The point of the article is not to draw direct and specific comparisons with the mechanisms of Soviet oppression of dissenters and those of American oppression of dissenters (although minorities and marginalised groups here might argue that there are comparisons to be made there, too). Haque addresses that in the first graf.
The point of the article is to draw parallels between the consensus mindsets of America’s current leadership class and those of the Soviet Union’s, and pointing out how that sort of thinking tends to lead to decline and collapse.
Put another way, saying “at least Americans aren’t being thrown into gulags en masse for expressing political opinions” (which the author also acknowledges in his article) doesn’t change the ironic fact that the American lords of neoliberalism and their minions are acting like members of the old Politburo when it comes to: creating conditions of political apathy amongst the citizenry; aspiring to effective one-party rule; power-seeking at the expense of the common good; provincial and exceptionalist thinking; and an unwillingness to entertain any political-economic philosophy – no matter how mild – that differs from the default (in this case, the neoliberal one).
