Why not just serve static text over HTTP? At least then you'd have the ability to inline images. This--the use of Javascript and other technology for tracking purposes--isn't a problem for Gopher to solve. It's a problem for web content creators.
https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
I think the USP could have to be something about "reading friendly" or "consistent reading experience" etc.
Javascript is just a general purpose programming language. It has uses besides tracking and advertising.
Modern-ish: https://www.dillo.org/
(it's very far from a lot of CSS features, but it works)
The problem with that is that it requires restraint, and I just don't see much of that in web content creators. In an environment where everyone is competing for attention and clicks and tracking, how do you expect people to willingly do less?
The only approach I could possibly see working is picking some subset of web browser functionality, and branding it as the Next Cool Thing, somehow. Maybe some way to badge or advertise pages, like "JS-free", or "KB-fast" (all content < 1.0MB).
You can still do some pretty amazing designs in a million bytes of HTML+CSS.
- dark/light auto or manual theme switching
- syntax highlighting ( https://prismjs.com/ ), because in-code version makes the text code in `pre` unreadable.