In my view, this sounds like part of the show, I think Vigano is probably in on. Just like Lefebvre and SSPX. They set up “conservatives” they can ban as “schismatic”. Our position is rather the Vatican is in schism and Francis is neither a Catholic nor a pope. The Vatican’s legitimacy must be undermined and tradition promoted instead, so that a traditional Catholic pope is elected who rejects Vatican 2 and believes and practices the Catholic faith.
(Also why it seemed like a waste of time for me to try to do anything under the Vatican only to be “excommunicated”. Catholicism is “excommunicated” under the Vatican… meaning that the Vatican itself is not Catholic, and itself excommunicated, rather instead.)
Our view is basically Vatican 2 was a modernist heretical attack on Catholicism; Lefebvre was the “fake traditionalist” setting up a controlled reaction to this attack, so that the enemy controls both the main attack (Vatican institution) and the “traditional resistance” to it. Vigano strikes me as merely continuing this project for a modern audience, distracting from a logical solution that works.
Lefebvre did commit a “schismatic act” by consecrating bishops without papal permission, in the 80s. Catholics are to obey the pope, and the Vatican’s “popes” are anti-traditional, so he requested permission to consecrate such bishops, and was denied permission. Thus, the situation looked like the false dilemma with the two options of: either you accept a Vatican that was going to destroy the organization he set up to be traditional (so the Vatican is anti-Catholic), or you in some sense recognize the Vatican’s claims to authority while resisting them (arguably not a traditional Catholic view) which is the route Lefebvre went in by both saying he recognizes a certain man as pope (who he is supposed to obey) and disobeys him by consecrating without papal permission (an act of schism in Canon Law I believe, all else equal).
We have argued in contrast Lefebvre’s view is logically contradictory, but that if the Vatican cannot be obeyed, this is an implication it is not Catholic; hence we do not recognize the Vatican as having Catholic legitimacy (like Lefebvre or Vigano do) and also disobey it like they do (but this is because we do not believe them to have any Catholic authority, so they are not to be obeyed).
So while we like Lefebvre’s and Vigano’s traditional-leaning views, they still are not consistent. They seemingly promote rebellion against authority and this creates more confusion and problems. Also, Lefebvre’s SSPX was in many ways only “half traditional”, as they accepted some of the modern reforms that have been made while rejecting others (such as using the 1962 missal, and not requiring the traditional Lenten fast of 40 days which was reduced to 2 days)