My personal opinion is that Rimu doesn’t think b he’s trying to become king of the fediverse. I think he sees himself as a progressive fighting back against ideas, people, and movements that threaten his idea of progress. He likes that blog post so much because it positions the free and voluntary association inherent to federation as a right wing idea, something that needs order imposed upon it by a liberal democratic institution (“like the UN”). If it’s right wing to be decentralized, him trying to create a centralized authority is left wing.

I’m of the opinion that people usually believe what they say, and Rimu is no different. Why else would he share such an embarrassing article thinking it makes some convincing point? His thinking is liberal to the core, and he does not understand paradigms without centralized authority regulating behavior. It’s no wonder he doesn’t like the anarchist instances.

At the same time, belief that you aren’t power grabbing does not prevent someone from power grabbing. I don’t think Rimu will give up in the long run. Even if this episode is a loss that does more to lose allies than gain them, he is still gonna keep doing what he has been doing. He can’t use piefed to mandate his philosophy on moderation without alienating more people. He’ll never get his idea of a fediverse UN off the ground, both with how he’s acted and because many instances would never agree to something like it. If he properly reads the room, he’ll be quiet and wait for some better opportunity for mass defederation to show up. Either that or he’ll thrash around and create even more problems for himself.