Even more than the rioting itself, developments following the successful effort to deny Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos his First Amendment rights at UC Berkeley vividly illustrate the utter bankruptcy of progressive ideology.

The Daily Californian, UC’s major student newspaper, published five separate editorials defending the campus riots.

“The black bloc is not an organization with an agenda,” insists Desmond Meagley. “It’s a strategic approach to protest that, in the case of the entire ‘Dangerous Faggot’ tour, was highly effective. The violence that forms the foundation of Yiannopoulos’ ideology is far worse than any tactic the black bloc uses.”

Juan Prieto jumps on the Orwellian bandwagon in a piece entitled “Violence helped insure safety of students,” giving thanks to the “AntiFas  —  an anarchist and anti-fascist group that uses black bloc techniques to meet its ends” for ensuring the safety of the “outspoken undocumented student at UC Berkeley” Preito apparently is. “Coming out of the shadows is a way by which many undocumented immigrants take control of the narratives being molded by the mass media,” he states. Prieto was fine with the violence because it “stopped white supremacy from organizing itself against my community.”

Homosexual activist Neil Lawrence bragged about his decision to make “good on my promise to revoke Yiannopoulos’ gay card” by wearing black and covering his face, presumably to engage in violence because of “all the objections and cancellation requests presented to the administration, local government and local police, the only one that was listened to was the sound of shattering glass.” Lawrence also warned Yiannopoulos and his supporters to “learn your lesson. Our shields are raised against you.”

Josh Hardiman blamed the administration for its “thoughtless adherence to the First Amendment” that allows people like Yiannopoulos, to “deliberately use such a basic interpretation of free speech to smokescreen their toxic, sexist, white nationalist agenda.” Thus, freedom of speech “should not be extended to envelop freedom of hate speech, for the unchecked normalization of hate speech will have real consequences.” He justifies the violence as a reasonable tradeoff against the “symbolic, structural and actual violence that is proposed, condoned and actioned by the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and his supporters.”

Nisa Lang bemoans “the resurgence of the belief that in order for a protest to be effective, it must also be nonviolent.” Furthermore, she doesn’t care “what Breitbart article or liberal bulls—t listicle you’ve read, or what your experiences in white suburbia might have taught you — police are violent agents of the state.”

Lang and her equally twisted fellow travelers may not have noticed, but those so-called “violent agents of the state,” a.k.a. the UC campus police, embraced the craven, stand down, “let them blow off steam” approach to rioting that represents a complete mockery of law enforcement’s fundamental imperative to protect and serve.

Instead, Police Chief Margo Bennett rationalized the servile approach. “Crowd control situations are different than a military exercise or an active shooter situation,” she insisted. “It’s just a different approach and a different set of tactics that you have to use in order to not escalate the situation, in order to control it. People have a hard time understanding that. I get it.”

Apparently the people who “don’t get it” are those expecting full-blown rioters who threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police officers, beat a man unconscious and vandalized more than a dozen businesses in the city’s downtown area to face a no-nonsense approach from those paid to uphold the Rule of Law.

Forget about it. As of now, a grand total of one arrest has been made.

Why? Arresting rioters would have created “a lethal, horror situation,” said Bennett in an interview with the LA Times.

As the Times reveals, this calculated impotence is nothing new as UC campus administrators and police have tolerated “far larger” student disruptions in the past. “Window breaking and barricade tossing were common during Regents meetings when tuition was being raised significantly in the last decade, and protesters at UCLA trapped the Regents and other UC officials in a meeting building and garage,” the paper explained.

Berkeley police Sgt. Sabrina Reich echoed Chief Bennett’s spinelessness, further insisting that if officers made arrests at the scene, as many as three of them would have had to escort each suspected rioter to jail, potentially compromising crowd control.

Thus, a university police force that has seen UC campus rioting for more than two decades is apparently still incapable of anticipating trouble, and providing sufficient manpower to deal with it.

Someone else yet to be dealt with is Ian Dabney Miller, an alleged UC employee outed as the author of tweets bragging about an assault perpetrated against a Yiannopoulos supporter. Prior to privatizing his Twitter account, Miller uploaded several pictures from the riot, including one of an injured man that included the caption “hey come get your boy, he got ROCKED #miloatcal.” Screenshots of other tweets include Miller bragging about his part in the assault, as in hitting the man with “a couple of weak shots to the face,” before pushing him over a bike wheel.

Although he used aliases while tweeting, another Twitter user managed to link Miller to his Facebook account. The same user also discovered an Ian Dabney Miller listed on UC Berkeley’s 2013 college employee records. It shows Miller earned between $64,000 and $70,000 a year from 2009-2013. Berkeley insists the FBI is investigating the incident, but did not confirm whether or not Miller was employed by the college.

Just as interesting, if not more so? A Google search including the terms “UC employee, Ian Miller, Berkeley riots” didn’t yield a single mainstream media story about Miller on the first two pages of Google results. Perhaps decent Americans are supposed to console themselves with the notion that no news is better than fake news, but the lack of journalistic integrity — and the calculated silence it produces as a result — is contemptible.

There is a poisonous mindset on the rise in our nation, one nurtured by numerous indoctrination centers calling themselves college campuses. The cowardice enabling it is exemplified by assistant vice chancellor and UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof. He insisted Berkeley administrators remain dedicated to protecting free speech — even as he warned those administrators might have to give certain events a closer look, if they have the potential to engender major disruption and destruction.

Here’s a better idea: at least one of the above columnists, Neil Lawrence, not only advocated violence, but indicated he likely took part in it. If that is the case, expel him and report him to the police for arrest and prosecution. Take a similar tack with every other student — or employee — who can be likewise identified.

The alternative? Campus brownshirts remaining confidant they can engage in transparently fascist behavior whenever constitutional protections and the Rule of Law “offend” their progressive sensibilities.

That contemptible dynamic, and tolerated totalitarianism it produces, must be eviscerated, even if it requires the U.S. Justice Department to get involved. Absolutely nothing justifies mob rule — or the feckless accommodation by administrators and police that enables it.