Actor and conservative commentator Ben Stein said Saturday that the protesters who berated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at a Louisville restaurant the night before are “becoming like the brownshirts in the early days of the Nazi Party.”

Mr. McConnell and his wife, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, were confronted at the Havana Rumba restaurant by at least two hecklers who reportedly stole the couple’s leftover food off their table and threw it outside.

It was one of many similar incidents involving Republican politicians being heckled in public in recent months. Mr. McConnell was recently heckled by protesters at Reagan National Airport near Washington.

Mr. Stein, a lawyer and economist who is also Jewish, told TMZ at Politicon in Los Angeles that leftist protesters are wading into fascistic territory.

“Disgusting mob rule,” he said. “Antifa is becoming like the brownshirts in the early days of the Nazi Party. Very, very disgusting, shocking behavior — stunningly horrible.

“I consider it violent — to go to somebody while he’s having a meal, and take the meal away from him and throw it away — I consider that as close to violence as I want to get,” he continued. “Democracy in action is voting, it’s not violence, it’s not taking people’s food away from them and throwing it away. These people are gangsters, they are mob gangsters, they’re not decent people.

The TMZ interviewer pointed out that there are right-wing activists like the Proud Boys who have engaged in violent protest. Mr. Stein said they deserved condemnation too.

“Anybody using violence or threats of violence or any kind of sudden action to deny people of their rights or their peace of mind is disgusting,” Mr. Stein said.

“I am a big student of World War II and the rise of the Nazi Party, and this is exactly how the Nazis started out,” he added.

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