You’d have a better point if the rules against “imperialist propaganda” were more evenly enforced to include all forms of imperialism.
But at the end of the day, when given an opportunity to reflect their own values in the way they run their instance, they have chosen a very restrictive framework to that end. I don’t know how you can come to any other conclusion. It is clear that their development effort is not done to protect any speech besides what they have deemed acceptable, and as far as I am concerned, they have repeatedly shown that they will happily keep their fingers on the scale to whatever extent possible. This is why they will ban people for commenting on other instances, and then not federate the mod logs, etc. These things should absolutely be seen as evidence that they will exert control beyond their own instance if they can.