The above having been said, Pax does have her share of problems as moderator. I have noticed that she is more lenient with people she agrees with, a good example being Jammer Six. That guy's whole point of cyberexistence was to defend illegal invasion, thumb his nose at our laws, and taunt people about how many illegals there are and how things would "change soon" under their combined weight. If that is not a provocative behavior, I don't know what is. But, it was fine with Pax, because her personal views are open-borders kill-nannystate anti-authority libertarianism. And so, she would come after me and Biker when we rip into J6 for being a criminal. Heh.
How do you know that a moderator is protecting a user because of a shared ideology rather than protecting a dissenting voice that's close to but not over the line of civility and rationality?
It's
how you rip into someone else, rather than your ideology or the ideology of the moderator, that determines whether you get warned or banned.
Sometimes moderators go overboard in closing threads, but it's hard to get banned for no legitimate reason. No matter how much you disagree with someone, calling them a troll or an idiot doesn't accomplish anything, and moderators have to respond to name-calling whether it's true or not. You have to be really annoying to invite retribution from moderators who disagree with your ideology. Being annoying and having a radical ideology is a good recipe for being excluded from any community, even when you communicate politely and rationally.
There are forums where the wrong ideology alone can get you banned. THR is not one of them. There is perhaps a correlation between ideology and presentation, causing people to confuse presentation-based bans for ideology-based bans. That correlation is not required, however. Anyone can say pretty much whatever they want as long as they're civil and don't continue to make unsupported statements after repeatedly being corrected by others.
