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ANARCHY: Anti-free-speech protesters lit fires and damaged property Wednesday to protest the appearance of campus speaker Milo Yiannopoulos.

In an embarrassing display of vulgarity and violence, rioters at the University of California, Berkeley lit fires and destroyed property to shut down a campus event featuring a speaker whose speech they oppose.

Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak Wednesday night, but had to be evacuated from campus when protesters masked with black scarves began throwing fireworks at the building where hisspeech was to occur.

I have been evacuated from theUC Berkeleycampus after violent left-wing protestors tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building, Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook. My team and I are safe. But the event has been cancelled. Ill let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

TOLERANCE: Included among the property damage at UC Berkeley weregraffiti death threats against the president of the United States.

The good newsfor the protestersis that they shut down Yiannopoulos speech. The bad news for protesters is that this will likelyhelp Yiannopoulos, as Reason associate editor Robby Soave explained in detail.

[The protesters] turn Yiannopoulos into a free speech martyr, which is exactly what he wants, Soave wrote. When Milo is censored, Milo wins.

A freshmen at Berkeley told Soave that the press gained by the riots turned Yiannopoulos event from one that was going to be attended by 500 people to one that attracted the attention of thousands.

It was a 500-person event, thats like the max occupancy of the room, said university freshman Kevin Quigley. If it was just 500 people going to hear him talk it wouldnt be in the news, but when you have thousands of people gathering in the streets theyre just making him more famous.

Many of the people hearing about the riots will, as Soave wrote, see college students and social justice warriors acting in a belligerent fashion. The riotsmay even cause those who arent familiar withYiannopoulos to seek him out on social media andevaluate his message for themselves. Either way, the campus speakerstands to becomemore famous the opposite of what the rioters intended.

At the core of this situation is the First Amendment, and whether peoplewith differing opinions should be allowed to speak.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education released a statement on the riots late Wednesday evening:FIRE condemns both violence and attempts to silence protected expression in the strongest terms.We also urge that decisions affecting long-term policy be made only after all the facts are gathered and with appropriate opportunity for reasoned discussion.

The university had previously refused to cancel Yiannopoulos speech, which was organized by College Republicans. Changing speech codes to kowtow to violent disrupterscould send themessage that violence is a suitable responseto disagreement, and that censorship is valid.

Former President Barack Obamaon numerous occasions told college students not to shut downthose with whomthey disagree, but to use peaceful dialogue and verbal arguments.

President Donald Trump weighed in on the violence, questioning whether the school should lose federal funding as a result its handling of the anti-free-speech riots. It is unclear what authority the federal government has to remove funding over the actions of violentprotesters and students.

Those who resort to violence stand to lose public support. Moving forward, UC Berkeley will have to bestrong in defendingfree speech to avoid becoming the new face ofcensorship among college campuses.

More here:
Violence and censorship rule at UC Berkeley - Watchdog.org