I think what has come out of the postmodern dialectic is the recognition that there are no neutral points of view.
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.
Postmodernism is the recognition that all points of view are equally valid (or invalid). Policing "hate speech" and "protecting" society are modern concepts not postmodern ones.
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:
I totally agree — the existence of “hate speech” isn’t a postmodern point of view, but rather a modernist reaction to postmodernism. But a great many authoritarian modernists use postmodern arguments in bad faith as a way to delegitimize their critics.
I think the act of bringing postmodern tools to the debate was a way of playing the "I win" game by turning the conversation into inescapable morass for those that weren't accustomed to that kind of debate.
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.
Yeah, there is a subtle distinction between “there are no neutral points of view” and “there is no such thing as objective truth”. Postmodernist arguments applied to contemporary politics serve to blur that distinction, which is where the bad faith comes in.
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.