You are right. I lived through it many years ago in Europe and infiltration and propaganda work so well on the gullible. A little bit of truth, twisted logic, and counterculture “against the man” cachet, and they flock.
Back in the two superpower days, before the Berlin Wall came down, the students in Germany had a whole “cool” underground. There was pot smoking, there was long hair, but most of all, there were “in the know” newsletters and cute little shops. This was the “rote” (red) movement. Everything “red” was cool. The info given out therein as it was explained to me told these young people that of the two evil superpowers, the soviets were a little less evil.
My friends so înfluenced believed it all. When I told them that this material they revered was no doubt written by the USSR, they scoffed. But it was. These were pre-med students, so no idiots.
Good movie about those times, The Baader Meinhof Complex.
Another good movie about that era I watched from that era was a French movie called “Après Mai”, referring to the aftermath of the student riots in Paris in 1968. It’s amazing how brainwashed the youth were back then, I mean they were hardcore Maoists, and to think these are the people who are pretty much running the show now.