You can’t have it both ways: if you want to speak freely about what you care about, you have to let the people you hate speak freely too. Over the last 100 years, it has done far more good than harm to let people express themselves
Didn't it help that is wasn't unacceptable to call a black person n**r and to call a homosexual f**t?
Freedom of expression always goes in both directions. Your free expression can suppress my freedom of expression.
How does even harmful speech (e.g. your examples) prevent your freedom of expression?
Fear, threat of property and physical harm.
Neither of these fears are the same as actually preventing someone from expressing their views.
When threats become actual violence there are already laws to address that. Trying to preemptively protect people from mean words invariably harms more people than it purports to protect.
Only physical violence or does psychological violence count too?
What about cyberbullying and mobbing?
You don't need physical force for that.
I dislike bad stuff too. Bullying is wrong and should be stopped. Hate speech is also wrong but I'll defend people's right to speak.