That seems like an implausible explanation for a comment trying to make a political issue out of two disjoint things: a package manager design flaw and an editorial control policy for package names. "Publishers" having a level of interest in what goes out on there platform is as old as anything, and so is flawed software design.

So I stick by my stance that it seems like tying to try those things together ("you screwed this up because you're morally in the wrong as shown by your focusing on the wrong things") to advance a personal political agenda is the more bullying behavior, here.

> using political correctness to bully people around them.

"Please don't use unnecessarily harmful/crude/we-don't-like-it language when giving names to pieces of computer software that we host, manage, and coordinate for you" counts as bullying now? I think not. As they say, if you don't like it, don't play.

And besides, NPM seems pretty focused on package names alone (as they should be). If you absolutely must live out your libertarian fantasy by being insulting, nobody's stopping you from making the API to your package something like:

  const pkg = require('totally-innocuous')
  
 pkg.IHateYouBecauseOfYourEthicityOrGenderOrReligionAndIAmProudOfIt()

It certainly does not count as bullying.

But people do have knee-jerk reactions, and people do overreact for fear of it being bullying next time. None of those are likely to be necessary on this case, but people's feeling aren't very contextual. Many people will react to overreaching political correctness for fear alone, and it isn't nice for the GP to accuse them of bullying.

Yes, it's sad what people do out of fear. But excusing and ignoring unpleasant behavior as a "knee-jerk reaction" or "overreaction," and complaining about someone criticizing it, has many, many dangers of its own.