I don't know the motivations of the specific people who flagged it, and some could have wanted to shut down a story they didn't support.
But generally these kind of threads don't lead to new or interesting discussion on HN so they get shut down. It's not about the story being unimportant, it's just that it (and the discussion it leads to, on both sides) doesn't fit with what the site wants to achieve. I don't think there's any political motive for these stories getting buried (independent of what might motivate an individual flagger)
Neither do threads about cryptocurrency, neither do threads about attempts to ban cryptography, neither do threads, for the most part, about so-called AI research.
Most news and news sites in general are not about only things that are practically very new, and most articles around even new technologies are reiterating the same information.
HN isn't robot9000. Not everything needs to be wholely original, nor is that HNs purpose - there's pretty clear guidelines around reposting the same article in the guidelines, so why would multiple takes on the same event not be worthy of discussion, to the point of flagging?
Those threads often get flagged too, especially the cryptocurrency ones
I think the OP is clearly worth overriding the flags for, despite the culture war aspect which does lead to crap threads, no doubt about it—though the comments here are mostly good so far, and one even talks about Rider Haggard.
But generally these kind of threads don't lead to new or interesting discussion on HN so they get shut down. It's not about the story being unimportant, it's just that it (and the discussion it leads to, on both sides) doesn't fit with what the site wants to achieve. I don't think there's any political motive for these stories getting buried (independent of what might motivate an individual flagger)