Proud Boys on the Left: One Side's Nuts Show the Other Side's Nuts How It's Done

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 Brownshirts of 1930s Berlin. "Throughout the day," as the Anti-Defamation League put it, "individuals associated with the right-wing extremist 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 hardcore 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 for years and fighting it out in the street," 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 get 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 by protestors. Some protesters ... threw horse excrement at officers."

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 Joe Biden, who has forcefully condemned not 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, dangerous 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.

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Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.