Indeed, and my answer is also in good faith: short version is Hannah Arendt covers the whole progression.

Long version is: Regarding the who, naming individuals just invites mobs, but they aren't of a particular ethnicity or nationality (other than being mostly of european descent), and of no particular religion other than mostly non-religious, as the thing they have in common is a simple ideology, because to scale it needs to be simple. They aren't a shadowy conspiracy, they're in plain sight, they write books, give talks, and publish everything.

Arguably it's just this prevailing generation of leaders responding to recent massive technology change with a new alignment to technocratic governance that tech makes possible. Perfectly well intentioned, like when Hollerith (now IBM) enabled a new kind of agility for government in the 20's with their punch card systems that enabled states to finally solve problems they couldn't previously without massive co-ordination and automation, and elevate all of humanity into a new age, once they got rid of some pesky holdouts, many of whom were our grandparents.

So how are these people different from just regular people with beliefs participating in democratic processes? Their intent is to dissolve distinct and diverse nations and subvert democracies by destroying the discourse that makes it possible. The goal is one humanity under a single co-ordinated bureaucracy, not unlike modern China. The Davos/WEF people and their networks are very public about their admiration of that system.

If you are a leader and you see what China has done with over a billion subjects in the space of a few decades, how do you argue they've got it wrong? Sure, terrible things happen, but with over a billion people working in harmony, the edge cases of a few million people here and there aren't significant. In that view, the only people standing in the way of this shared prosperity for hundreds of millions are the hereditary elites, the exceptional, the individual, and the nationalist. What leader wouldn't give a few years of turmoil in exchange for being on top of a machine like that?

What the article talks about is mainly members of the mob who are in academia, and not the faction who sponsors and directs their attention. Some of the the cancel crowd believe this, but mostly they're on the tactical subversion edge of this alignment and are content to just see stuff burn without much thought as to why or in whose interest.

Regarding the how, for anything to scale it needs to be simple, and the popular presumption is that if there is intent, there must also be a static command and control structure operating it, and if you can't identify the C&C, then there must be no co-ordinated intent - which is wrong, and this is a stealth tactic by design.

The mechanism is an alignment of interests between an elite faction who have co-opted the mob(s), where the faction directs targets and the mob piles on. By now it's metastasized into a kind of an economy and culture. The directing faction has a gradient of intent and membership, where the objective is to subvert the US and its allies, and replace it with their own systems and membership that do not have the constraints and volatility risk of a democracy - not unlike the way the EU imposes regulations on its member states that are against the will of the local populations. The ideology is technocratic and secular (mostly nihilistic), and only uses movements and nations as hosts and stepping stones. Meaning and truth itself are fluid to them because power is its own end, and once you have the power, truth is what you make it. To adapt a quip that summarizes their ideology, "when we have our boot on the necks of the world, what does it matter whether it's the right boot or the left boot? It's all for their own good."

Long comment about complex ideas, but I hope you found it chilling, and if nothing else, at least it shows how it's simple enough to scale.