This kind of mundane bullying betrays their lack of seriousness. If they truly believed the threat is as severe as they claim, then physical violence would obviously be on the table. If the survival of humanity itself were truly perceived to be threatened, then assassination of researchers would make a lot more sense than impotent complaints to employers. Think about it: if Hitler came back from the dead and started radicalizing Europe again, would you threaten to get him in trouble with HR? Or would you try to kill him?

Basically, this is just another case of bog-standard assholes cynically aligning themselves with some moral cause to give themselves an excuse to be assholes. If these models didn't exist, they'd be bullying somebody else with some other lame excuse.