I can vividly remember my first public confrontation after having fallen into the alt-right pipeline. A transgender classmate at Augusta University spoke up during a class discussion, and I saw an opportunity.

By this point in my life, watching untold hours of videos with titles like “WOKE FEMINIST OWNED BY STOIC LIBERTARIAN” had trained me to pounce. Once called on, I launched into a tirade, repeatedly denouncing “wokeness” and attacks on “Western Civilization.” What’s hardest for me to recall now, though, is the cruelty I gleefully expressed toward my classmate. More than once, I made a point to purposefully refer to this peer as a woman, despite the fact that he had clearly stated his identity as a man (and had surely suffered immensely along his life path toward that decision). “Despite what she says, she’s not a man,” I told the class.

When I finished, my classmate responded succinctly: “It’s ‘he,’ and you’re an asshole.” But in my mind, I’d done it: I had mounted a simultaneous attack on political correctness and defense of Western values. I had waded into the marketplace of ideas, done battle against progressivism, and that was all that mattered.