Bitcoin has a decentralized flow of money, it brings that power back to the people where it belongs.
This is a threat to the economic elite. At first they did not recognize that threat, but now that it is clear Bitcoin is real, they recognize the threat is real. They can't take it down directly, but what they can do is attempt to seize control of the network. And that is what I believe they are trying to do, using the very social engineering tactics quoted in your original post.
The worst part of this is that genuine people are being manipulated by the campaign and they're indirectly joining it. This does make a lot of sense if you consider:
1) Bitcoin "has many enemies".
2) Bitcoin can't be damaged otherwise (no known exploits).
2) Humans are flawed.
Indeed, people organically spread the meme ("urgent max block size increase required or Bitcoin will stagnate and possibly die") as
misinformation, but its origins are probably as
disinformation. It's not so much that "humans are flawed", it's more that propaganda and mind control and perception management techniques have gotten quite advanced.