[mindslight]

> how hot-button an issue Free Speech has become.

What has really happened is that a major political group has gone from having views basically supporting the mainstream power structure ("conservative") to having views at odds with the mainstream power structure ("reactionary", to use Moldbug's own label). They're shocked that their viewpoints are suddenly being censored by the mainstream media, and chalking it up to a conspiracy by the other political party rather than the mutually interested oligarchic behavior that's been there the whole time. For anyone who came up having their politics at odds with the mainstream power structure, the censorship dynamic of mass media (which now includes social mass media) isn't a shock.

(I suspect there's a similar pan-political shock for the generation that grew up with social media primacy, but before social media had been fully captured by the incumbent power structure)