I find this to be a bit of a bad comparison. /r/politics downvotes opposing viewpoints - they aren’t banned. And there are many, many other subreddits where you will find opinions completely different from those of the /r/politics orthodoxy.
There's not really a way to prove it, since reddit doesn't have transparent moderation, but in my experience /r/politics tends to ban users with different viewpoints.
You believe something that doesn't have a way to prove it? Were you banned personally? Or are just believing anecdotes from people with an agenda?
What makes you believe it then? Anyway, that sub bans people only for violent threats and such, but opposing viewpoints are downvoted a lot. They even have some pro-Trump mods on their team who can see and reverse mod actions including bans.
Anyway you can try an experiment if you care, post on there (with a new account if needed) very partisan stuff, but don't advocate for violence, and you'll find yourself not banned.
Why would there be a lot of opposing viewpoints that are buried under downvotes if you sort by controversial then? You’re making claims with no basis whatsoever.
Do they? Or is it someone with opposing view points that also happen to be racist/belligerent getting banned, and think it's because of their opposing view points rather than being racist/belligerent?
I have no experience with /r/politics but I've seen other subreddits make absolutely no distinction between "having moderately opposing viewpoints" and "being racist/belligerent/troll/brigader", so it results in a ban.
No, you're thinking of /r/conservative, which literally has "flaired users only" posts, and insta-bans people who express even mild criticism of conservative talking points.
"Do not violate the Mission Statement. (We provide a place on Reddit for conservatives, both fiscal and social, to read and discuss political and cultural issues from a distinctly conservative point of view.)"
And when you suffer from constant brigading, this is a reasonable way to deal with it. If /r/liberal did this, fine. /r/politics belies its name by being a liberal echo chamber. And _yes_ you can easily get banned there for expressing perfectly benign, but unpopular views.