Last night, the forces of campus fascism may have overplayed their hand by forcing cancelation of a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley and then rioting (many rioters in masks) through campus and downtown Berkeley, lighting fires and smashing windows.

Fire at Wells Fargo #milo @berkeleyside pic.twitter.com/oDlqu3px4R

— Kevin Kunze (@KunzeFilms) February 2, 2017

President Trump this morning took note on Twitter and raised the nuclear option of federal funding:

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

Berkeley and its university are worldwide symbols of the leftist takeover and corruption of academia.  Few people realize that until 1964, when the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley signaled the start of the leftist assault on academia, Berkeley had been governed by Republicans for many years.  The influx of thousands of leftists from all over the nation is what changed the city into a stronghold and symbol of the left.

The president of the University of California is none other than Janet Napolitano, the former head of Homeland Security, someone who ought to know about keeping order and preventing riots, but let her university fail.  It is not as if the intentions of the rioters were any secret.

But the university has issued a strong condemnation.  If words were deeds, that would mean something. 

 We condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence and unlawful behavior that was on display, and deeply regret that those tactics will now overshadow the efforts to engage in legitimate and lawful protest against the performer’s presence and perspectives.

The University is claiming that it did a lot:

The University and the UCPD went to extraordinary lengths to plan for this event and put the appropriate resources in place in order to maintain security. Officials were in contact with other campuses and paid close attention to lessons learned at the speaker’s prior events. Dozens of additional police officers were on duty. Multiple methods of crowd control were in place. Ultimately and unfortunately, however, it was simply impossible to maintain order given the level of threat, disruption, and violence.

We regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as home of the Free Speech Movement. As Chancellor Dirks made clear in his message to the Berkeley campus community, while Mr. Yiannopoulos views, tactics and rhetoric are profoundly contrary to our own, we are bound by the Constitution, the law, our values, and the campus’s Principles of Community to enable free expression across the full spectrum of opinion and perspective. 

No arrests have been made, so far as Google tells me.  But there should be digital fingerprints for the social media used to organize the protests, and for the people behind resistfascism.org, who sent out classic fascist tropes claiming justification for shutting down Milo:

-In fact, he is a fascist, and students at campuses along his tour have righteously fought, and sometimes succeeded, in shutting down his speaking gigs. (snip)

-People who protest Milo are not opposing free speech, they are opposing a fascist America, which is the actual, real, and gravely serious threat to basic rights of speech, assembly, and intellectual life.

This one is priceless, straight out of Orwell:

-Students who oppose Milo are strengthening the role of universities as places where dissent, critical thinking and the search for truth can flourish.

None of this will be persuasive to anyone but an authoritarian leftist.  So the time is ripe for the Department of Education (once it has a secretary) and for Congress to consider rules, regulations, and laws to crack down on free speech violations on campus and other features of the conversion of academia into a political adjunct of the left.