“The hard left was always paranoid about government surveillance because they didn’t want to get caught plotting their revolution.”
Too many people on the right simply refuse to believe that statement.
Regardless of how much information they have in front of their face, they simply refuse to believe it.
They believe, simply because they want to believe, there has to be another explanation and will endlessly search for another explanation ignoring what is right in font of their face.
Listen to how many people on the right say “some of my best friends are leftist, THAY would never do that”.
They actually convince themselves because their leftist friends would never advocate a revolution, NO leftist would.
I know this because I once was a hard leftist in my misquided youth. I learned a hard lesson about this at the Peoples’ Revolutionary Constitutional Convention, in 1971 in DC. The Black Panthers forced a reporter for an “underground” radio station to erase the tapes of his interviews. They wanted to take my camera, because they claimed the right to authorize all pictures. The camera had been a gift from my parents, a reactionary concept in their eyes. I managed to talk then out of taking the camera, but they took my film (pre-digital stone age). I lost the camera to a pickpocket later that day.
It was the point at which my path diverged from that of the hard left. It wasn’t evident at first, because a shifting of a degree or two in direction is nearly imperceptible at first, but after a few miles can result in a large difference in destination. When I realized that, I made a hard right turn.