After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate’s Berkeley landlord) “outside agitators.”
Cartoonish Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich went on CNN to float the lurid conspiracy theory that the “black bloc” anarchists were false-flagged conservatives disguised to make liberal protest look bad.
Sorry, Bob, but bona fide liberals are quite capable all by their lonesome of making left-wing protest look bad—particularly liberals who also happen to be students at elite institutions. To wit, here are some of the headlines for articles Cal’s student newspaper, the Daily Californian, has published about the riots at their school: “Violence as self-defense,” “Black bloc did what campus should have,” “Condemning protesters same as condoning hate speech.” And The Scrapbook’s personal favorite, with its Orwellian juxtaposition of opposites: “Violence helped ensure safety of students.”
That must make UC Berkeley one of the safest schools around—at least for those students willing to conform. ¨
