Lemmy is too small and this snafoo is so pointless that I think a community apology would be hilarious.

It doesn't need to be something fancy. Just an "EDIT: I apologise to the community for sounding abrasive. I'm a mod here so my behaviour should be better than that, my bad." I think that it's important because users take moderators of their respective communities as role models on how they're allowed/disallowed to behave, so if the mod doesn't at least mention that they fucked it up, other users might see it and think "OK, that's valid behaviour here, even the mod does it. Time to go rogue."

I think the punishment should fit the crime. Having some weirdo follow your posts around calling you manipulative and toxic for months is just… its too much.

Yup, full agree with that. And based on interactions with the user in this thread, they're being clearly disingenuous, mincing words to play the victim. The mod was in the wrong but that's, as you said, too much.