It is kinda cynical, but it's also exactly what you're seeing on Reddit. Some subs stopped protesting the moment Reddit said they will start removing moderators. Not because the sub wanted to stop protesting, but because the mods of that sub decided so. /r/pcgaming for instance is one of those subs. Another sub I frequently visited, /r/europe, pulled an entire charade of having users vote whether they want to protest or not, when protest won they asked for suggestions on how to protest, the top suggestion was moving the community which got no response from the mod team, instead they had another vote on whether to stop protesting or continue, and when continuing to protest won they gave some bullshit response and opened the sub. I never said moderators don't care about their subs, I simply stated that some of them value their moderation of the sub above what the sub might want to do.

As for fracturing the community, I'd argue what Reddit did already fractured communities into people who want to protest and people who don't. Fracturing was always going to happen, it's only a matter of making it apparent or acting like it didn't happen. Because of that you're not going to move the entire community anyway. The community is fractured, some people just don't want to move. From the mod perspective it should come down to understanding who are the people that actually make up the community you're moderating and then doing what they want.

I don't have an issue with mods who had the community vote and then opened the sub (or didn't even participate in the protest in the place) if the community voted that way. I have an issue with the mods who effectively make those decisions themselves. If you've already decided to protest without discussing it with the community then IMO you can't just decide to back out later, unless the community wants it. But that's what some of the mods did. Decided to protest and then decided to stop. Then it is already in your self-interest because you've technically already abused your power to protest without communicating it with the community. If you then stop protesting you should also resign because it's a breach of trust and someone who the community cannot trust shouldn't stay as a mod. But the mods don't do that because "who else is going to moderate?", meaning they would much rather moderate a community that has no reason to trust them than have someone else moderate the community. How is that not putting their own interest of moderating over the interest of the community?