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it really does show how much of the "is free speech on campus being threatened by the woke mob?" stuff is just pure manufactured nothingness.
When events like this happens, it's like the upper echelons of society just goes "Alright, those times where you had the ability to say what you want and where we were talking about how free speech is important in democratic societies is now over. Put the toys back in the box. That was a fun time in recess on the playground but now it's time to pack it in. No more funny jokes about free expression, we were just letting you play make-believe for a while there and letting your imagination run wild, but it's time to return to the real world. No dissent is tolerated anymore. You will lose your job and starve and you are actually a terrorist yourself if you try and have even peaceful words about the issue here. In a few weeks we might let you go outside and play again and talk about the abstract ideals of free speech, but not right now, children - there's serious adult business going on here that you don't understand yet."
I get the sense that its a pure bait-and-switch. You're brought up to believe in a free society with unlimited right to speech. Meanwhile, everything you say and do is carefully monitored and documented. Eventually, you come of age and try to join the working adult society. And if you've violated any of the taboos of the society while believing you had the right to do so, this information is used to bar you from participation.
The ideology of Free Speech becomes a means of baiting people into outing themselves as non-compliant. The end result is a kind-of selection bias, wherein only the ideologically pure ever get to climb the socio-economic ladder. And that keeps everyone at the top of the pile thinking in the same "correct" direction.
Guys like Elon Musk toed the line in their 20s and 30s, so they got admitted up the chain of command until they are administrating everything from mass media to the automotive industry to the space program.
Guys like Richard Wolff are allowed a minimal public platform without any social or economic sway and - like unwitting judas goats - used to separate anyone else with leftist predilections from the central herd so they can be flagged and blacklisted and shut off from the mainstream of society, too.
there's a class component as well (in this case social class not economic) as people raised in the upper and middle classes actually do get educated somewhat in the fact that you need to verbally toe the ideological line in public
Definitely a class component, but even the upper crust has its black sheep. Compare your Beau and Hunter Bidens, for instance. Or consider the path Pete Buttigieg and Bill Clinton took on their way up the political ladder. Its an endless series of hoops to jump through, to prove you're a loyal and committed junior officer of the Empire, before they start sizing you up for Consul.
One reason you still see a bunch of Congresscritters crawl out of the MIC. Or how many city politicians come up through the police force. There's no better indicator that you've been molded into a compliant lackey than bars on your shoulders.
One more cause of the terminal group think at the top of society