It's disingenuous to equate huge numbers of people disagreeing with you on the internet to the government suppressing you with law or force.
ESR is free to speak his beliefs in public, and in return people are free to criticize him, not recommend his books, refuse to invite him to conferences, etc.
Freedom of speech is about prior restraint, not immunity from consequences.
Is it now? When you can get fired from your job over your private beliefs, when even a Nobel prize winner can have his (and her - completely innocent - wife's) career ended on the spot, when you can lose your home over disagreeing with "status quo", I say something is wrong.
Maybe this is how democratic - as opposed to totalitarian - oppression looks like. When you have to avoid discussions out of fear you'll get fired and blacklisted in the industry, this suddenly doesn't look so different than what refusal to government "truth" looked like several decades ago.
ESR is free to speak his beliefs in public, and in return people are free to criticize him, not recommend his books, refuse to invite him to conferences, etc.
Freedom of speech is about prior restraint, not immunity from consequences.