Even with the utterly humiliating 1960s-era red scare plot that T&C launched into everyone's faces like a Republican sponsored t-shirt cannon, I dunno if we should start lionizing IDW1 for being "pro-communist" again.
Megatron being a lower-class miner was always meant to be a bad thing. Him starting a violent revolution was a bad thing. Only until MTMTE/LL did this get retconned into him being a "peaceful protestor" that was forced to the end of his rope. It was damage control to make his character more consistent and likable than a cackling bad guy who's evil for the hell of it.
But said damage control also involved introducing a death cult that operated a prison camp in Megatron's name, and the only person who condemned this in-universe was a bold-faced sexual predator who was only bringing it up just to make himself look better by comparison.
And then there's waaaay more gross stuff like the entire "colonization is good actually" plot in Optimus Prime and TAAO where The Mistress of Flame tells Optimus point blank that "hey dude, doing a manifest destiny is your primus-given right, go for it big guy" with it basically being another one of those "oh his heart was in the right place and it turned out fine in the end!" shenanigans that IDW Optimus is wont to do. Meanwhile Starscream whines about the filthy, stupid underdeveloped previous colonies that were abandoned that now are trying to steal Cybertron's resources. Windblade does notably push back against this (thank god), but it's kinda blah how this is framed as a civil political disagreement and not a "jesus fucking christ you racist pukestain, Star".
(Said colonies get vaporized by Unicron and rejoin Cybertron despite having now developed their own cultures and lifestyles because hey, fuck their feelings, right?)
And Jazz, who is literally a black American man 9 times out of ten in every single continuity, killing a single cop that was trying to murder his unarmed friends and being condemned and hounded for it for the vast swath of the story for it by nearly fucking everybody. But Thundercracker and Skywarp, who slaughtered scores of humans under Megatron's order, are able to get away just about scot-free because they joined the EDF and GI Joes.
I just feel like everyone ignores the worse aspects and focuses on MTMTE's sillier moments, and that's not really beneficial if wee wanna compare and contrast the two.
Anyways, my money's on MAYHEM turning out to be that obnoxiously popular trope among liberal writers that they're "actors who're getting paid to say communist things" and someone's gonna give an equally embarrassing big speech about how people go too far with wanting change and blah blah blah someone dies in front of Thunderclash and he's traumatized now roll credits.
