I said something admittedly nasty about Mao's policies a couple of months ago, and was threatened with banning due to "borderline nationalistic trolling". Fair enough.
It sure doesn't seem to be enforced in an objective fashion though. More likely, it appears to be more in line with the current fashion of SV: Never discriminate, unless it's against a group viewed as being powerful and bad by West Coast Americans, in which case it's ok. American? That's definitely a way to be cool and anti-imperialist/colonialist. Christians? Even better. Because of all of the regressive religions which preach hate towards gays and deny evolution, Christianity is the one practiced by white people from Alabama, and therefore it's funny and useful to attack it. If this gentleman were an Islamic missionary from Egypt, the above comment probably would never have been made, and if it had, would be removed, with good reason.
All: please help with this by letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com when you see an egregious comment on the site that hasn't been flagged or moderated yet. We can't read all the comments, but we do read all the emails.
If you see a comment that attacks any individual or group, the best thing to do is downvote it, flag it, and move on.
As you can see, now that I've noticed the thread and had a chance to moderate it, the evidence shows the opposite.
You've been here long enough that I wish you would be more charitable. You've made such comments before. I wouldn't ban someone just for saying false or mean things about HN moderation, but it's still a bummer. Especially since, if you'd take a longer and fairer look at what we do, you would know that it's not true.
My advice would be to just ignore it and flag rule violations, in my admittedly brief HN career doing anything else has never helped me nor anyone I'm replying to.