I'm not convinced that history is just repeating itself. There does seem to be something qualitatively different about the possibility that nowadays a non-celebrity can spout an offensive joke or political take and have it be much more likely to be recorded and broadcast to the whole world with permanent consequences for them everywhere they go. Bad decisions are far more likely nowadays to be permanently recorded, and moving over to the next town, state etc is no longer enough to escape your history. There were implicit safeguards before in that most people were much less likely to have a wide audience that would remember what they said. It was much easier to change your mind about something and then pretend it was your opinion the entire time and save face. There are organizations with pet issues that dedicate themselves to recording offensive social media posts by college students and then making profile pages for each student on their site to publicly shame them. In the past these kids could graduate and then change their mind years later and no one would be the wiser as long as they never became celebrities or politicians.