No, according to the spec, I can enable / disable JS and not run any code, which I'm doing: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#enabling-and-disabling-scripti...
So an HTML document viewed in a browser with JS off should not itself run code, ever.
Trivial to strip HTML tags and produce useful text.
Send all the extraneous garbage you want to the user. She can remove it and keep only what she wants. Meanwhile from the user's perspective you are wasting bandwidth. Who is paying for that bandwidth?
I was oversimplifying, hense the smiley.
But since you want to argue...
A request to an HTML document with no JavaScript src links, image links, or CSS links will not make multiple requests. I'm old enough to remember when I had to actively tell images to load.
The code for the page is written by programmers. Programmers cause browsers to make multiple requests. Often times without understanding "the spec".
Unless there's a non-JS src link, or a non-CSS link tag, or an xml:base attribute, or an area element with an href attribute, or... you get the idea.
If you dislike HTML, then don't use it. Use another format that serves your text-only needs. Gopher is a possibility, just don't click on any HTML files if you're using a web browser though.