Amazing! Now the right to freedom of expression, as historically understood and instantiated by Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, is now considered a fundamentalist understanding of "free speech". And what exactly is Article 19?

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Clearly, the long, moral arc of the universe eludes you. Yes, those with power did everything within their power to repress and dispossess those utilizing nascent means of communication to spread free inquiry and discussion outside what "respectable" society desired.

The end result of that attempt at suppression and repression was the Thirty Years War, the Commonwealth of England, more than eight million dead in Europe, and a safeguard so enduring that within a generation of the aftermath, freedom of the press was established in the United Kingdom--as well as the dissemination of certain, how shall we say, liberal philosophies that led to the draconian view that freedom of speech is fundamental to an open society and must be purchased by eternal vigilance against those that would take it away. As previously noted: different times, different costumes.