Outside Agitators

“Outside agitators” is a trope used throughout U.S. history in reference to slave resistance, Reconstruction, the labor movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and more to dismiss and repress the legitimate agency, intellect, and concerns of local people. It is a form of McCarthyism.

In 2024, many university presidents used “outside agitators” as their rationale for calling the police against student encampments for Gaza.

This year, the Trump administration is referencing “outside agitators” as a (false) justification for sending I.C.E. and the National Guard to Minneapolis and other cities.

Given the frequent use of the term, it is important for students to understand why and how it is used. Here are excerpts from articles that can serve as prompts for class discussion.

Howard University Law School professor Justin Hanford said in a Vox interview that the reference to “outside agitators” by the right:

Is an effective tool because not only do you delegitimize the protest itself, but you also delegitimize the activists as not being skillful enough, or clever enough, to do this on their own. You play on racial tropes as well.

Historian Howard Zinn said something similar,

When students begin to defy established authority it often appears to besieged administrators that “someone must be behind this,” the implication being that young people are incapable of thinking or acting on their own.

In Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King refused to be characterized as an outsider, as educator Elyse Eidman-Aadahl wrote in Medium:

Letter from Birmingham Jail originates as a clap back to a statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, who criticized the march and similar civil rights demonstrations and blamed “outside agitators.” King explains how he came to be there, was in fact invited to be there, and then he adds eloquently the counterargument: he refuses to be characterized as an outsider:

. . . I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

And so, anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Below are more resources on the topic.