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.

Free speech as in allowing hate speech, which is a free speech absolutionist position

There's a significant difference between "being a free speech absolutist" and simply defending hate-speech on the grounds of "race realism" and similar eugenicist beliefs.

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

They did not. They campaigned on college campuses to encourage students to espouse and adopt racist language by claiming any negative social consequences the students experienced were infringements on their "freedoms".

But you don't need to dig too far into the history to note that Steven Crowder was posting up on college campuses fully uninhibited, while Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk were kidnapped and trucked off to ICE blacksites. Nobody was having Ben Shapiro or Kaitlin Bennett snatched off the street and shoved into an oubliette. Charlie Kirk isn't in hiding right now, because of his stated opinions on the Biden Presidency or his fringe views on South African apartheid.

Who knows how many people this may resonate with, but this type of challenging thought still seems important for bridging the political divide.