Seeing this everywhere on the site. Reddit discussing the defense of free speech as an important guiding principle is nothing short of hilarious. These protections end the moment that a personal arbitrary line is crossed. Then the defense of speech goes out the door, and an attempt to redress the disliked speech as “hate speech” and “bigotry” takes place in order to cast certain kinds of free speech as unacceptable, and the conversation ends.

Sure, private company etc, yes I do agree about that actually.

In Rushdie’s case, it was someone else’s ideas being satirized, not western ones, so it’s easy to pretend now to be a proponent of free speech after violence has happened. I have no doubt in my mind that some subreddits would be celebrating if JK Rowling got stabbed. Thankfully that is not likely to happen.