Context: In HOI4 Kaiserreich, the Combined Syndicates of America (socialist faction in the American Civil War) has three routes: Market "Socialism", Wholesome Anarcho-Syndicalism and the tankie, redfash Totalists because of course.
Kaiser Cat (a fan merchandise group) has the Totalists, led by Earl Browder no less, naturally win out in the CSA power struggle in their "Divided States" series and check off every box for Black Book-tier stupidity. This drives the main character to decry the false song of Communism Syndicalism and defect to the Defenders of Democracy™ (remnants of the Federal government in the West Coast whose incompetence caused the Civil War in the first place). The plot follows her trying to get a German nuclear scientist to the Federal government in California so they can win the war (how they will be able to produce enough nuclear weapons with their limited resources in time is anyone's guess). Now we're at this point where the team has dropped all pretenses of "nuance" and are posting "ironic" memes like this. To add, even the American Union State, which takes inspiration from the Spanish Nationalists (in the team's own words), are given more nuance and character than the big bad Syndies.
It's all funny when you consider how some of the original devs for KR back in the Hearts of Iron 2 days were actual Syndicalists.
Why is the KR Community like this? So much of this nonsense and "rEcLaIm ThE bIrThRiGhT :so-true: " bullshit
Funny thing is most of the devs are based. It's the community, and the new people who try to join the dev team that are cringe. All the based people in the community aren't allowed to do similar things without getting dogpiled and banned by libs.
Yeah, the upcoming updates for France, Norway, and a few others seem to indicate that there are actual leftists on the team.
This is something I noticed for some other mods, as well (like TNO). The Devs/writers tend to be more left (if not outright Leftists) whereas the community managers, and their corresponding communities, tend to run from radlib to reactionary. I know in TNO's discord you can't express any opinion left of milquetoast reformism without getting banned.
I think that's because the devs are creating things while the community managers are like internet security guards. Kind get off on rules so naturally they wanna make the janitor an administrative position and create a mess of rules instead of simply trying to create a good community.
Because the KR community mods are sympathizers to it and purged all the leftists who used to push back against it.
The cat's been out of the bag since the first iteration of KR where the creators wanted to create a war scenario that's "morally grey" (unlike WWII). Only they didn't ponder the implications of equating the socialists with reactionary revanchists (Entente) and an empire which oppresses millions across three continents (Reichspakt). The funny thing is that, the way it's set up in-game, the Third International may as well be the good guys by being the "least bad" of the factions.
Even if the devs turned left overnight and wanted to stop pandering to the fans of the latter two groups, they'd be worried about losing the crowd that they amassed.
The closest you can get to a "morally grey" war scenario is to just make it a naked conflict between various imperialist nations vying for colonies and power, and even there you have to just ignore the agency of the colonised peoples being forced into service and exploited.