The cancellation of a speech by Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California at Berkeley on Wednesday is a special sort of news story -- a predictable disaster that still managed to surprise. In just a few violent hours, it packed in half a dozen lessons about politics in the Trump era.

Provocation works.

Yiannopoulos, perhaps best known for being blocked from Twitter after leading a trolling campaign against the unsuccessful "Ghostbusters" reboot and its co-star Leslie Jones, is one of the proudest and most open provocateurs in American life. He has embraced and defended movements not just from the right, but specifically from young men who, he says, have been minimized and alienated by a feminized, politically correct society.

[Trump lashes back at Berkeley after protests block speech by Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos]

Before Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign, Yiannopoulos latched onto the "Gamergate" controversy and became a witty, urban icon for young men who accused "social justice warriors" of ruining and censoring the online gaming medium they loved. In May 2015, a bomb threat disrupted a Yiannopoulos-hosted Gamergate meet-up in Washington; his recap of the night informed Breitbart readers that the protests "got me laid."

After Trump's campaign took off, Yiannopoulos went all-in, referring to the presidential candidate as "Daddy." The British, Jewish, openly gay Yiannopoulos gave speeches on college campuses as part of a "Dangerous Faggot Tour," riding in a bus wrapped with the slogan and a photo of his face. On social media, it's hard not to stumble across compilations of Yiannopoulos mocking overly sincere "SJWs" on TV shows or in Q&As during college campus events.

Despite his inflammatory behavior, he has thrived, and secured a book deal with Simon & Schuster, even as journalists who profile him come away with the feeling that he's provoking for provoking's sake. "The crowd of excitable young and young-ish people gathered to hear him pontificate believe what he’s saying, even if he doesn’t," wrote the author Laurie Penny after Yiannopoulos hosted a party at the Republican National Convention, ostensibly for gay conservatives. "He doesn’t."

The right and left are feeding off one another's radicalization, especially on campus.

Near the end of the 2016 campaign, I went to two campuses where Yiannopoulos was set to give speeches. One was canceled; one, at Clemson University, went forward. In both cases, plenty of College Republicans distanced themselves from the events. At Clemson, Yiannopoulos easily filled a large auditorium to the brim with people wearing "Make America Great Again" hats. It felt like the old, formal version of the GOP was being displaced by a new agenda.

Wednesday night's Berkeley event seemed to prove that. The campus's College Republicans, who have long thrived on being outnumbered at one of the country's most famously progressive schools, helped bring Yiannopoulos to campus and decried the cancellation and left-wing protests. "Their success is a defeat for civilized society and the free exchange of ideas on college campuses across America," they said.

[‘Black bloc’ protests return for Trump era, leaving flames, broken windows from D.C. to Berkeley]

This is similar to what College Republicans were arguing before any Molotov cocktails were thrown. The point of the "Dangerous Faggot" tour, and the viral videos of angry Q&As, is to cast the modern left as the engine of censorship in America. The campus trend of "safe spaces," described as spots on campus where people can feel safe from emotional harm, is a source of constant mockery on the right. The "Safe Spaces" tag at Breitbart gets a workout every month. Recent stories with the tag include: "UC Student Body President Opposes Campus Carry Because of ‘Stabbings,'" "Watch: University of Virginia Students Sign Petition to Ban Christmas," and "Tulane Advances ‘Gender Pronoun’ Rule, Blames Trump."

Mocking the campus left has been a sport on the right since before Yiannopoulos was born; political commentators Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Ingraham famously got their starts writing for explosive conservative newspapers on college campuses.

Liberals are worried about left-wing violence.

As The Washington Post's Derek Hawkins reports, the Berkeley protests, like last month's inaugural protests, went off the rails for the same reason — the arrival of activists using "black bloc" tactics to start violence and damage property. Mainstream liberals had already been having a conversation about whether the "safe space" left was impeding the broader left's ability to win elections by culturally alienating voters who agree with the left on economics. The opportunism of window-smashing protesters has sent that critique into overdrive.

There's a more practical reason for this worry. In the 1960s, which Democrats are already harking back to as an antecedent to the anti-Trump protest movement, violent radicals were highlighted to discredit mass protests — and protest movements were infiltrated in the interests of national security. Earlier this week, the Intercept obtained a recent version of the FBI's Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, which includes its guidelines for determining whether protests are "legitimate."

“An organization whose primary purpose is to engage in destruction of property as a means to bring public attention to commercial activities that harm the environment is also not a legitimate organization within the meaning of this definition because its primary purpose is to engage in criminal conduct,” reads the guide, according to the Intercept's Cora Currier. “On the other hand, an organization that seeks to bring attention to a social or political cause by engaging primarily in lawful protest or advocacy, but also some acts of civil disobedience, is a legitimate organization.”

So, there are two big concerns, working in tandem. One is that President Trump, who lost the popular vote by a wide margin in November, can exploit a backlash to political violence to build majority support. The other is that a president who has talked openly about cracking down on dissent will take any opportunity to do what Breitbart and Fox News do in highlighting the least sympathetic protests.

The president can be led by Fox News.

It's well-known that Trump starts the day flipping between MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and Fox News's "Fox and Friends." The Berkeley incident gave us one of the clearest cause-and-effects yet, as the president took less than an hour on Thursday morning to repeat an argument from frequent conservative "Fox and Friends" commentator Todd Starnes.

"The birthplace of free speech became its graveyard," said Starnes, as footage of a student being assaulted played behind him. "Here is what needs to happen. President Trump should immediately issue an executive order blocking Berkeley students from receiving any federal funding. Same goes for any other public university that wants to silence conservative voices. Free speech for all, or no federal money."

In the next hour, Trump tweeted exactly what Starnes had suggested, though he did not promise an executive order.

This feedback loop has proven to work smoothly in Trump's first weeks. Later on Thursday morning, Yiannopoulos posted Trump's tweet on Facebook with commentary of his own.

"American universities are on notice," Yiannopoulos wrote. "The President is watching. The days you could silence conservative and libertarian voices on campus and still expect to collect their tax money are coming to an end. I am the catalyst for this change."