It sounds like you just need a set of standards & rules BUT you're going to have to combine that with totally brutal moderation for at least a month. I don't think I've posted in A&H more than several times and I can't even remember what for so I'm not sure what their spergery looks like but I'm going to guess it involves the occasional federal agent asking for an IP address.
As far as join or die goes, make them follow at least one lolcow and post in the thread. I don't know how you track who the A&H-only posters are but I assume there is at least some way to make sure they do this. There are actually plenty of other old school forum websites for people to sperg over news on whether you're on the right or left. They just don't let you use rampant profanity because boomers hate that. If you just want to say soy or chud and suggest someone be lynched for disagreeing with you then you should take yourself to reddit or /pol/ respectively.
Total ban on any 'in minecraft' comments with zero tolerance for that board. Doesn't matter if they're joking. If it's causing a problem for the website overall then it should stop.
Also you don't care about politics, so there should be a way to restrain people from politi-sperging in a section about NEWS. I would suggest banning people who deviate too far from the news topic...
say if there's an article about a shooting by a sped there shouldn't be a comment about how someone has big nose heritage because they're okay with circumcision anywhere in the thread, for example. It doesn't matter what made someone segway into that, they should not post it.
Alternatively an easy way to get rid of the biggest shit stirrers are probably to just restrict profanity on that board entirely. People who can't control themselves for the month of brutal moderation will be filtered, and you'll be left with people who can actually follow rules, though this is more of a last resort sort of thing.
Edit:
Started reading the rest of the thread and a lot of people are doing exactly what was bolded above. If you cant refrain from politicsperging in a thread where the site owner is asking for help to tard wrangle the people doing exactly that, you are beyond saving.
My condolences
@Null
