That starting point kinda makes the rest of us the conservatives of the community.

It makes the rest of us the liberals, certainly. But a lot of the turf battles between .world and .ml tend to be on US political orthodoxy running up against any other country's reported histories. People getting sucked back into the argument over whether the Hungarian Revolt of 1956 was worth defending, for instance, is the baseline for what defines a "Tankie" (evil Khruschevist authoritarian villains) versus "A rational centrist" (not all CIA-backed color revolutions are bad, people!)

So it's less a question of right versus left and more a question of nationalism versus internationalism.

If you want to feel challenged, look into who we defederate from.

One of the benefits of .world is that admins generally don't bother outright banning anyone for their political views, even when they're taken as "extreme". You can head over to these other sites, but don't expect to post very long before you're given the boot.

Admittedly, Reddit's political subs were much the same. Easiest thing in the world is to say something on a political sub of any flavor that will get you banned, whether its /r/progressive or /r/libertarian. If that's the kind of sub someone is looking for...

But I don't really see them as challenging so much as insular. Structurally closed communities where appealing to the whims of the moderators is more important than any actual ideological tenant.