I do not know this writer, I have never read the article in question, but this seems, at first glance, to probably be an example of where context is needed and where a single snippit from a lengthy and nuanced argument is insufficient.
Now again, not actually knowing what the article in question said, I am familiar with an argument that has a similar conclusion, and I will make it here:
To put it bluntly and shortly, when you have a population that has been oppressed/repressed/shackled/etc for long enough, that status, regardless of how terrible it may be, eventually becomes familiar and carries with it the comfort of familiarity as opposed to the uncertainty of the unknown.
When you free a population of slaves, a certain % of them will voluntarily, if allowed, willingly resume their role because it is familiar and safe. It is well known that people that have been in prison for decades often suffer depression and what can only be described as homesickness after being "freed" into a world that is unfamiliar. In the words of Brooks from Shawshank Redemption "I sometimes think about getting a gun and robbing a store so they will send me back home." It is also well known that many people will voluntarily retain and uphold even the most repressive of long standing cultural or religious restrictions even when the institutions that enforce those rules have been overturned.
So, the argument is, that following a major liberation of some kind, the cruelest trick of institutionalized oppression then rears it's head, the desire of many of the oppressed to return to their state of oppression, so dependent on it have they become, and sometimes you must actively take steps, counter intuitive as it may seem, to restrict the freedom of the recently freed to freely return to their bondage. After even one single generation has passed, that problem evaporates and goes away, but that very first freed generation that have grown comfortable with and dependent on their state of oppression, they sometimes have to be forced to give it up, like a drug addict almost.
I have no idea if that is the case this author was making in this context, but it sounds like it might be, and I have heard that argument before and found it fairly compelling.
