I looked at the other account's history the same way I looked at yours. The comment you replied to was not great, but the account hasn't been abusing the site overall, while yours has. If that assessment were the other way around, so would the ban be.

Creating an account just to feed hellfire on HN is obviously a bannable offense—it's a way of killing what this site is supposed to exist for. We need an immune system against that. The immune system doesn't care what color the flames are.