But this doesn't apply to Javascript in its absolute sense, since although

    (1) foo()
        .bar()

is equivalent to

    (2) foo() .bar()

there is a difference between

    (3) foo()
        bar()

and

    (4) foo() bar()

(the (3) results in valid code, whereas (4) would not).

But trying to argue that (2) should be syntactically invalid would be a very hard ask indeed.

Yes. Though even Python, which does treat newlines different from other whitespace, allows `object . someMethod` with spaces on either side.