Yes, by the late 1990s there was partisan American political battle, but only if you went looking for it, on the dedicated newsgroups you mention. If you did no

Yes, by the late 1990s there was partisan American political battle, but only if you went looking for it, on the dedicated newsgroups you mention. If you did not expressly subscribe to them, you generally did not see those politics on sci.whatever, comp.lang.whatever, or alt.music.yourfavoriteband. And you had no way of knowing if your interlocutors held strident views about politics or posted elsewhere on Usenet about politics.