He's not getting downvoted, he's getting flagged - mere downvotes don't result in [dead] comments.

I didn't follow the whole discussion (especially since I was on holidays), but the comments I saw were not obviously worthy of being [dead]; hence my repost.

I agree, the only 'rebuttal' to fogus comment seems to be saying that he is tone deaf and bad at communicating with no explanation of why. The flagging of his comments seems to be other politics at work with no explanation of what they are.

The anonymous down-voting on hn is really a problem.