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Hundreds of “anti-hate” protesters took to the UC Berkeley campus tonight to protest Ann Coulter’s speech, and to try to prevent people from going in to hear her. Look at this:

Andy Ngo
✔
@MrAndyNgo
Left-wing protesters at @UCBerkeley form a human wall with linked arms to block others from entering the @AnnCoulter speech earlier tonight.

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12:36 AM - Nov 21, 2019
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Yes, it’s Berkeley, but you know as well as I do that if right-wingers were forming a human wall preventing people from going to hear a prominent left-wing speaker, it would be on all the national news outlets, and we would be talking about the Coming Crisis Of Fascism. But as it is, this is just another day in progressive America.

Seriously, what if a mob of white people at a major American university banded together to prevent people of color and their allies from going into a hall to hear Ta-Nehisi Coates speak? How do you think our media would frame it? They would report the hell out of it, and they should report the hell out of it, because a mob preventing anybody from going to hear someone speak is un-American, and a serious violation of our traditions. This should not happen in America, and especially not at a university.

But like I said: just another day in progressive America.

Here police have to escort students in who just want to hear a campus speaker. Otherwise, they might be beaten up by the mob of peace-loving progressives:

Anjali Shrivastava
@anjalii_shrivas
Attendees are escorted by police into Wheeler Hall. T-minus 20 minutes until the event officially starts! #CoulterProtest

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10:42 PM - Nov 20, 2019
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Look — but better not play this at work. The enraged mob chants, “F–k Ann Coulter!”

Ann Coulter entering Wheeler Hall with escorts

Also: two helicopters above Berkeley pic.twitter.com/aYcBJjP7TP

— Марк (@not_mapk) November 21, 2019

What is it going to take to fight this? It’s so exasperating how little people in this country care about the fact that left-wing mobs are taking our liberties from us, and our political leaders — including Donald Trump — are doing nothing about it. Barely even talking about it. I honestly don’t get it. We should not be living in a country where people who want to go hear a speaker have to be protected by police simply to get into the hall. You know what this looks like?

That’s a History Channel screenshot of an image of the Little Rock 9, black high schoolers who, in order to exercise their constitutional right to go to class, had to be accompanied by, and protected from the racist mob by, US soldiers. It was a disgrace to this country — a different sort of disgrace, because it had to do with race hatred, but nevertheless a similar disgrace to what happens at Berkeley, in that a fanatical mob attempts to stop free people from going to hear a speaker of whom they disapprove.

We know that the US media do not care about things like this. Look at how quickly they sided with the mob against the Covington Catholic boys, simply because the boys were wearing MAGA hats, and (therefore) fit the left-wing narrative. But what about the rest of us? Why don’t the rest of us care? I’m not interested in hearing Ann Coulter speak, but I am very, very much interested in fighting the mob culture that seeks to shut down speakers like Ann Coulter, in part by howling curses at, and attempting to humiliate, Americans who are interested in what she has to say.

If you think this is going to stay in Berkeley, you’re mistaken. This mob action might not spread to places outside of the coasts, but here’s what’s going to happen: those young people who join the mobs, they are going to graduate and move into the institutions of American life. They are going to carry their militant illiberalism, including their contempt for free speech and open discourse, into those institutions, and are going to do their damnedest to institutionalize them. One thing I have learned from the past few months spent studying Soviet-bloc communism: watch the intellectual class. It is a very big mistake to think that what they say and do only matters in the shadow of the ivory tower. They are the ones who produce the ideas that are eventually spread through society. If you don’t care about this stuff when it happens now, on campuses, you had better prepare yourself to be made to care later, when graduates of these campuses are setting corporate policy, or serving as gatekeepers to the institutions you want your “deplorable” kids to get into. This is not a joke.

UPDATE:More “Watch The Intellectuals” news, this time from Syracuse University, which has been going through a spasm of alleged racist threats. Read on:

Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud told the university’s student senate on Wednesday that the latest episode of racist activity on campus was likely fake, following protests and criticism from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“It was apparent that this rumor was probably a hoax, but that reality was not communicated clearly and rapidly enough to get ahead of escalating anxiety,” Syverud said Wednesday.

But:

At a campus forum later Wednesday, student protesters called for Syverud’s resignation and walked out when he wouldn’t promise to sign onto all their demands as written, according to news accounts. They marched to his house, chanting, “Sign or resign!”

On Thursday, Syverud announced he had signed on to “nearly all” of the demands, including mandatory diversity training for faculty and staff and $1 million to change the curriculum in order to better address diversity.

So, a likely hoaxer and his allies bullied the administration of this university into paying a million dollars to teach propaganda, and to compel teachers and staff to undergo political re-education. From what was likely a hoax.

Again and again: why aren’t Republicans talking about things like this every damn day?

UPDATE.2: A reader points to this passage from a local Berkeley paper’s story on the protest:

However, [UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo] Bennett said she was “sympathetic” to students concerned about the heavy presence of police in riot gear around Wheeler.

“I totally understand that,” she said. “We did messaging to impacted groups that felt the presence of police caused them anxiety.” [UC Berkeley spokesman Dan] Mogulof echoed Bennett. The concerns were “understandable on a lot of different levels,” he said. “We have work to do to continue to find ways we can accommodate profound differences of opinion. We believe we have met our obligations to both free speech and the rule of law, and to provide for the safety and well-being of students and campus guests,” he said. “Having said that, I understand that students are deeply disturbed and unsettled by someone whose views they deeply disagree with.” He said counseling and other services are always available to students.

