Why? What possible reason could there be for the Metropolitan Republican Club to have someone like Gavin McInnes speak? It’s not that they don’t have the right to invite him. They do. It’s not that he doesn’t have the right to speak. He does. But of all the people in the world to invite, why someone like Gavin McInnes?

…Gavin McInnes, who spoke at the club Friday evening and who is touted on its web page as the “Godfather of the Hipster Movement” who “has taken on and exposed the Deep State Socialists and stood up for Western Values.”

McInnes, a Canadian, is a co-founder of Vice Media and leads the far-right group “Proud Boys,” whose members have been involved in several physical conflicts with left-wing and anti-fascist protesters. The group, which insists it is not part of the so-called “alt-right,” is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Being tagged by the SPLC doesn’t make a group “alt-right,” but it doesn’t make them not “alt-right” either. In this case, there’s no question but that the “Proud Boys” is that group of angry, pathetic misfits that serves as the poster boys for the dimmest of “alt-right” bulbs.

A Republican in Manhattan is, with the notable exception of Rudy Giuliani, damn near a socialist in flyover country. So naturally, having someone like McInnes speak gave rise to the one thing that would elevate his status above anything that could possibly spew from his mouth.

A vandal sprayed graffiti on the GOP’s Manhattan clubhouse and left a warning note “to put the Republican Party on notice” ahead of a speech by the founder of the “Western chauvinist” group Proud Boys.

Two bright orange anarchy symbols were painted on the doors of the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side on Thursday night, state party officials said. The vandal or vandals also broke a window and left behind the angry note.

What would, and should, have passed unnoticed, because it was utterly unworthy of notice that McInnes was there at all, was turned into a demonstration of left wing crazy to balance out the right.

Vandalism on the Metropolitan Republican Club at 122 East 83rd Street, which occurred last night, that the members claim to be the doing of Antifa, Manhattan, New York, Friday, October 12, 2018. (Shawn Inglima for New York Daily News)

And some childish vandalism wasn’t stupid enough for a Friday night in the big city.

“Kill more nazis!” Outside the metropolitan republican club now with a pretty big anti-fascist mobilization. pic.twitter.com/21XhGaFc0g

— Shay Horse (@HuntedHorse) October 12, 2018

But if the Antifa handed a moment of victory to the Proud Boys by making McInnes’ speech into a big deal rather than something so insignificant as to be unworthy of a decent yawn, the Proud Boys managed to do the near impossible and turn it back on themselves in a display of just how despicable they could be.

It appears that a couple blocks away, after the speech was over, one of the protesters tried to grab a MAGA hat from a Proud Boy, so naturally the entire group of brave tough guys had to deliver a beating, screaming “Are you brave now, faggot?” The only thing “New York” about any of this as the fact that there wasn’t a cop to be found when needed.

On the one hand, this is the classic “hold my beer” meme played out in real time, with each side doing everything possible to prove it’s worse than the other. But these aren’t equivalents, there being no redeeming feature to these Naxos thugs. Much as the protesters, the Antifa, are functionally the flip side of authoritarianism, at least they can lay claim to better motives if not the same methods.

Curiously, the Daily News report suggested that none of this was a big deal.

Aside from a fight after the event between a protester and a Proud Boy and a flare-up before the talk between a man recording the protest and a demonstrator, the evening was peaceful.

While the video may not reflect a riot, it was hardly peaceful for the guy beaten. But then, in the scheme of whose crazies are the worst crazies, it’s a coin toss.

Demonstrator Kelly Murphy, 29, of Astoria, called McInnes a “white supremacist” who “despises people of color’.

Murphy downplayed the anarchist graffiti sprayed on the Republican clubhouse. “There’s no way that what they did could have paralleled Gavin McInnes’ calls for violence,” she said.

The lost distinction here is that McInnes’ “wrong” was speech, while the “anarchist graffiti” and other damage was conduct. But when you wrap yourself in righteousness, real differences get glossed over in the rhetoric.

What would have happened if McInnes spoke and nobody gave a damn, relegating him and the Proud Boys to the status they deserve, unworthy of notice? Then again, what would have happened had the Metropolitan Republican Club chosen its speaker more wisely rather than feed red meat to the most worthless of the right? Everybody could have had a pleasant Friday evening and no property would have been damaged and no one would have been hurt.

Instead, another bizarre confrontation between the pointless misfits of outrage in a city that apparently could benefit from some sleep and a lot more thought. It may have been a warm October night, but summer in the city is over and it’s time for a fall. Both sides fell here and the only argument is which fell further.