Does this benefit the bitcoin overall with XT?
No, whether you are pro or against the changes that XT brings, it's
very bad for everybody (except banks and governments, I guess) if Bitcoin would split up into Core and XT.
Do not lie.
Bitcoin XT is a fork of bitcoin core which implemented BIP101, the most widely accepted proposition for rising the blocksize. The way BIP101 works prohibits a split.
It's all about providing room for new users to utilize the blockchain.
Blockstream(Core devs) have the agenda of suppressing the natural evolution of bitcoin and moving users to their payment hubs and channels.
Do not lie.
Bitcoin XT does not only increase the blocksize limit (in a pretty arbitrarily and not well-thought enough way btw) it also includes a lot of "goodies" like TOR blacklists and other stuff that will for sure be used to kill any improvements in privacy. Also, you are delusional if you think you will not need something like LN to scale bitcoin up no matter how much you increase blocksize.
The "bans" only activate if a node is full, so if all nodes on the ENTIRE bitcoin network are being DDOS-ed to capacity - then YES this code would ban everyone on the blacklist from the network until their is excess network capacity again. In all other circumstances this code DOES NOT BAN ANYONE from using the network. Either way this is optional and can be deactivated by the user of that node.
Please stop will all that FUD.
About LN, the market will decide if its good for it. Is big players want to shift their operations to that network is still uncertain. From now on it seems they want bitcoin itself to scale and now. LN network is years away from being fully operational.