Unbelievable. The authorities here — the police chief and the university spokesman — sympathize with the mobbed-up students whose fanaticism and violence required police presence so that a conservative speaker could address those who wanted to hear her. No wonder the First Amendment is losing. The authorities pity the tyrannical mob.

The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation. The discord could be the prelude to a major fissure within federal law enforcement on the controversial question of investigating a presidential campaign.

Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding that the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016, these people said.

It’s not yet clear how Barr plans to make his objection to Horowitz’s conclusion known. The inspector general report, currently in draft form, is being finalized after input from various witnesses and offices that were scrutinized by the inspector general. Barr or a senior Justice Department official could submit a formal letter as part of that process, which would then be included in the final report. It is standard practice for every inspector general report to include a written response from the department. Barr could forgo a written rebuttal on that specific point and just publicly state his concerns.

Spokespeople for the inspector general and the FBI declined to comment.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement that the inspector general investigation “is a credit to the Department of Justice. His excellent work has uncovered significant information that the American people will soon be able to read for themselves. Rather than speculating, people should read the report for themselves next week, watch the Inspector General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and draw their own conclusions about these important matters.”

The Russia investigation was opened after the FBI was told of statements made by a then Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that the Russians possessed hacked Hillary Clinton emails. Papadopoulos’s alleged comments were key because they were made well before any public allegation that Russian intelligence operatives had hacked the Democratic National Committee.

The attorney general has privately contended that Horowitz does not have enough information to reach the conclusion the FBI had enough details in hand at the time to justify opening such a probe. He argues that other U.S. agencies, such as the CIA, may hold significant information that could alter Horowitz’s conclusion on that point, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Barr has also praised the inspector general’s overall work on the matter, according to one person familiar with the matter. The inspector general operates independently of Justice Department leadership, so Barr cannot order Horowitz to change his findings.

But the prospect of the nation’s top law enforcement official suggesting the FBI may have wrongly opened an investigation into a presidential campaign, even after the inspector general announces the agency was justified in doing so, will probably generate more partisan battles over how the Justice Department and the FBI operate.

It is not unusual for an attorney general or the Justice Department to disagree with some of an inspector general’s findings. However, typically those disagreements occur because senior leaders at the department believe the inspector general has been too critical. In this case, Barr has conveyed to others his belief that Horowitz has not been critical enough, or is at least reaching a conclusion prematurely.

People familiar with the draft language of Horowitz’s report said that while it is critical of some FBI employees, and found some systemic problems in surveillance procedures, it overall does not agree with Trump’s charge that the investigation was a “witch hunt” or a politically motivated attack on him first as a candidate and then as president.

Instead, the draft report found that the investigation was opened on a solid legal and factual footing, these people said.

Part of Barr’s reluctance to accept that finding is related to another investigation, one being conducted by the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, John Durham, into how intelligence agencies pursued allegations of Russian election tampering in 2016. Barr has traveled abroad to personally ask foreign officials to assist Durham in that work. Even as the inspector general’s review is ending, Durham’s investigation continues.

Barr’s disagreement with Horowitz will probably spark further criticism from Democrats, who have already accused Barr of using his position to protect the president and undermine federal law enforcement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged in September that Barr had “gone rogue.”

In recent weeks, Democrats have charged that Barr’s Justice Department was too quick to decide not to investigate Trump over his efforts to persuade Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Ukraine controversy has led to an impeachment inquiry.

Criticism of Barr previously centered on his handling of the Russia investigation. The case that began in 2016 was taken over in May 2017 by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. After a nearly two-year investigation, Mueller filed a lengthy report of his findings to Barr, by which point he had charged 34 people with crimes, including 26 Russian nationals. Those charged and convicted included Trump’s former campaign chairman, former personal attorney, former deputy campaign chairman and former national security adviser.

After receiving the Mueller report, Barr released a short letter summing up its main points, including that there was insufficient evidence to accuse any Trump associates of conspiring with the Russians. Barr also said Mueller had made no determination about whether Trump had sought to obstruct the investigation, but Barr and his then deputy concluded he had not.

When the full report was released, Democrats protested that Barr had improperly skewed the findings to be more favorable to Trump.

Barr has dismissed such criticism, and charged it is Democrats who are abusing legal procedures and standards in their quest to drive Trump out of the White House.

“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr said in a speech last month.

In his first months on the job this year, Barr made clear he had serious concerns about how the FBI had conducted the investigation into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia.

The attorney general declared in April that the Trump campaign was spied on, though aides later said he used that term not in a pejorative sense but in the more general meaning of surveillance.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr told lawmakers. “I think spying did occur, but the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.” He also criticized former leaders of the FBI, saying, “I think there was probably a failure among a group of leaders there in the upper echelon.”

Current and former law enforcement officials have said that, when presented with information about a possible plot to undermine the U.S. election, they had a duty to investigate, and that it would have been wrong not to have launched an investigation.

In the months since, Barr, through Durham, has pursued information related to a onetime associate of Papadopoulos, a European academic named Joseph Mifsud.

Mifsud was publicly linked to Russian interference efforts in late 2017, when Mueller revealed Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the details of his interactions with Mifsud.

Shortly after his name surfaced publicly, Mifsud told Italian media he did not work for Russia. “I never got any money from the Russians: my conscience is clear,” Mifsud told La Repubblica. “I am not a secret agent.”

Since then, the professor has disappeared from public life, leading to a host of theories about him and his whereabouts. While court papers filed in Mueller’s investigation suggested Mifsud operated in Russia’s interests, Papadopoulos, conservatives and conspiracy theorists have suggested he was working for Western intelligence agencies.