I don't think he is being manipulated into it, that's probably his genuine reaction to what's happening.

He is a socially inept autist who recently was embraced by this movement as some sort of icon and hero, he probably got a huge dopamine spike and ego over how much people have been fawning over him.

Only for suddenly those same people to turn on him. All his normal tactics refused to work on these people, they kept not only disagreeing with him, but also pointing out genuine mistakes in his reasoning and showing those that were on his side were happy to abuse (Vivek). They were beating him with logic, they were beating him with memes, and these were the guys who were supposed to be his team who applauded him when the Lefties started getting on him.

So he did what any good autist does. He got overwhelmed from the stimuli and freaked the fuck out, responding on the level of a tantrumming toddler by just banning or check stripping anyone he could to re-assert his power and control of the situation.