> At worst, the mesh is no worse than what we have right now.

No, it won't make it easier to censor--no one is arguing that.

> In reality there will always be some people moving around between cities, satellites and drones passing overhead, and enthusiasts setting up antennas.

It's trivial for a regime to find people who are illicitly operating wireless backbone infrastructure (backbone is the stuff that connects a mesh cluster to the rest of the Internet); they're broadcasting a big, loud signal. And if it's not wireless backbone infrastructure, it's physical and thus the same problems present as today. And this is assuming the regime won't just forbid mesh devices, full stop (sure, a few might be smuggled in, but they're easily located and useless without mass adoption).

> If mesh devices become ubiquitous, and they will,

This is extremely unlikely. The arc of the Internet has bent toward centralization. Mesh implies tradeoffs, especially with respect to performance, and the overwhelming majority of consumers (and businesses) are going to pick performance over the abstract benefits of decentralization--mesh is unlikely to achieve the mass adoption necessary to make it useful even in a basic capacity.