Yeah it'll absolutely happen no matter what but they still want to create at least something of a cohesive narrative around things, maybe it reduces the number of liberals who are actually radicalized by political crackdowns on the left? For example, they even try to get supposed socialists to become imperialist China/Venezuela/USSR/DPRK/whatever-bashers with these sort of "from-the-left" attacks on their political systems, even though socialists have almost no say in terms of foreign policy of the US right now. I think it comes from a sort of "squash it before it grows out of control" policy. It probably doesn't take much effort from them anyways. The CIA has to spend their billions on something after all.