Sasha Baron Cohen is a manipulator - that's the basis of his comedy, and for comedy, it's funny. It's not the person who I want to take cues on freedom of speech from.

Yes, you can go to a group of people and get them to sing anti-semitic songs, just as you can bluster them with an unlabeled map or have them fall prey to trivial parlor magic. That's a terrible basis for attacking basic human rights on.

He calls the openness of platforms a defect, and he would like to censor every single word before it is public - that is not freedom, it is authoritarianism.

I suspect he believes that most people are dumb sheep - this is after all how he made his money - and he sees himself as protecting the poor sheep. He believes that because his intent is just, his actions are just - that the end justifies the means. He is the most dangerous kind of strongman: the self-righteous kind.