QUESTION ASKED: How did free speech become a right-wing value?

In early May, I explored the left’s reaction to billionaire Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter and his vow to make it a free speech platform again. Since then, Musk and his vision have repeatedly been portrayed as “right-wing.”

It’s the damndest thing.

Canadian Conservative politician Andrew Scheer picked up on this strange phenomenon back in April, saying that that the corporate media framing free speech as a “right wing value” was just plain weird. As though to drive home the point, Twitch’s Zachary Ryan called Musk a right-winger on Monday. And over the weekend, entrepreneur Samir Tabar had a question for a whiny Robert Reich:

Since when did free speech become a right-wing value? Right around the time that conservatives won the culture war: