I'd argue that being forth right is a better approach. While they won't often ban on politics they do enforce a timeout when your comment gets down voted having a similar effect.

it's not just /r/the_donald that has that no criticism rule. I recently noticed that r/latestagecapitalism has that same rule. The number of subreddits where dissenting opinions are not allowed appears to be growing.

There are dozes of anti trump subreddits which will ban you for not conforming. It's same with most if not all ideologically driven subreddits. They always have not pinned "go to r/<our-ideology>Debate if you are not conforming" type thing. To me every one of these echo chamber subreddits should be prevented from appearing on r/all (which is how people get exposed to these subreddits most often)

And that debate frequently ended with HRC people being called corporate shills and whatnot. Meltdown after Sanders loosing was sweet though!

And /r/the_donald would say just the opposite. The thing about propaganda – why it works so well – is that it's presented as authentic civil discourse. There's no clear cut demarcation between the two types of speech.

One could argue that /r/the_donald uses the banhammer to maintain order (the narrative), and /r/politics uses shill comments+downvoting to do the same.

Communities that run against reddit's primary demographic base (college-aged, democrat-leaning male atheists with an interest in computers) must be liberal with the banhammer or they will be overrun. There is no other coherent way to hold a discussion contrary to the site's zeitgeist; you get too many trolls, invaders, and impostors. Many subs that try to run contrary to reddit's narrow primary demographic end up having to go entirely private; most serious conservative and religious subs have done this.

Point being liberal application of the banhammer should not be interpreted as proof of the mod's intent to run a "propaganda machine" as much as a necessity of holding a discussion within parameters that presume certain reddit-unfriendly positions.

> /r/the_donald specifically exists to spread false information, and to dox and harass people.

Can you substantiate that? I went there a few times after election and didn't see any doxing or harassing. There were gays, trans, immigrants people of all walks of life all seemingly having fun with their frog image or whatever they call it, and don't remember seeing a lot of harassment. I didn't follow but maybe you're saying it is hidden somewhere or they are subversive and just pretend to be nice?