Yeah that's a solved problem. Iran, Russia, China and other countries have gone through this "stages of denial" process years ago. It starts with "haha they are incompetent and can't block everything" and 10 years later half the Internet is blocked and you have prison sentencing for accessing "illegal" information (for the flgood of the people of course). Anyone who claims that internet censorship is not possible is a naive person fortunate enough to live in a place where it's not a thing.
"IT people/programmers are furry gay liberals" is a myth. There are plenty of bootlickers among them, like in any large enough group of people that's not defined by a specific ideology/political affiliation.
There does not need to be any connection. Any state that has a specific ideology that it pushes on its people will be concerned with making sure that new generations follow it. And the earlier you start to do it, the most effective it will be. That's like priority #1. Typically it's done through controlling the kids' school (or even pre-school) curriculum, so that certain societal values and appropriate attitude to major historical events are instilled. These "youth groups" are for most suspectible kids with cooperative parents to instill extra loyalty and encourage them to fully participate in and uphold the system that the state created.