I agree that the point of removing words is to change the way people think. (Orwell once wrote a popular book on the topic.) It takes some pointed questioning

I agree that the point of removing words is to change the way people think. (Orwell once wrote a popular book on the topic.) It takes some pointed questioning to get people to go from "we're banning words" to "we're banning racism" and finally to "we're banning thoughts that we don't like." The last statement is where the problem becomes evident. We give our government the right to kill but in theory they don't have the power to act against a religion, group or philosophy. On the other hand we have this nebulous, almost rogue entity we let wield this power and somehow it's almost beyond critique. I agree there are situations where giving a group the power to shape discourse and language might be a reasonable thing to do. I don't believe in giving a group that power and letting them use it to make questioning or critiquing themselves impossible. That's exactly what the social justice movement's doing when anybody who disagrees with them is cast as sexist, racist, bigot, ignorant, etc. As hueving notes, history is written by the winners. Even Howard Zinn spoke of how hopelessly biased history will always be. He who controls the past controls the future, and all that. Part of why I don't like the social justice movement is I think their version of history is self-serving to the point of being inaccurate.