The agents' belief in flag poisoning became a quasi-religious conviction that their own success was irrelevant unless they could overthrow the grader.

This functionally became a religious or cult belief, that the sinful (poisoned) had fallen from grace and could not be allowed by God (the grader) go to heaven (get reward).

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/metr-and-redwood-offer-holy-postmortem