The Proud Boys are synonymous with the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, and they’ve earned the infamy. The group played a lead role in organizing the breaching of Capitol Police lines, smashing windows, vandalizing the Capitol’s interior and destroying property. It specializes in street violence, calling to mind the Nazi Brown Shirts of 1930’s Berlin. “Throughout the day,” as the Anti-Defamation League put it, “individuals associated with the Proud Boys played key roles in the insurrection, engaging in numerous acts of destruction and violence, assaulting members of law enforcement and leading groups of rioters.”

The Republican National Committee called this “legitimate political discourse.” Democrats correctly called out Republicans’ gutlessness in refusing to speak out against the mobs.

Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot, as elements of the Left’s hard core constituencies exult in their law-breaking, vandalize and destroy property and bully those who disagree with them. Some of those most vocal about Jan. 6 have been struck mute over the past months, too intimidated by the mobs on the Left and those who back them to say about them what they said about Jan. 6. It hasn’t been a pretty sight.

Andy Campbell, author of “We Are Proud Boys: How A Right Wing Street Gang Ushered In A New Era of American Extremism,” predicted this. “They (have been) showing up at events big and small at the behest of Trump and the GOP grievance machine and fighting it out in the streets,” Campbell told POLITICO in 2022. “Over time, the goalposts have been moved to the degree that political violence as a justified response to the things that the GOP is mad about, is totally normal now. Every facet of American life is overrun by political violence now, and I think the Proud Boys are a big part of that.”

Those who have orchestrated many of the anti-Israel protests have followed the Proud Boys’ lead. Though there have been plenty of peaceful protests, there have been enough not-so-peaceful ones to know that those who preach the rule of law to the Right aren’t so quick to insist on it to the Left. At Columbia University, protesters smashed windows, threatened employees, forced out university staff, and took over Hamilton Hall, barricading themselves in with soda machines and furniture to preserve their criminal trespass. “We don’t expect to go to work and be swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves,” custodian Mario Torres told The Free Press.

Mobs stormed the Brooklyn Museum, defacing artwork. Police officers have been injured, spit on and had objects hurled at them, the same invective screamed at them as the insurrectionists screamed at the Capitol Police on Jan. 6. Buildings have been forcibly occupied, students who were entitled to enter campus property were forcibly excluded. In Boston, they blocked the annual Pride parade because, well, they thought they were entitled to.

At the University of Arizona, protesters taunted police “If you come in we will fight you.” At the University of Texas at Austin, protesters “physically and verbally harassed our staff. Officers were headbutted, spit on and verbally assaulted. Some protesters threw horse excrement at officers,” according to the school

It’s true that none of this was intended to block the counting of electoral votes. But it was otherwise substantially comparable to Jan. 6.

Many Democrats have been loath to take the Left’s Proud Boys on. A notable exception has been President Biden, who has forcefully condemned not the only the conduct but the accompanying rhetoric. This weekend’s protests at the White House featured the usual genocidal fare. “Hezbollah, Hezbollah, make us proud. Kill another Zionist now!” chanted one group. “Antisemitism, violent rhetoric and endorsing murderous terrorist organizations like Hamas is repugnant, and against everything we stand for as a country,” responded a White House spokesman.

There are some other Democrats who have shown some spine. But many others have been just as feckless as the Republicans were about speaking the truth when it came to Jan. 6. It’s going to prove to be a problem come November.

Jeff Robbins, a nationally syndicated Boston Herald columnist, is the author of “Notes From The Brink: A Collection of Columns About Policy At Home And Abroad.”

Members of the Proud Boys New Hampshire were outside Salem High School before former President Donald Trump’s speaking engagement at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee 2023 January annual meeting in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha, File)