Clean coding just means writing code that is as easy as possible for other people to understand and maintain. That's all.

What's not to like about that?

People who refuse to write comments or go to extreme lengths to use the minimum possible lines of code aren't practicing clean coding, however much they might think they are.

Avoiding overly verbose code, on the other hand, may often lead to cleaner code.

I don't think you are arguing against clean coding, you are arguing against bad coding practices that masquerade as clean coding.