As slater pointed out, HN doesn't have a "no politics" rule [1]. It has a rule, but it's fuzzier than "no". See my reply downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134386.

> what is different this time around? Why is politics suddenly a relevant topic here?

HN isn't different. What's different is the macro environment. We can't be immune from macro trends [2], and sometimes the world has intense political swings. Every time that happens, the same phenomenon that you're observing shows up on HN, with the same complaints from the different basic camps (i.e. the various partisans, plus the users who don't want so much politics on HN). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018) for how far back this goes.

These swings, and especially the feelings of intensity, tend to fade from memory after a while, so when a new one comes along, it always feels like something unprecedented if not disastrous, but the short answer to your question is that HN has ridden out these fluctuations before, and will most likely do so again.

See also Ask HN: Can we stop with the political posts? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42613027 - Jan 2025 (22 comments)

[1] Incidentally, we tried it once just as an experiment for a week. It was a disaster and we ended the experiment early.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 (Dec 2016)

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...