My theory on why most politicised young people are so apathetic about (or hostile to) free speech is that they've never had the experience of holding views that put them in a small minority. Politicised at university, they've always been in the majority among their peers

Their opinions - radical or liberal left - are in fact minority views in society at large, but within their social milieus (e.g. fellow students, their twitter bubble etc etc) they are totally hegemonic. They conform with all of the callow zeal of young people trying to fit in

I spent my school years as close to the only person with left-of-centre views in an Essex grammar school where being a Tory was seen as a sign of being wet. I was treated with a mixture of total bafflement and frank disdain. The feeling of being a tiny minority has never left me.

I actually overall now look with fondness on my school days, but the sometimes unfortunate reality of it (and this was only 15-20 years ago) is rather extraordinary to think of now. One PE teacher made us strip to the waist and play 'Asians v Whites' in basketball

1 teacher would begin his biology lessons by saying 'You still a socialist boy? If I stand still long enough, you going to nationalise me?'. He'd then follow it up by a lecture on why lefties are stupid. He trotted this or similar out every lesson. It got very boring very quickly

On a more serious note, being one of the few people who tried to discourage the relentless bullying of the only boy brave enough to come out as gay (extremely unpleasant homophobia being endemic) did not make me very popular, that was for sure.

In general, at every possible provocation most of my class would gang up on me to shout down my opinions. I persevered out of sheer bloody-mindedness. But the experience makes one reluctant to try to do something similar to others, even if you think they are absolutely bats.

A decent % of those boys went onto become leftier than thou wokeistas. I met one in a pub years later who bored me to death about how he was now a Corbynista. A conformist at 13, a conformist at 20-odd, just in opposite directions because his peer orthodoxy changed