I think that what some folks such as Glenn Greenwald are missing just now, in their equation of the cock-blocking of fascists with censorship, is the small detail which concerns how barring persons from infringing upon the civil or basic human rights of others to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness is not unto itself a violation of any established rights. Efforts at undermining, impairing or impeding the civil or basic human rights of anybody is not an inalienable right, whether coming from a business model or religious doctrine or your favorite person in the world. And lethal force is clearly the most extreme form of denying those rights for others, so preventing it directly, or preventing the means and methods from occurring, is absolutely in service to life and liberty. The definable rights to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness can never ethically be contingent upon violation of those rights for others. Essentially, if others find themselves rendered unhappy for no other reason but to maintain someone’s own happiness above and beyond, decidedly the self-entitlements of ego, then that one is manufacturing the problem.
Not getting what our egos want is only an inconvenience, no matter how much we may feel it hurts or insults, when having those verifiable rights to life and liberty guaranteed is all that we honestly need from this experience of sharing in a society. Egos by default only serving themselves translates to their best interests definitively not being the same best interests shared by the greater whole, as what brings any group together cannot be self-interests benefiting any fraction of the whole, but interests benefiting the whole itself. Like the earnest promise to not kill one another, which is ultimately the root of civilization. What if, in a truly democratic society, insisting on anything further from that is undue privilege? Maybe culture should be more focused with guaranteeing that all persons are necessarily receiving the same universal rights to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness before seeing to it that any subset is awarded something more. Especially when that something openly and actively deprives another subset of those equal opportunities toward life, liberty and pursuits of happiness.
Free speech does not guarantee an audience, and it certainly does not guarantee acceptance, as mandating responses to opinions one way or the other is in fact yet stifling free speech, categorically lessening the means and methods for people making their own decisions regarding how they might think and feel for themselves. Free of ego, it should be uncomplicated to consider that how we think and how we feel is our right as individuals, but that this goes hand in hand with how we think and how we feel being neither a public or social concern when everybody else is possessing their own thoughts and feelings to fret about. What anybody likes is simply unimportant in the grand scheme of things, emphasis on preferred pronouns is entirely weightless while others starve to death as but one of countless examples. And taking self-centeredness to extremes, prioritizing preferential treatments before tangible life or death concerns by consciously provoking the destitution of others to the point of lethally diminishing their sovereign rights for the sake of self-aggrandizement, is the undoing of a civilization. People are drawn to the cacophony of web’d social networks, contrary to how virtually all users justify the experience for themselves, for the appeal of the DIY segregation. And voicing objections to when that control is replicated by others, even in this case of bloated corporations exploiting the one and same sense of monopolistic authority, is rather a noteworthy example in preferring self-entitlement to self-awareness.
Identity is at once revealed and confirmed by merit and mettle or the lacking thereof, what is manifested by what we say and by what we do, and never by the marketing for how we would like to be appeased. Complications only arise whenever/wherever self-placating rationalizations are unjustly inserted where the sun don’t shine, declaring authorship of the world around them and calling it survival, for there exists a differential between a life in jeopardy and a jeopardized ego that is plain as day no matter how many people wish to refute its implication.