When I see GNU I think of gsl, gcc, screen, emacs, lilypond, bash, and the core-utils which are all incredible pieces of software that I use every day. The FSF arguably might not always make the best decisions in how they represent themselves but GNU is a "brand" built on awesome free and open source software more than anything else. Additionally, the "extreme ideology" that you mention fits in pretty nicely with the purpose of this software so the name should be somewhat fitting if that's how you feel.