The Free Software movement has been completely routed. MS owns GitHub. The farmers fighting for the "right to repair" their tractors are the "front" of the "battle" for user empowerment. But sure let's beat the shit out of the dead horse that's actually a real live old man with cancer who wrote fucking Emacs, see if that helps?
The uncharitable take is that the people who wrote this incredibly uncharitable and obsessive character assassination of an old dying guy are working for Microsoft et. al.
So that means that it's more likely that this is just backbiting on an old, sick man. E.g.: The People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
Let the old nerd die in peace with his friends.
(I'm done with this thread and this subject. Have a better one.)
You make an interesting point though: perhaps the FSF has made its bed and the best solution is to give up on it and rally behind another organization with similar goals. Maybe the 'net interprets Stallman as damage and routes around him.
Politics is, often, about centralization and coordination of power. It's a lot more effective to change leadership at an organization with good ideas but questionable people than to split power and focus by forming a competing organization. The two resulting organizations may end up politically weaker than one organization (especially if they can't coordinate their efforts because the membership of one of them expects their org to boycott the other org for the reasons they split in the first place).
Jill Stein may, for example, have ideological purity over the Democrats but she'll never be President.
In any case, I hear the FSFE decided to split from working with the FSF when the FSF re-instated Stallman. I'd prefer to have an org with more direct influence over US law and policy, but I'll happily support FSFE since it's the closest thing I have to supporting free software as a concept without supporting continued discussion of age of consent on the side.