[blattimwind]

> Do we really care about the kind of people who care about "cultural appropriation"?

Yes, because not disagreeing is considered assent. Telling people with stupid ideologies that their ideologies are stupid is not something you want to avoid entirely, at the very least to remind folks that they haven't found the One True Ideology.

Whether the ideology in question is SJWs/ctrl-left or alt-right... doesn't really matter. Neither of those should dominate the public or wield governmental powers. And to avoid precisely that from happening, you speak out against it.

[marcus_holmes]

Isn't that just feeding the trolls though?

[Viliam1234]

Coordinating "not feeding trolls" on a large scale is very difficult.

Also, it is difficult to ignore people who can attack you offline. I think these fanatical students (seems to me they are usually students; students are most susceptible to recruitment in all kinds of cults) constitute pretty much zero danger to me... but they can be quite dangerous to their classmates, so if I had children in university age, I would probably worry a lot.

If you told me that when I eat pizza that it is a cultural appropriation, I would just tell you to f.off. But when a student is surrounded by militant classmates, this can lead to bullying. And even worse, when a teacher is a part of some social justice cult. So... not feeding the trolls is sometimes not an option, unless you want to give up on your diploma, and the time and work spent so far studying.

Not feeding trolls also assumes that people are mature enough to recognize who is a troll. But there is a continuum between people who sincerely believe that political correctness is simply the usual politeness applied to politically sensitive topics... and people who throw a hissy fit whenever someone disagrees with their latest pseudoscience. Try to make a line somewhere, and people who are under the line but quite close to it are going to object.