Comment by Capricorn2481

> "Free speech absolutist" was a strawman used against anybody who spoke out against deplatforming as a dangerous idea, which included a lot of liberals

Definitely not on the scale you're implying. People disagreed on who should be deplatformed. People generally didn't call you a "free speech absolutist" if you didn't self identify as such. That was a term people dubbed themselves (and often failed to live up to).

You're making it sound like there's a large group of people that were concerned about deplatforming in general and they were randomly and derogatorily labeled free speech absolutists against their will, to shut the conversation down. Maybe that happened in a few very specific places on the internet, but that's not what the broader conversation was.