> It’s offered a megaphone to those promoting dangerous ideas like white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other anti-LGBTQ positions, and sometimes outright Nazism.
One should note that every one of these ideas flourished in times and regimes with strict and sometimes totalitarian control of speech. From the anti-Islamist Crusades to the criminalization of queerness to the damn Holocaust, all of the cited problems of free speech had their hay day in times and places without it. What progress has been made to fight these ills only occurred because of the right to say the unpopular.
One should note that every one of these ideas flourished in times and regimes with strict and sometimes totalitarian control of speech. From the anti-Islamist Crusades to the criminalization of queerness to the damn Holocaust, all of the cited problems of free speech had their hay day in times and places without it. What progress has been made to fight these ills only occurred because of the right to say the unpopular.