You have trouble imagining that some people find Noam Chomsky to be a clearly cut case?

Yes. I thought that Hacker News was better than that. I'd expect this kind of "Stifle Things I Disagree With" to be more a reddit phenomena.

But I am not as active on HN these days (very busy post-acquisition), so maybe I've lost touch with the pulse of the community.

It's a "stifle radical political activists here because they are off topic and annoying" attitude, not stifling stuff due to disagreeing.

Do you want Ann Coulter links here, too? This isn't a politics site!

I think politics and startups are intrinsically intertwined.