I think that free speech is okay, IF it’s consensual and if each person is represented by themselves. I do not think bots and duplicate accounts are free speech. I do not think spamming messages and overwhelming media is free speech.
Imo if I dislike what people are saying, then it’s up to me to look at things systemically rather than personally. Fascism seems to be akin to a societal response to external threats, almost like a scab forming. Which is why so many leftists do indeed turn to fascist methods to fight fascists - wasps swarming their hive.
If we reduced external threats, maybe modeled non-threatening behaviors, it could help every day. The Black Panthers, for instance, used to feed people (reducing the external threat of starvation). Remember how friendly everyone used to be? I try to bring some of that back by complimenting people, asking about their day. It may seem minor, but that’s what communities are built on. And modeling prosocial behavior is, at its core, antifascist.
What happened in 2016 was so clear, along with Jan 6th. It is quite disturbing how many people still support him - I went on vacation to Newport.Beach recently, near LA, and there were multiple businesses there and on Balboa Beach openly supporting Trump. I saw Trump merch everywhere including hats. It was honestly insane to see something like that within 30 miles of a major city. These are people with money and access to education (not that they use it…). These are some of the people who literally own most of the American economy (California is the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world by itself). And they don’t want to acknowledge climate change or that fascism is bad. It’s bad here.
Reducing freedom of speech wouldn’t change how bad things are here.
And please give your fellow Americans some grace. Yes, it’s wild they can’t see what’s going on, but it’s kinda obvious someone took the CIA’s classic plan for destabilizing a country and uno reversed it onto us, right? Like the obvious attacks on education, business, medicine, etc, this isn’t happening on accident. There are countries paying billions for your mom and my dad and everyone’s grandparents to be hypnotized into self sabotaging.