[onos]

It’s stunning that the left fought for decades for racial equality and free speech, only to do an abrupt about face.

But to stick to the current topic: these required dei statements are definitely ideological litmus tests, and the people promoting these are not “on the right side of history”, but authoritarians.

[TheFreim]

It was never about "free speech" but rather "how can we justify what we say to gain influence". Once sufficient influence has been acquired it is necessary to prevent opposition from wielding the same tool that gave you power. The common man may have been convinced that "free speech" was an ideal but ultimately they were being used or manipulated.

[snapplebobapple]

It makes more sense when you realize it's not the same left. The old left was much more on the hopeful/practical side of marxist thought focused on the economy as the alleged pathway of oppression, which gave them a focus on unionization and equal rights. The new left is much more influenced by the butt hurt, due to the utter failure of the system in the face of free market, decedents of old school marxism that has generalized marxist thought processes (i.e. critical theory) to all sorts of different alleged pathways of oppression. The new left comes much more out of the university and the legal profession and many of the different versions don't really like each other because critical theory doesn't give you coherent results and as such things that form the foundation of one version are considered abhorrent in another (i.e. put a critical race theorist and a queer theorist in a room and compare and contrast what the same base idea and reasoning system manifests as). The moderate center left is much more alienated under the new regime and is increasingly homeless as well because the new left isn't as willing to compromise its vision in return for incremental improvement (I think that's because it's not as unified a thought process as it was when it wasn't generalized but that's just my opinion)