my lib friend condemns existing socialist states because of their state repression of counter-revolutionaries:
he complains about the lack of civil liberties. when I pressed him on whether the emancipation of the poor is more important, he said that he refuses to compromise on giving everyone full civil liberties and due process.
I personally think civil liberties are good, but are a secondary concern to emancipating the poor. and due process can be implemented in time, I'm not against it. Finally, fascists do not deserve civil liberties and I fully condone repression against them.
Reject the premise that there is an inherent trade-off.
The necessity of cracking down on counterrevolutionaries is historically contingent and grounded in very real material concerns directly related to your friend's "free speech" country constantly exporting violence, funding death squads, funding color revolutions, and so on, against countries struggling to maintain their basic autonomy.
Ask you friend why those "civil liberties" took a haircut after 9/11 and haven't been restored. Ask them what they think would happen if their country was actually facing existential threats, not the exaggerated horseshit used to push military aggression, and what would happen if that threat remained, just as a hegemonic power attempting to subjugate all others economically rather than with a direct hot war on their country. Would those civil liberties be restored?
And of course, as others have mentioned, Western civil liberties fetishization requires walling off whole categories of material reality where you do not actually have those or related liberties. The dominance of capital is the default in their minds, so of course there possibly of being fired for speaking your mind on Facebook does not register as censorship for them, even though it's functionally the same as losing your state-run business job for nakedly criticizing the head of state. Though of course, in the former case you could end up homeless within months whereas in the latter housing has tended to be guaranteed. And naturally, civil liberties fetishization fails to answer the question of what purpose and power it gives you, instead appealing to an incomplete and abstract idea of freedom. You can give a toddler the freedom to say whatever they want within their playpen, but they are still not in control of their own bodies or destinies at that point. Such Western Chauvinists jerk themselves off to the fact that they can swear at Trump on Facebook in the safety of the imperial core without cops harassing them (not always true btw), but what power or freedom is that, exactly? What did you actually gain? Did you organize something? Was one of your problems solved? Of course not: you're free to vent in your complete powerlessness, just like that toddler.