Sometimes we look at historic and current events and impose a greater order on them than is/ was actually the case. People often do this in support of an ideological agenda. They'll say something like - in X historical development, Y political group tried to achieve Z but things went badly wrong because Y is misguided and their ideology is abhorrent.
But real events are more chaotic and complex. Great power, either exercised overtly or covertly, is often attributed to certain political or ideological groups, that is probably exaggerated. It's an oversimplification.
A recent example is conservative commentators using the Chinese Cultural Revolution as an example of what happens when the left wing mob has their way. They imply that there was some kind of unified will directing the Cultural Revolution and that this will was comparable to the agenda of modern left wing thinking, and that's why the results were so tragic, but the Chinese Cultural Revolution was not organized and orderly, and the tragedy was more a result of misguided zeal than altruistic idealism. It was driven by a spirit of rebellion against all authority, which Mao initiated and encouraged, and then it was like a fire that got out of control.
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