I'm sorry, when did expressing an opinion become oppression?
Uhh ... since like always. If you constantly shout at black people "n.... go home" would that be "just expressing an opinion" or would it be oppression?
I'm sorry, but this seems fairly disingenous. What I'm talking about is the full range of social exclusion tactics, domination of the discussion etc. it amounts to bullying. And it's rife within the campus activist community. People who are/were strong supporters of the goals are talking about how toxic it has become. Enforcing groupthink through the full range of psychological abuse tactics. That's what it's evolved into.
It's no different to the Stanford Prison Experiment - people come up with all sorts of psychological abuse tactics to get what they want and take control of the situation. People who happen to join a mob who are doing it in the "name of social justice" aren't automatically excluded from the "lord of the flies" type bullshit that goes on. Mob mentality can be applied to literally anything, any cause, any rhetoric.
Boiling that down to "just expressing an opinion" is not a fair caricature of how social peer pressure works. You could justify just about any fucked up shit short of throwing punches as "just expressing an opinion".
It would be oppression, but it wouldn't be a free speech violation. And its only oppression because of the larger context. Although that's mainly a semantic argument. I don't think that randomly shouting "unattached earlobes go home!" would be oppression but I also don't think it would be good behavior.
You have this weird idea that ideas and identities are the same. They're not. First of all, the current definition of race is that you don't choose your race, and that seems unlikely to change in the short term. Additionally tho, there's nothing about having black skin that is unacceptable behavior. So even if being a race were just like changing your shirt, giving someone shit for wearing a black shirt is still a prick thing to do. Compare to fascism. You can decide to be a fascist or not whenever you want. Furthermore taking pro-fascist action is always a choice. Its also very easy to make arguments for why encouraging fascism is harmful. So attacking fascists and attacking black people is wildly different. Hell, attacking leftists and attacking black people is wildly different. There's been hella insults and criticisim directed towards feminism on this forum, have I ever said its oppression? Have I ever said it was a free speech violation against me?
Now, fascism isn't quite the same thing as racism. And you could turn it around, and be like: but the left likes communism. Why is making kill the rich jokes ok but deport the immigrant jokes not? Well, here's the beautiful thing: I have definitely heard leftists defend the USSR. I have NEVER heard a leftist who takes shit for that respond with some bullshit like "its a free country I can say what I want". They just defend the idea, they don't attack their opponent's right to criticize the idea.
You trying to draw equivalencies between people expressing ideas and people existing is rubbing me the wrong way. But more to the point, even if that were true, even if "fuck fascists" and "n____ go home" were equivalent, it still doesn't work. Because the anti-PC crowd (which you're part of) is the only one using "free speech" to defend themselves and attack others. Leftists never said you can't say "n_____" because it takes black people's free speech away from them. In fact many leftists would argue that you CAN say that word, you just SHOULDN'T say that word. The law agrees with that view, although that conversation would be a big digression.