An important figure in Russian history, he’s now remembered more for a quote he didn’t say and a fealty to a postmodern dialectic that has proved to have more staying power than the Soviet Union. The dialectic is still practiced in Russia – Vladimir Putin uses is – but it’s more common here in the United States, in a mutated form replicating itself like a virus in almost every elite university in the United States — and on Twitter. Actually, it’s in Twitter’s mission statement, a nice shorthand for “dialectic materialism” being “intersectionality.” A product of leftist campus politics, it holds that members of our society are defined primarily by race, class, and gender identity – and the “oppression” they’ve been subjected to as a result.

It was bad enough when such dogma was confined to campus, but how was it ever going to be contained there? Today’s college students are tomorrow’s colleagues in the workplace. Some of those employees work at Twitter. “Our mission,” it boasts, “is to power positive global change by fostering respectful conversations.”

“Respectful” turns out to be an interesting term of art. Increasingly, conservatives are learning that it translates in the language of Silicon Valley millennial-speak to “censorship.” For the past couple of years, prominent conservative pundits and provocateurs have had their Twitter accounts suspended or been given lifetime bans, a list that continues to grow. The social media platform also apparently has a nefarious practice of “shadow-banning” conservatives, which means muting or diminishing their tweets without their knowledge.