It’s increasingly obvious that far too many people out causing havoc in the name of Black Lives Matter are in fact just wallowing in the chance to bully people and break stuff, or worse.

And the ranks of Antifa, in particular, are packed with utter thugs (mostly white) who are devastating mainly black neighborhoods in towns like Kenosha, Wis.

Yes, many protesters try to stand up to the extremists: In the videos of ruffians trashing restaurants and threatening diners up in Rochester, you see some people trying to stop the mayhem. But they fail, badly — and so the cause is set back, badly.

And for that, all these movements’ leaders are to blame. The civil-rights movement understood that it could only succeed by appealing to the nation’s conscience and ruthlessly policed its own ranks. Black Lives Matter organizers seem to think otherwise — why else sit by as its followers harass restaurant-goers across the country?

Then, too: After even a single night of riots or looting, anyone aiming at peaceful protest should be staying home. Otherwise, you’re just enabling the violence-prone and the outright criminals. (Even more grotesque are the intellectuals who actually defend looting and riots as “communication.”)

Yet today’s left seems blind to these obvious truths. Time and again, it seizes territory — as Occupy City Hall did in the city this summer, and Occupy Wall Street nine years ago — only to produce filthy, crime-ridden encampments. The anarchy of Seattle’s CHOP brought the shooting deaths of two young black men.

High-profile, sustained “protests” seem to be magnets for the disturbed. Police shot Michael Reinoehl dead last week after the attempt to arrest him for the murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson turned into an exchange of gunfire. Long estranged from his family, Reinoehl had gleefully dubbed himself “100% Antifa” as he joined in the rioting in his native Portland. (Danielson, for his part, had foolishly joined a right-wing rally in Portland, but that hardly justifies his murder.)

Meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse is likely to plead self-defense against two murder charges in yet another far-left/far-right confrontation in Kenosha. It may well work, as video shows him fleeing attackers before he opens fire. And at least one of those attackers-turned-victims had an ugly record that included conviction for multiple sex crimes against children in 2002.

Rampant civil disorder is a far, far cry from peaceful protest — and does nothing to bring justice or reform. It brings out the worst among us, not the best.

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