This might come across as a bit defeatist, but I think it needs to be said.
I agree with most of your assessment, and I've said before that GG has made important strides, but I think everyone should be cautious when assessing the health of the SJW movement and GG's impact. I say this because of the above post about ZQ and AS at the UN. Specifically, ZQ's statement that "We need people to actually enforce their own terms of service and shut down bad actors and bad faith websites" says a lot about where things stand.
Getting people "to enforce their own terms of service" and "shut down" bad actors are both references to what I consider soft censorship, which I define as manufacturing or manipulating public opinion to pressure non-government organizations into adopting a desired behavior. It's a means of controlling behavior outside the statutory system. SJWs have learned while they would love to have the power of the state to enforce their agenda, they don't need it to advance their cause. A well-timed, well-publicized media campaign, like a Twitter hashtag, is enough to intimidate private organizations into modifying "bad" behavior.
A great, post-GG example of this tactic in use is the Confederate Flag controversy in US, which took place earlier this year. Various media constructed a narrative around "public outrage" which led to all major retailers ending the sale of flag items, to the point that it is now difficult to buy these items in the United States despite no change in the legal code. Care to guess how many polls that narrative was based on? Not a single one. The retailers stopped selling on June 24th, and the first polls appeared on July 2nd. Those polls, by the way, showed no virtually no change in public opinion on whether the flag was racist or not since polls taken in 2002. But the media campaign had already been fought and won by the SJWs. The retailers had modified their behavior to avoid being perceived as "bad actors" based on a non-existent shift in public opinion.
My point is not that GG should have taken a side in that debate, or should be required/expected to take any side in any debate, and least of all to reopen the debate about the Confederate Flag (especially in this thread), but rather to remind everyone that while GG has given the SJW movement a well-deserved check, and in doing so has exposed its underlying hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, and its unflinching lack of an ethic, it remains a powerful cultural movement. A powerful cultural movement which understands the power of perception over fact, and has no qualms about manipulating the former at the expense of the latter. I brought up the flag controversy to illustrate this point.
It's also one reason why, for all the fulfillment it brings to see these anti figureheads exposed and discredited, part of me believes discrediting them, important as it is in the short term, will not lead to long term impacts. Most of them are useful tools, and like all tools will be set aside when their job is done or replaced when they become too broken to repair. One can completely expose someone like a ZQ and it won't matter. The truth will either be rejected (shrbutts) or the cards will be reshuffled (Quinn generally taking a backseat to Anita/Wu) as needed.
It's the wider cultural and social circles responsible for arranging one-sided events such this UN charade, for allowing the Rolling Stone-UVA incident to be printed, which need a counterbalancing opponent. Movements like GG are encouraging to see and have already made an impact during their short lives, but they are still only saplings. It is encouraging to see them growing and making connections to one another, but only time will tell if they can evolve into a wider, deeper, self-sustaining cultural movement that generates single-issue causes, rather than be generated by single-issue causes. For example, rather than reacting to the absurdity of UN hearings, there would be enough cultural influence to generate or participate in UN hearings (not that I think UN hearings have any importance beyond illustrating my point).
To put it in terms of your war analogy, it is good to see the opponent being stalemated- but it is better to see them defeated. There have been several tactical setbacks for the SJW movement in the last year, but have they suffered a strategic defeat? I'm not so sure. For me the signal the tide has turned will be when printing a fabricated story about rape on college campi, holding uncritical hearings in which discredited figures justify crypto-fascism through fabricated victim-hood, or inventing social outrage to modify cultural behavior, carries a loss of credibility with measurable, long-term repercussions for both the individual(s) and institution(s) involved. Ultimate victory will be when the concern for such repercussions prevents such distortions of reality from even being attempted.
GG has certainly nudged the discussion in that direction, but it's important to remember this is one battlefield in a much larger conflict with deep cultural roots.
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