans misogyny.” In interviews, right-wing trans men and women alike reiterated these ideas, often repeating the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of trans women controls the transgender move ment. Angel adopted transmisogynist rhetoric to comprehend, justify, and mediate his exclusion from trans spaces.

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July–August 2025

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