It is also something that seems to me to be so very, very often used to prevent discussion about ideologies per se.

Most ideologies have, shall we say, "bad parts". And they may have a history that is somewhere between sordid and outright evil.

And of course "crack down on hate speech" is these days most often levied against criticism of islam. We have yet to see even basic discussion on things like the role of islam in slavery, historically and contemporary. Additionally the blatantly racist laws of Saudi Arabia that are defended as just islam's laws, racist where it pertains to faith, sex, and the blatant exploitation/slavery imposed on Asians there, all justified through islam. But of course censorship doesn't just stop there. It is now defending things like Erdogan's support of islamic state (including the massacres), and of course the Chinese state's many sordid actions in Nepal, Xinjang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and even just generally within China. The massive corruption.

And then of course there is the many ways in which sex, corruption, labor exploitation, criticism of power figures like Xinnie the Pooh and so on is getting censored.

We should just not do this. We should not let the idea that people might get the wrong idea, or personally care hinder criticism of ideologies, including of course in areas where there may be minorities criticized and especially not in cases where the majority or an oppressive government is getting criticized.

We should be allowed to openly discuss things like China's destruction of Nepal. We should be able to ask a muslim why they follow a prophet that, according to muslim tradition, killed over 10000 people, including having women and children massacred. We should be bringing up Erdogan's dealings every chance we get. And so on and so forth. We should be able to bring up San Francisco's treatment of the people getting forced out of that area.