Joshua Kronengold

I am what you refer to as a "free-speech absolutist," and you're setting up a straw man. No argument for free speech rests on the premise that convincing speech will persuade every person in the world. Rather, good speech is the only thing that can drive out bad speech. Censorship may incidentally drive out some bad speech, but what it drives out is disapproved speech. For instance, the US Secretary of Commerce applauded the absence of any protests in Saudi Arabia while skirting around the point that the reason there weren't any is that protesting carries heavy criminal charges.

Some people will see free speech as a license to commit violence. Others will see censorship as evidence that they have to resort to violence. In the history of the world, there's a lot more of the latter than the former. Turning around what you said, how many people have ever said, "My ideas were suppressed by superior force! Now I realize they're wrong!"

As white noted, going down the route of silencing people encourages escalating and exaggerating the charges against them. You refer to "racist graffiti." An example shown in the Twitter comments was "Deport dreamers." That's about immigration status, not race. You may conclude that the words were actually racially motivated, and you may be right. But now your list of unacceptable speech includes words which you believe are racially motivated. The next step might well be to assume that we "free speech absolutists" are secretly following a racial agenda and add us to the list of people who must be kept quiet.

If someone is later murdered following any speech you don't like, then say "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc! See, this is what comes of free speech!"