People latch on whatever little power they can get via these social constructs.

Office politics comes to mind here too.

The trouble with this is where do you draw the line? What you say is totally true and makes sense sometimes. The question is when is it actually that situation? I can imagine two situations:

• one where the disliked opinion is "the Nazis were right", and where the kicked person will probably argue back with

opposite of their own CoC terms such as tactful, respectful, safe and inclusive. Instead the opinions they don’t like are weaponized using the other negative terms they list such as anti-social, unhelpful, trolling, controversial etc.

as a way to try to legitimize their position, express their negative feelings at being excluded (because even if you're a bad person, being excluded feels bad), and make the ban look to others like "oh, just a power-trip by bad management" and totally unjustified. Note that they might legitimately believe it is unjustified, that they probably are not twirling a mustache thinking in strategic terms of "how can I legitimize my position" and are just expressing their hurt feelings—but those are the things that happen when you make that argument.

• one where the disliked opinion is "I don't like dogs", which absolutely does not warrant a kick except maybe in a panel of judges of a dog competition or something, where the part I quoted is a good representation of the situation—people are being intolerant when they should not be, the kicked person's grievance is legitimate, and there might be a case of just personal dislike or power-tripping affecting the decision. When they argue with

opposite of their own CoC terms such as tactful, respectful, safe and inclusive. Instead the opinions they don’t like are weaponized using the other negative terms they list such as anti-social, unhelpful, trolling, controversial etc.

it is actually probably valid.

There are some actions/opinions where the view on whether it is the former situation or the latter situation is… controversial/unclear. I always wonder what happens when it is that kind of situation and how to deal with it.

I see where you are coming from, but to me it comes off as a little bit naive and reductionist.

That being said, I am thinking of this more globally, not necessarily solely in context of open source development (let alone this case in particular).