The Ban Hammer of Censorship to provide false enclaves, called "Safe Spaces".

[Igel]

26. We have always had safe spaces.

They're called "homes."

We used to have safe spaces called "social clubs," where you could pick and choose who's going to be there. Same for schools and colleges.

What's new is demanding safe spaces in public spaces because some safe spaces do not yield as much money or prestige. This amounts to exerting hegemony and control over public behavior by others in spaces that used to be a commons, essentially ideologically privatizing the formerly public space. Some groups can be criticized in safe spaces; some cannot. Some speech is free; some is not. I've seen "safe spaces" in which some speech is all but coerced--it's a kind of ideological loyalty statement before saying something that might be understood as dissent, to blunt or defang it and provide cover against pariah status. It's an exercise of power to define what can and cannot be criticized and impose that definition on others.

Safe spaces, anti-blasphemy laws, and criminalization of anti-societal political speech are close cousins and all reflect a kind of totalitarian impulse. Nobody thinks they're doing bad things; but few totalitarians worth their salt have told the masses, "I'm doing this because, frankly, I like filet mignon and raping women with impunity, screw you." Usually the rhetoric is, "I'm doing this for your good, for the public good," and usually they believe it. Often the result of giving the powerless power over authoritarians is just a kind of enhanced totalitarianism--they learn their lessons, and enhance and expand their range of application while calling their worse version of oppression "good." Evil almost always shows up saying it's the good guy and there to help.

I've even heard calls for "safe space" neighborhoods, where you get redlining and restrictions on what cultural traits can be expressed so as to leave the way open for other cultural expressions. "This neighborhood has reflected ______ values for 70 years, and that must be continued without change" is fine if it's Latino or African-American, but one area 15 miles away in the same megalopolis that still celebrates its long-standing German heritage is called upon to reduce that in favor of a more "diverse" cultural expression. By "diverse" they do not mean Polish or Turkish. They treat cultural celebration as a zero-sum game, and want the resources by the German-heritage groups to be expended on their behalf, they want not just to share the stage but to liberate the stage.