Social justice would be great and we hope that, someday, the identity politics progressives will actually show some interest in promoting it instead of cancel culture, outrage, and grandstanding.
> The extremes are a product of the ineffectiveness of more measured tactics.
You can use that logic to justify _absolutely anything_.
The extremes are there because people performing them actually like performing them. They do it because performing the extremes gives them status and power over others -- sometimes real, sometimes imaginary. They do it because it costs very little and it feels good and it can sometimes bring completely outsized rewards (career, uni degrees, money, fame, etc.).
It was true when people added names to Sulla's proscription lists in 81 BC. It was true when people reported their neighbours as 'kulaks' in 1930. It is true now because nothing really changes under the sun.
(You know your movement has a image problem when even Barack Obama is stepping up and criticizing "woke" people: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50239261)