“They claim they want privacy, but they also want to empower the government with more power. These are opposites.”

These are opposites to the Cypherpunks you describe but you must understand, it’s not in the minds of the Socialist Fediverse.

They don’t care about consistency, they only care about power.

The cypherpunks can’t have any power as that would detract from the socialists power. Therefore the State should be wielded against the former, ideally by the latter but regardless of who has the reins, just do it.

Stop expecting logical coherence from socialists. A four year old could poke holes in their ideology, that is irrelevant. You’ve actually got to stop them because they will continue appealing to a big chunk of the bell curve and as Saifedean says about a 12 year old with a gun, we live in an age where power can be equalised with technology - they can win by sheer numbers of stupidity.