Hijacking top comment:

As a former SJW and member of the "CircleCabal", I can tell you exactly what happened because I have been involved in these things. There are a few scenarios as to how this happens:

Scenario 1:

-Circlebroke/SRS notices problematic subreddit, PM's admins on Facebook/Twitter (yes, they are friends outside of Reddit. I am too.)

-Rogue admin gives SRS/Circlebroke/Subredditdrama member top moderator priority so they can proceed to remove all other mods and add their friends to do what they want. This trick used to be performed by cupcake1713 quite often.

Scenario 2

-A higher-up mod was a sleeper agent. SRS/CircleCabal folks like to infiltrate subreddits by sinking years of legitimate Redditing into an alt-account and then earn moderator status in order to have control over popular subreddits. Most Circlebroke/SRS mods have multiple alts that they keep going at any given time to build loyalty. This one might sound tin-foil, but it's what I and others did to take down creepshot subreddits back in the day. The most recent example of this which I was involved was /r/facebookcleavage.

Scenario 3:

-Reddit request. If the top moderator has been AWOL for a long period of time, anyone can Reddit request the subreddit. Cupcake or the other mods will usually fasttrack this process for SJW moderators in order to destroy problematic subs without being directly involved.

My professional opinion? This happened because a #BLM member was posted to /r/punchablefaces. Having a black activist in /r/punchablefaces is obviously Code Red Racism.

Scenario 4.

Top mod is agentlame and said "lol fuck it"