I think most of the people there believe in what they are doing but I can't shake the feeling that they were led into it by government provocateurs. In this scenario the government plans for it to not end well and wants it to be an object lesson for what they intend for anyone who opposes them. Perhaps this has been said before. I haven't read everything about it.

But one thing I don't think has been pointed out is that the Wikipedia user, LavaBaron, who wrote most of the original Wikipedia article about Malheur on Sunday, has attracted the attention of Wikipedia watchers, who have concluded that LavaBaron has had hidden agendas when editing other articles on Wikipedia, as discussed in the following link. I wonder how much of the Malheur article was conveniently pre-written. Seems rather fishy to me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/comments/3q758l/the_frank_gaffney_edit_war/