No one ever accused anticommunists of being coherent. It's more that Wei was "aUtHoRiTaRiAn" when, in truth, Cao Cao's agricultural policy (tuntian, effectively diverting military resources to work farmers' lands and reimbursing them for use afterward) and its prevention of further widespread famine kept Wei's economy afloat better than Wu or Shu, who each had their own bizarre supply line issues due to their geography. Regardless, maybe there are some parallels there to Mao, and that's what propagandists are trying to evoke by painting Cao Cao -- and therefore Mao -- as overly ambitious?

I dunno, man; I'm two sentences into this thought experiment and I'm already at my limit for bullshit Reddit Island cryptohistory takes, lmao

We can probably leave it at "poorly thought-out KMT propaganda." Edit: or

I'm trying to remember when and where I saw it. I'm guessing around 2016-2017, which means it very well could have been a Reddit post of an article from some NATOid rag talking about the "evolution" of Three Kingdoms discourse. I'll try to do some digging, because all I can remember are the glorious brainworms.