Policing “hate speech” is an attempt to address the fact that differences in perspective exist, but there are still some behaviors that are not tolerated because they lead to a breakdown of society.
The problem is that reactionaries see it as a loophole that they can use to play the victim while continuing to dehumanize others. Nothing means anything when people argue in bad faith.
I think if you read classic postmodern literature (think Gravity's Rainbow) you'll find a lot of speech that would be considered politically incorrect, possibly even hate speech. That was purposefully designed by the authors to help devalue and level the meaning of all speech as that's a core postmodern principal.
Reality Is What You Can Get Away With is another postmodern classic that explores some of these themes:
https://www.amazon.com/Reality-What-You-Can-Away/dp/15618408...
Whatever the "reactionaries" did in response was yet another step in the evolution of the back-and-forth and no more or less in bad faith than the previous step.