They tap into a small set of historical analogies that indeed, as you write, serve to display assessments of (usually undesirable) morality (overarching motifs are religion and war). I hadn't seen all of them, but most are very familiar and the list is a lot longer of course.

It is kinda fascinating to me how the insurgent morality of 2013 became the dominant morality of 2024 with critics a decade later viewed as moral opponents cut from the same cloth. When engaging in critique of top it’s not unusual to be accused of having something to hide or whatnot.