First off, nobody made him raise $1.25bn. He traded his autonomy for money.

Secondly, people aren't necessarily mad about him charging for the API. In my experience, most users want Reddit to succeed financially. He could have easily figured out a way to roll this out in a better way.

People are mad he's been caught lying multiple times and has at this point decided to declare war on the thousands of people (the mods) who do free work for him, in order to pit users against the mods.

You just called the board clueless so maybe they're just not strong willed as far as how to handle this sort of thing. Its hard to say who's pushing for what just from the actions alone.