>Despite this, said ideology simply having to compete in the marketplace of ideas and practical reality, slowly turned into more of a running joke than any real

>Despite this, said ideology simply having to compete in the marketplace of ideas and practical reality, slowly turned into more of a running joke than any real threat in any meaningful sense to U.S society. More people in the US take communism and socialism seriously as an ideology than ever did during the Cold War. I also doubt that communism as an ideology was ever a "threat" in any meaningful sense. Actual communist states, sure, but collectivist ideology can be found everywhere in American culture, from social welfare programs to unions and progressive activism. The current frontrunner for mayor of New York is a self-described socialist. And it didn't work with the Nazis - we debated and denounced that for nearly a century and white supremacist ideology is still popular. Antivax has become not just mainstream but integrated into American policy. Conspiracy theories, racial realism, UFOs, antisemitism, all of it debated and criticized ad nauseum and ad infinitum and none of it has gone away. >Bear in mind the obvious too: once you create the legal right to legally repress insidious ideas, it's a very small leap for successive administrations to also start banning "insidious" ideas, meaning anything they happen to not like out of some self-serving convenience. Fair, but I really don't see how letting disinformation and hate run rampant and answering it only with polite debate and criticism when the authoritarians control the means of communication and discourse is much better. Part of combating harmful ideas (after recognizing that such a thing exists and truth has value) has to be attempting to limit the rate at which such ideas propagate, and for that mere debate simply isn't enough. Maybe the state isn't the solution but free speech alone also isn't.