I've been doing CyanogenMod for years, and since become a director at LineageOS.

I've never heard anything akin to " malicious organization/project that's involved in spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS and harassing our developers" and if I were I'd have no problem with going around smacking some of my friends ( some I've known since ~2014 ) that work on the project.

Nowadays most of custom ROM developers are chill and there's really nothing like the old "wars", everyone is "friend" with other projects. The issues arise with these people that you called "evangelists", and I couldn't agree more. It seems like a cult. And it's always on these "super" security/privacy oriented projects.