Okay.

First, permit me a moment of advocatus diabolii here.

"The only way for minnows who espouse views that trigger socialists to survive here on Steemit (and the only way for Steemit to SURVIVE as anything other than a socialist echo chamber) is for us, as a community, to assert what I believe is our LEGAL AND PRACTICAL ownership of the block chain..."

Your opening argument is "to prevent this site from being taken over by Socialists, we need to make sure this asset (steemit) is collectively owned by all participants and not simply privately owned by its founders."
...Mon ami, I'd like you to read that sentence several times, slowly, and carefully.

Now with that having been said, you have a lot of very real and accurate points. On one hand, what you have pointed out about massive downvote attacks as a form of censorship is 100% true, but it's also not news. Many (myself included) took one look at Steemit when it first came out and said "it calls itself uncensorable, but the minute enough people of like mindset get together and decide to silence all dissent, the "hide post" mechanism becomes the easiest way in history to do that." The majority gets away with saying "it's not censorship" by claiming it is "the People" and not some central authority who causes any post they deem objectionable to be hidden, and expects us to be stupid enough to fall for that. In other words, exactly the phenomenon you are describing was the rather predictable outcome of the experiment known as Steemit, and nought remains but to use it for what little it's still worth, while it's still worth it.
Further, as long as an oligarchy of witnesses hold unchecked, irrevocable power to alter the environment in any way they collectively see fit then the asset was never truly "decentralized," and as long as the ability to prevent content from being seen exists, then whoever has that power (which, in the case of Steemit, is whoever can stir up enough people to join their downvoting campaigns) holds censorship power.
If Steemit truly wanted to put their money where their mouth is regarding the "free and open" aspect, then the next hardform would remove the ability for content to be hidden based on its rating. Frankly, given that every recent hardfork has been about creating a "he who has the most money (even if STEEM isn't real money) has unchecked power," I find that unlikely.

We have reached a day and age where the only way to guarantee you are heard is to be in the majority, because if the views you espouse are not popular, anyone who wants can label you a [bigot/racist/luddite/whatever-label-is-fashionable-that-week] and call for their hivemates to join in an insectile swarm against you, and that is precisely what appears to be happening en masse. That is the sadly unavoidable Achilles' Heel of Democracy: it takes on the characteristics of its participants. In an age of enlightenment, a Democratic society was enlightened. In an age of determination to achieve a goal (such as the World Wars), Democratic societies became unstoppable machines. In an age where paranoia and and whining stupidity wherein anyone who disagrees with me/you/him/her/whoever is [insert label here], Democratic societies (such as a decentralized blockchain-based information community) become echo-chambers where whoever is in the majority is unquestionably "right" and whoever disagrees is unquestionably [whatever label they want to apply]."