A Culture of Blame – The Legacy of "Outside Agitators"

Riot outside 1968 Democratic Convention

I remember, after the roiling Black Lives Matter protests – the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 – and the excuses given for the counter-demonstrators at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, assess blame for liberal resistance in situations where violence erupted, centered on this group I had never heard of: “Antifa.” So, I wondered where their website was and how they were organized. But when I Googled, there was no such group, even as conservative pundits repeatedly blamed “Antifa” as an organized group of leftwing outside agitators trying to take police and government down. That happened again on January 6, 2021, as Republicans in Congress blamed the Capitol attack on outside agitators led by “Antifa.”

It turned out that the populist right had created a non-existent formal, organized group (often purported to be financed by liberal donor, George Soros) that became their anti-Christ out of a philosophy. The Encyclopedia Britanica defines “antifa” as “a broad and decentralized political movement comprising individuals and groups who believe that fascism continues to pose a unique threat to democratic and peaceful societies and must be combatted through extraordinary, radical, and, in some cases, violent and illegal means.” A movement, a philosophy but not a real and identifiable grouping. Not like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, etc. Yet to this day, there are members of Congress who continue to refer to “Antifa” as an identifiable group that must be stopped. Anti = against. Fa = Fascism.

I’m seeing this elusive body of “outside agitators” arise again to explain the pro-Palestinian demonstrations across many American campuses. I certain do not condone any associated violence or any antisemitism, but I remain puzzled why protests that certain politicians do not like often contain references of blame: “outside agitators.” Harmeet Kaur, writing for CNN News on April 27th observed: “On April 18, the New York Police Department arrested more than a hundred people in connection with pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, kicking off a wave of similar demonstrations at other US colleges and universities. Following the NYPD’s arrest of more than 130 protesters at New York University earlier this week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a news conference that ‘outside agitators’ were disrupting the city and throwing bottles and chairs at police officers.

“NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry suggested on Fox 5 New York that an outside entity was funding campus protests because of the similarities in tents used at student encampments, saying ‘there are professional agitators in there that are just looking for something to be agitated about.’” This description echoed from Atlanta (Emory University) to Los Angeles (USC and UCLA)… “In these instances, and others, authorities have not offered many specifics about who the ‘outside agitators’ are, how significant their numbers are or how they differentiated outsiders from university-affiliated protesters.

“Large-scale social movements can certainly be vulnerable to groups who seek to capitalize on the chaos for their own ends, said Aldon Morris, a professor emeritus of sociology and African American studies at Northwestern University. But time and again, authorities have leveled the broad accusation of ‘outside agitators’ to undermine or stifle protests, according to scholars who study social movements — and Morris is concerned that history is repeating itself.

“‘The notion here is that student protests aren’t really legitimate because the claim is that they are being taken over by outside agitators who are violent, anti-government, anti-democracy and so forth,’ Morris told CNN. ‘It seems to me that the ‘outside agitator’ claim is one to shift the focus away from the grievances of the students and their protest’… The emphasis on ‘outside agitators,’ Morris says, detracts from the central issue that is driving students to protest: Israel’s war in Gaza…

“Claims of ‘outside agitators’ — or ‘crisis actors,’ which evoke a similar idea — also emerged during a 2018 walkout of Oklahoma teachers, in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting earlier that year and amid the violent unrest that followed the police shooting of an 18-year-old Black man in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

“The ‘outside agitator’ label was also frequently evoked during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, implying that protesters participating in demonstrations were driven by the nefarious agendas of shadowy “others,” as opposed to being motivated by their own concerns.

“One example is the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, Kathleen Fitzgerald, a teaching associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, explained in a 2020 interview with CNN. A group of mostly White college students who traveled from the North to Mississippi to help register Black voters and open freedom schools were dismissed by White Southerners as outsiders…’When they use that narrative, it’s an assumption that no locals would agree with these actions and no locals are on board,’ Fitzgerald said in 2020… ‘And that’s certainly not true.’” Kaur.

Indeed, it seems that when a government leader blames “outside agitators” for any protest, that is usually followed by a litany of arrests or cops with shields and batons beating protestors. They can place the blame on some nefarious “others” (it couldn’t be our kids, right?) to justify the government’s putting down the protest. And if you think this is bad, it does seem to rile up young protesters to amp up their protests. With the Democratic Convention slated for this August in the same city where that convention erupted in riots in 1968 (see photo above), “stand back and stand by.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and you have to wonder if those alleging “outside agitators” (without naming them) intentionally want to bait the participants and make it worse… or are just plain stupid.