Honestly, I think it's more foreign psyops than anything else. The Lemmy developers are devout Tankies who openly support the invasion of Ukraine, Chinese takeover of Taiwan and Hong Kong, etc. There is proven tankie bot activity and the majority of downvotes are from a handful of IP addresses. The CCP both supports the Trump admin and at the same time violent insurgency in the USA, Europe, and other nations around the world, because they don't care how we destroy ourselves as long as it gets done.