The author implies that the “nakedly coercive” left is a new phenomenon, but it’s not. Leftism has always been about both institutional brute force and vicious personal violence.
Ann Coulter goes through the history very nicely in “Godless.”
I don't believe that the author is suggesting that this is a new phenomenon, but rather there has been an awakening - a fuller understanding by those on the Right (and others) about the depth of deceit employed by the Left.
As David Horowitz put it in June of 2000 in his essay about Hillary Clinton: Hillary Clinton and "The Third Way" How America's First Lady of the Left Has Bamboozled Liberals and Conservatives Alike ..........................."Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left—by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.
Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them."