Oh, I can confirm your suspicions are quite on the money, though I'm the least conspiratorial person you'll find. I worked in politics for 11 years now, and I've seen that world up close. I actually recently did an article on this issue specifically, how extremist movements hijack well-meaning people and convince them to do things they wouldn't normally do, using disinformation as the tool to guide them into whatever behaviors they want.
If you can nitpick the claims on the cows and the greenhouse gasses, I'm all ears, but the EPA and other government bodies are usually slower than progressive activists, the former being who I sourced my data from. This is actually why we had so many missteps in America at the outset of the pandemic and it felt like the CDC was always three months behind the science.
For that piece, it can be found here, it covers the #PissForEquality hashtag, Alex Jones and Sandy Hook, the conservative plastic straws troll job, and the Carnivore Diet.
https://medium.com/illumination/how-political-extremists-indoctrinate-ordinary-people-5ad746be63b5
Lastly, not sure if you've seen RationalWiki but it's great.
