>I'm not saying that censorship is just or desirable. Just that it works.

Does it though? Ideas are hard to kill. Just because you stop people from saying something in public, does not mean they aren't talking about it in private. In fact, oftentimes people even assume the thing you can't talk about must be really important or else they'd let you talk about it. And in turn, it holds more powerful and spreads further. I don't think censorship is really effective at stopping ideas

You say ideas are like viruses. Since when has trying to stop viruses worked?