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Their behavior is indeed baffling if you assume that they are trying to implement a rational plan to achieve the goals they claim to have. But I don't think that is what is going on. If you ignore what they say and watch what they do, what objective does it point to?
As an aside, I think it's a bit cold blooded to say that the offender "had it coming". I suspect that if you or I had been his shoes, and walked in his shoes a while, we might have acted the same way he did -- or at least understood and empathized with his motives. I think it's more accurate to say that the shooting was justified.
I mean "had it coming" in a more immediate sense. Not that the person as a whole deserved to die in the abstract, regardless of what he had done at any particular moment. More that yeah if you try to beat or choke or stab or shoot a cop, he's probably going to try to shoot you, regardless of what motivated you to do that and to what extent it was understandable.
On the first, it's pretty standard for the leaders of a movement to be disingenuous about their real goals. It's the behavior of the on the ground individuals that I find bizarre. It sure doesn't seem like they're sophisticated enough to have a more sinister real goal and to be pushing the beliefs they claim as a cynical ruse to achieve that goal. They seem to be true believers, but about something that's completely fabricated and nonsensical.
When an animal gets rabies, it seems to decide to stop drinking water. That is why it is called "hydrophobia". This causes excess viruses to build up in the animal's mouth instead of being washed down, which would happen if it were drinking normally. The little spit that is left in the mouth is thick with rabies virus, so he is said to "foam at the mouth". Then the animal seems to decide to get mad at the world -- so mad that a skunk will attack a German Shepherd, and a German shepherd will attack its owner. To himself the rabid animal is probably thinking the equivalent, "You called my momma a name and I heard it". But what is really happening is that a rabid animal is not in control of itself; it is carrying out the plan of some other agent that has infected it, and the goal of that plan has evolved to spread the virus that carries it.
The locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank; [Proverbs 30:27, ESV]
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