Interesting - I've heard the "pulling the ladder up behind them" idea applied to the boomer generation regarding wealth, and even power, but it never occurred to me to translate it to the information sphere. I'm making an assumption that the reference here to the Left supporting free speech until they got into power is compatible with a narrative that the roots of the 2020's lie in the 1960's, and that yesterday's radicals are today's powerbrokers, with their students and protégées carrying on the project.

Of course, this also assumes the Left is ascendant, yet another interpretation fits the same narrative: it could also be that what we're seeing is the last gasp of the 60's revolution, the final, desperate expenditure of energy before the collapse. In many ways, this seems unlikely, with the Left ensconced at the heights of cultural and political power. Yet the increasingly unmoored conversations on the Left have such a "let them eat cake" feel at times that one wonders if this increasing trend toward authoritarianism is, in the end, actually a sign of political weakness and an impending loss of power.