Moderators don't tolerate bigotry and racism on HN. I agree with that. But there were quite a few comments yesterday discussing Fyodor Dostoevsky who implied it was impossible for Russia to produce culture because it's people are monsters or something. Extreme ethnic hatred. So the users within the software community share many of the same faults regarding bigotry that the rest of humanity has.
Same goes for commentary on Chinese people or Palestinians, though nowhere near as extreme in animosity as that towards the Russian.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, that by no means implies that the post is ok or somehow blessed by the mods. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it*. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.
You can help by flagging such a post or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. It was only because someone brought those unacceptable comments to my attention that I was able to respond. We can't moderate what we don't see!
Same goes for commentary on Chinese people or Palestinians, though nowhere near as extreme in animosity as that towards the Russian.