'Who whom?'

Lenin is supposed to have said at the second All-Russian Congress of Political Education Departments on 17 October 1921, 

"The whole question is—who will overtake whom?"

It was Trotksy and later Stalin who shortened his question to two words 

'Who whom?'

but it is the important question.

Carl Benjamin, blogger (Sargon of Akkad) and UKIP candidate, was visited by the police
during the Euro-elections this year for having in 2016 said of a woman that he “wouldn't even rape” her and then thinking aloud that there again he might. Jo Brand, one of a number of left-wing comics who have never been funny in their careers, said she wanted acid thrown at Nigel Farage instead of milkshakes. Some people complained, but she was
never in any danger of getting into trouble. Danny Baker tweeted a picture of a monkey and was fired by the BBC. 

Some putative victims are protected (such as women, so long as they are pro-EU like Mrs Anna Soubry) and others deserve to be persecuted (Brexiteers).

Boris Johnson was in trouble for saying, very reasonably, that European history had seen repeated attempts to rediscover the

"golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans.

"Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.

"But fundamentally what is lacking is the eternal problem, which is that there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe.

"There is no single authority that anybody respects or understands. That is causing this massive democratic void."

This was shocking because it is shocking to compare a noble anti-racist thing like the EU to Hitler, especially if you want to leave it and are therefore borderline racist. 

If you accuse internationalists of being Nazis and you are white, conservative and have a plummy voice, then it's you who are the Nazi. Do you get how this works?

I am not sure that I do quite discern the logic, and perhaps there isn't one, but if it exists it is linked to racism and skin colour. 

The redoubtable Miss Ann Widdecombe was in trouble for her maiden speech at the European toy parliament, in which she compared Brexit to a slaves' revolt. Slaves come in all colours but she had compared EU to evil ante-bellum American slave-owners. 

Perhaps the logic is that the left and even much of the centre now hate free speech because they find ideas they dislike physically painful. Do doctors have any evidence to support this? 

Or maybe they are just used to winning arguments by shutting other people up and it sells newspapers at the same time.