Yikes. Not a good look.
The problem with the overt censorship and threats of benching (and actual benching), as I see it (I'm a First Amendment lawyer) is that it creates what are called "chilling effects" in the first amendment lexicon. In an open debate, you don't want people "pulling punches" so to speak. But that I believe is exactly what happens routinely in situations where people believe they can be punished for speech, whether that happens in the universities, or on Cowboys' message boards. The solution, as I see it, is something Justice Brandeis said in his concurring opinion in
Whitney v. California: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education,
the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence [emphasis added].”
Heavens knows we have the time to expose the fallacies through more speech here. That would be my suggested approach.