To be fair I had the same feelings about it being defederated when I joined and went to check it out. The top post was pretty much talking about killing liberals. Tankies and fashys are pretty much the same rhetoric at the end of the day. They both have no place in civil liberal democratic society and poison everywhere given enough time.
I think part of it had to do with genocide denial being pretty rampant there and way outnumbering the number of users in new instances when the reddit blackout started. One of the top posts here when the instance was new was asking if the admin even allowed discussing the topic. I think @god made the post I'll see if I can find it.
This whole thing has gone so far off the rails I don't think it would be believable as a fictional story.