Every government is authoritarian by its very nature. The government derives authority from having monopoly on legalized violence. The only reason there is the illusion of freedom of speech is due to the fact that mainstream views are carefully curated. Any ideas that are seen as a threat are eliminated just as ruthlessly in the west as anywhere else. Entire books have been written on this subject.
Nobody is making anything up here. The reality is that state censorship in the west is no different from the countries you consider authoritarian, the only difference is that it’s dressed up in a way that’s palatable to western public. In fact, it could be argued that governments in places like China are simply more honest with their public. They’re explicit regarding what ideas they reject while the west uses sophistry to create an illusion of freedoms that don’t translate into anything tangible.