Yes, literally burned down..with fire (and looting, and making it unsafe for business). There are parts of this country that are not coming back economically for a decade after what happened. Did you have your eyed closed through the whole ordeal? I lived in an area affected, its a real thing that actually happened I shouldn't have to explain this. And if a right wing group had done 1/10th of what these groups did we would never hear the end of it. But we get radio silence instead because of institutional politics.
I don't think anyone on HN is trying to deny or excuse far-left violence. But I do think that they disagree with the way other commenters on this thread have portrayed it.
For example, let's examine the claims made by the person you replied to:
> There are parts of this country that are not coming back economically for a decade after what happened.
Is this actually true? Can you find a citation saying that these businesses will not "come back" for a decade? Given that recessions, natural disasters, and pandemics cause even more damage, and businesses are able to begin operation usually within a year, I find it hard to believe this specific claim.
For example, Axios estimates that damages caused by rioting could be around $2 billion (from the Insurance Information Institute) [1]. Axios also notes that natural disasters such as hurricanes can cause more than $3-$5 billion in damages. Hurricanes also cause their damages in a localized area (as opposed to nationwide rioting), so I would assume that it would be even harder for businesses to recover from hurricane damages. But my impression is that businesses in areas hit by hurricanes tend to recover within a year or two.
> And if a right wing group had done 1/10th of what these groups did we would never hear the end of it.
Wikipedia says that right wing extremists have killed 114 people since 2001 and injured dozens more [2]. It also claims that one person was killed in a far-left attack. If we consider the monetary value of a human life to be $10 million [3] (let's ignore that assigning monetary values to human lives may be problematic), we find the damages caused by right-wing extremists in the last twenty years in deaths alone has been $1.14 billion. I sincerely doubt that left wing rioting and looting has caused more than $11.4 billion in damages since 2001, so the right wing has done more than a 1/10 of what "the left" has done -- but we aren't "never hearing the end of it."
Again, nobody here is saying there is no violence caused by the left. But I am criticizing how other commenters have exaggerated that violence, while ignoring the violence caused by the other side.
Hyperbole much?