I mean, you don't seem to suggest the cultural revolution wasn't real, or the persecution of Uighers today isn't very real and both of those movements were/are very focused on careful control of speech, which was also true under the USSR and even Russia today (despite significant differences in party line and government).
The line between speech control and authoritarian rule is not very large. Hungary which is currently diaplaying some authoritarian streaks is also engaging in speech and press control.
It sounds like you are confusing authoritarian with a partisan concept. Both leftists and rightists can engage in authoritarianism and often go through speech control on the way there.
>the persecution of Uighers today isn't very real and both of those movements
The Uyghur situation is an example of a classic pattern: single-race ethnic supremacy doctrine leading to ethnic cleansing. If I were concerned about this re-occurring in my own society, I would look for which political parties in those countries were advocating for similar policies, and make sure I did everything to thwart their ambitions. I don't think "people demanding you use their preferred pronouns on Twitter" would top my list of threats, but I suppose opinions differ.
Again: what I see here is people confusing the trappings of existing authoritarianism (authoritarian governments do indeed control speech) with the actual root causes, which are usually much more fundamental and rarely look anything like "activists being too mouthy on Twitter."
The line between speech control and authoritarian rule is not very large. Hungary which is currently diaplaying some authoritarian streaks is also engaging in speech and press control.
It sounds like you are confusing authoritarian with a partisan concept. Both leftists and rightists can engage in authoritarianism and often go through speech control on the way there.