Yeah I know those are the given reasons what I mean is that the game hasn't given sufficient justification either to me or to the Phantom Thieves to actually believe those things are true.
And it may be intentional if the writers end up following through with basically turning the Phantom Thieves into a corrupt group, but even if that's the case then the transition was really poorly handled imo.
You may not have remembered this, but the whole thing started when Makoto hacked Sae's computer and found out that Okumura was her number on suspect behind the shutdowns. Even if there'd been nothing on the Phansite saying that they should target Okumura and the public had been completely ignorant of him, they still would've made him their next target. ---