GOP

The framing of the article is focused on people who might have agreed with the free speech absolutionist position before

That is the thing, none of them were ever free speech absolutionists even back then. That is a disguise they used when it came to certain issues around free speech, mostly hate speech, but never for anything else.

Words mean absolutely nothing to these fascists, they will exploit tolerance to promote their non-tolerance, but they will happily cast tolerance aside when it comes to the defence of vulnerable minorities of all kinds. Even back then.