There's no way for me to know for sure, but it seems as though Klabnik was exaggerating here.
The problem with the r/rust thread, AIUI, is less "far, far, far over the line" and more just a huge volume of the same sorts of criticism. It sucks to see such a response on that scale, but it's harder to characterize any individual's comment as "nasty."
I agree. I'm further disheartened by a lot of the reactions that happened since. One of Rust's greatest strengths is turning into a weakness.
The Rust community needs to treat this cultural exploit as if it were a critical technical exploit and apply the same sort of objective and collective examination of source and insightful exploration of assumptions made about existing grammars and syntax and come up with appropriately safe and forward thinking solutions to ensure that the code of conduct isn't just a progressive cliche.