Why is the right now interested in categorizing certain speech as "hate speech?"
Because they didn't expect a very violent society to be directed toward them. White, middle to upper-class, conservative men aren't supposed to be the targets of political violence in America in the worldview of most moderate to right-wing white people.
You didn't see the right talk about "hate speech" when Dylan Roof shot up a black church or when the El Paso shooter targeted Mexican (and other Hispanic) people in a Walmart.
Why? Because those people are not them. The right's empathy (as they gladly boast about with their heat-map meme, "toxic empathy", and Charlie himself espouse) ends with their capacity to see themselves in a situation.
Civil rights are mutual accordances we agree to protect for each-other. If you didn't speak to protect the rights of others, why would anybody have a larger concern for your rights? That is the sentiment of much of the left currently. We're just taking what the right says about "toxic empathy" at face value and instead of associating the out-group to be BIPOC people, we see the out-group to be the authoritarian right. I think that is what is bothering you.
