It's interesting to see how the campus protests are dividing the left into two camps at this moment. I think the division can be seen pretty clearly in how various elements of the left-wing media are responding to the building takeovers and vandalism on various campuses. 

On the far left, you have shock at the police and university reaction to the protests while the more moderate left is shocked by the behavior of students and concerned about how this looks to normal people around the country. For example of the far-left reaction, here's Natasha Lennard at the Intercept:

It was a police response reminiscent of the repression that met protesters in the 2020 George Floyd uprisings. Nearly four years ago, police also responded with extraordinary violence to a mass protest. Then, the alleged provocation involved crucial acts of militant resistance, including low-level but widespread property damage, scattered looting, and the burning of several empty police vehicles.

Tuesday was different. In recent days on the campuses in Manhattan and across the country, massive police operations came in response to peaceful student encampments. Students gathered to share food, maintaining space to hold teach-ins and rallies, and demand their universities divest from Israel.

At Columbia, student protesters took over one university building: Hamilton Hall, the same building seized by students in 1968 in protest of the Vietnam War. At most, the latest building occupation saw a few broken windowpanes and some furniture moved around...

it was the protesters’ message that was being handcuffed — the condemnation of Israel and the calls for a free Palestine — and young peoples’ commitment to it.

I just have to say that reducing a building takeover to moving some furniture around is a hilarious take. Even the protesters themselves tried to make hay out of piles of furniture stacked outside the building.

Broken tables and chairs left by NYPD officers outside of Hind’s Hall at Columbia University. pic.twitter.com/vD2siSRFIN

— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) May 1, 2024

You literally have the protesters saying "look at this chaos!" but Natasha Lennard is claiming some moved furniture is a nothing-burger. I'm just saying maybe she's not totally objective.

On the other hand, you have more moderate lefties on Morning Joe who are freaking out about how all of this is playing on television. Even Al Sharpton compared what he was seeing to Jan. 6.

"The politics of that, what is being robbed by them not doing that, Joe, where you and I agree. How do the Democrats, how do all of us on that side say Jan. 6th was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on on college campuses, you lose the moral high ground," Sharpton said.

"Good Lord, don't make a parallel to Jan. 6th," co-host Mika Brzezinski said in response. "For some reason that's not allowed."

I'm curious where Mika got the idea that the comparison to Jan. 6 was "not allowed." She had apparently made the same comparison a day earlier saying, "I’ll echo the horror that this does look like Jan. 6th. What a terrible example for our students." Did some producer tell her not to go there? I do know that yesterday, Philip Bump devoted an entire article to arguing that comparison was crazytown.

Comparing the protests at Columbia University — disassembled by New York police on Tuesday night — to the attack on the U.S. Capitol three years ago seems like it makes sense from a distance. Get in close, though? A rhetorical mess...

Yes, the Columbia students engaged with law enforcement — defensively, as police, following a request from the university, moved in to remove tents and clear Hamilton Hall. Jan. 6 rioters, on the other hand, removed barriers to gain access to the Capitol and then engaged in an extended, violent fight with police guarding the building. More than 100 police were injured. Multiple rioters died...

Equating the two events is useful not as a bit of political commentary but as part of the long-standing effort to diminish the significance and scale of what unfolded at the Capitol. Up close, though, the comparison is a big old mess.

It seems Sharpton didn't get the message that comparing these two things was part of a right-wing plot to downplay Jan. 6. And that wasn't all that Sharpton had to say about the student protests.

"Anytime what you are protesting for becomes secondary to what you are doing, then you really aren't protesting for it," Sharpton said. He added that the anti-Israel protesters had "become the cause" and have largely shied away from their original message...

"It's about them, it's not about pushing the cause. They need to ask themselves if they were sincere. Are you really focusing on what's going on in Gaza, about the children, about the women, about the innocent people, and in Israel? Are you focusing on whether or not you are violent or whether or not you can say the most incendiary statement? How are you guiding this? It's about them, and I think that they've lost the message," Sharpton said. 

In short, they've lost the plot. Both Sharpton and Scarborough seemed to be in agreement about why they had lost the plot. It was because of "outside agitators" who were organizing these protests and paying for all of the matching tents. But the idea that outside agitators were involved was denied or downplayed by both Philip Bump and Natasha Lennard. 

In this current moment, the “outside agitators” conjured are both the perennial anarchist bogeymen or Islamist terror groups sending funds to keep student encampments flush with the cheapest tents available online.

So there's quite a gap in how various groups on the left are viewing this. On the far left you have those who see it as a police overreaction aimed at silencing criticism of Israel. Meanwhile, among the center-left, you have concern that this looks a lot like Jan. 6 and is making Democrats seem like extremists. The fight over these different positions hasn't really been joined directly. So far the two sides are just shouting past one another but it will be eventually need to be resolved.