Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity...
by tomlockwood on Monday June 07, 2021 @05:19PM
(#27427090)
Still not sure how the question implied that the loss of the right to free speech can't threaten life.
The first thing dictators do is remove free speech. This is what enables removing all the other rights at the dictator's whim, because then nobody can speak out against it. Nobody can even inform others about it. This is why totalitarian regimes so aggressively suppress free speech.
The Soviet Union collapsed soon after Gorbachev stopped repressing free speech (glasnost and peristroika). This is not a coincidence.