"left wingers have long tried to portray any opposition to them as a kind of violence "

Any being the key word, any opposition is considered hate speech or violent speech to them, simply disagreeing with the left makes them want to silence you and shut you down because they know they can't win the debate and they can't win in the arena of ideas, their only hope is to misinform/program/mold enough followers to blindly follow them while destroying their opposition.

In fact if you want to get technical, the left is about hate and voilence as they want to destroy, shut down, silence anyone who doesn't see things their way.