I said something to another moderator account earlier that I just went and deleted. Calm me always looks back on angry me like that one's an idiot.

There has always been some bias in /r/news moderation. It's gradually improving, but the pattern has been that if someone anti-police, pro-legalization, liberal, and atheist trolls and harasses someone disagreeing with any of those things, then the one getting trolled and harassed would be moderated and banned the moment they lose patience.

Moderators are human, so you'll see hostile statements you disagree with as worse than hostile statements you agree with. Bias is human.

Tragedies like this need to be handled differently. Unless someone (including a perpetrator or suspect) is doxxed, threats are made, or somebody actually tries to spread sympathy for terrorists, discussions about this kind of event should be hands-off moderation-wise. There are plenty of other topics more appropriate for the usual tug of war between modes of expression.

At times like this, we need to just tolerate that people will express themselves as they need to. Everybody processes this kind of thing a little differently, but they need to be allowed to process it. Collective grief, alarm, and societal defense instinct can't be internalized such that we have enmity with each other, or we will have just allowed murderers to divide us against ourselves.

The threshold for political correctness in this kind of situation should be where people directly insult those things held as sacred by the religion's members. If someone is directly insulting the Prophet or Deity, calling for a religious war, or otherwise obviously instigating trouble, then that's where a line should be drawn. But I don't think that simply making the connection to Radical Islam in this case is something that crosses the line, even if the more defense-minded people omit the word "Radical".