You don't have to visit Google directly to have a website download megabytes' worth of scripts that provide no value to you.
The issue is not the technology per se (it rarely is), but there are damaging consequences in the exaggerated misuse of it, that opens users to privacy violations and security vulnerabilities.
Considering that article was written back in 2009, before the boom in JavaScript framework and libraries that followed shortly after, I'd say that this was an excellent judgement call on his part.
Even as a web developer, can you actually vouch for the Nth dependency that you use in one of the dozens of packages that are included in the bundled JavaScript that you send with your website?
Most developers can't, or won't, even when the problem is easy to solve by hand; they've been taught to reach for a package that can do it for them. This in turn can have other unexpected consequences, like with that left-pad incident that broke thousands of projects.
Another example of a damaging consequence on this over-reliance in JavaScript is the control that it gives big companies like Google. For instance, by introducing artificial incompatibilities to funnel traffic to their own products and services. And once again this can happen without people being aware of it, like when a website making use of some script they don't understand prompts the user to change to Chrome when they're using Firefox.
I don't disagree with you in that, as of today, it's unrealistic to speak of a JavaScript-free web. But the dangers that Stallman talked about have proven themselves to be very real, and detrimental to the user experience in many ways. Again, this was 16 years ago!
Personally, I'd be happy to trade all those conveniences and flashy animations away for some privacy. A lot of that is jut junk anyway, and you can still browse the web normally without it.
Luckily, CSS is coming with some really cool stuff and the reliance on JavaScript for a lot of things is going to diminish. Although, those coding AI assistants are trained with data that makes heavy use of JavaScript for a lot of things, so... still some way to go.