This seems to be the latest update to Herbert Marcuse's idea, set out in his 1965 article Repressive Tolerance, that tolerance of "right-wing" speech is actually repressive, whereas fostering "left-wing" speech is liberating. Some regard Marcuse's essay as the founding manifesto of modern-day cancel culture.
This article provides a good debunking of this garbage, which apparently is all too typical of American Studies courses and academics these days where everything has to be seen through the prism of "white supremacy"—pure civilizational self-loathing.
If you were unaware that freedom could be ugly, Ms. Anker is more than happy to enlighten you. Freedom is a suspect enough idea that she puts the word in scare quotes. Or rather, freedom is suspect (or “ugly”) when it is invoked by anyone whose views are to the right of her own. Anker cites Republican governors lifting mask mandates and parents demanding greater transparency from school systems as examples of so-called “ugly freedoms.”
“Each of these actions used the language of freedom to justify anti-democratic politics,” Anker argues. These “ugly freedoms” are “used to block the teaching of certain ideas, diminish employees’ ability to have power in the workplace and undermine public health.” According to Anker, these ideas represent an “exclusionary” and “coercive” view of freedom. That’s right: Lifting mask mandates and giving parents more control over what their kids learn in school is now considered coercive.
It is perhaps not a surprise to learn that Anker’s essay is drawn from a book titled Ugly Freedoms, which claims to critique “liberal American democracy, outlining how the emphasis of individual liberty has always been entangled with white supremacy, settler colonialism, climate destruction, economic exploitation, and patriarchy.”