When I grow up, I want to be an “outside agitator.” They seem like a spritely group of people with an outsized influence without gaining personal notoriety or attention. Where do I sign up?
I grew up hearing about those “outsized agitators” on college campuses…no, not at Columbia this year, but at UCLA, Berkley, and other campuses in the 1960s. What I have noticed about these activists is that they are seldom named or arrested. I mean, who doesn’t want to be able to stir up trouble, cause a national furor, and take over college buildings with no identity or accountability?
The vocation of “hellraising” without any public-facing exposure sounds like the perfect retirement job…or hobby. My only problem is that my outside agitating needs to be done by 9:00 pm…bedtime for Daniel.
Is there an “outside agitator non-profit” group that I can join? Where do I sign up? Who are these agitators who cause such a commotion that police must attack them in full military gear and force? Yet once these “outside agitators” are arrested, they become nothing more than students. The outside agitators.org group melts into the surrounding neighborhoods….where did those scoundrels go?
I think you get it now…the label “outside agitators” is made up to discredit all the students. It is a convenient pejorative to dismiss the whole movement. It always has been.
I have been waiting to write about the current student protests that are occurring around the country against the actions of the Israeli government’s war against Hamas, with the Palestinian people being caught in the crosshairs. I needed to let this round of unrest distill my thinking, so this is my first shot at trying to understand and write about it.
I’m not going to write a detailed analysis of who is right and who is wrong as if such binaries are useful…they are not. The situation is much more complex than that.
If I were forced to choose sides, however, I admit that I would be cheering the student protestors all the way. I grew up witnessing student protests in the 1960s and have always admired the passion, fire, and idealism that college students express. After the 1960s I thought I had seen the last of the true student protests as the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s only saw a sporadic protest here and there. The protests against Apartheid in South Africa in the 80s and 90s were hopeful, and as you can predict, there were “outside agitators” then, too.
But what has caught my focus and attention in this recent round of campus unrest is the use of the term “outside agitators.” Yep, it's back in full force. There is a rich and questionable history of using this trope. With the current round of student protests in support of the Palestinians, that old moniker “outside agitators” has once again been bantered about to attempt to discredit the protesters.
Throughout history, this label has been used to marginalize and discredit any person or group that tries to upset the status quo. It has been used by white supremacists, segregationists, bigots, and the elite, who only prosper because they divide the masses and paint their opponents in simplistic terms.
We see the same tactic being used by the criminal candidate Trump in his descriptions of immigrants: they are “all” criminals, rapists, diseased, and subhuman. It is designed to divide people around incoherent and illogical descriptions that oversimplify the issue. No critical thinking is required.
“Outside agitators” have been used throughout history in response 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. Today, university presidents are using the trope “outside agitators” as their rationale for calling the police against student encampments.
Howard Zinn, the late “people’s” historian, says this about the use of the “outside agitators” label:
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.
Having grown up in a generation of student activists, my advice is never to underestimate or devalue the voice of young people. They have the agency and motivation to make their voices heard, and listen we must.
Here is what I think this generation of young people are saying…it isn’t the line of “antisemitism” or “anti-Israel” messaging that their opponents accuse them of. These are labels used by the “establishment” to paint the students as wrong-headed and even bigoted. (I love using the term “the establishment”…ahh, the good ole days.)
Are there a few antisemitic voices in the protest? Yes, of course. But from the evidence I’ve seen, they do not represent the movement. There are many Jewish student organizations that are involved in the protests. But, the authorities love to amplify the voices of the few extremists to discredit the sanest voices that make up the masses. So, they take a broad brush and paint ALL the protesters as “antisemitic.” It is an old trick.
These students are sending us an important message. A war against Hamas is not going to end the violence. Violence only begets violence. You cannot defeat an evil enemy by resorting to evil means to do so. Genocide and starvation of the innocent population of Gaza is a crime against humanity, just as indiscriminate bombings over Vietnam were a crime against humanity, the atomic bomb over Japan, the Holocaust, and the whole era of enslavement in the American South. All were crimes against humanity.
These students, if we listen with ears to hear, point us in a better way—a more humane way to a better future. Are they idealistic? Yes, but when have politicians ever applied idealism to their policies? When have they chosen humanistic and humanitarian concerns over realpolitik? What would happen if they did? It might be worth a try to find out…that is what these students are suggesting.
The core message of these students is one we should heed. War in the 21st century needs to be considered obsolete. Nationalism, whether it is Zionism, Christian Nationalism, or Russian expansionist nationalism, can only lead to the death of innocent people, many of whom are children. It is time to reject such ideas.
These students are standing up for a voiceless people, the Palestinians. But they are standing up for humanity. Today, it is Palestinians…tomorrow, what other voiceless, powerless groups will find themselves bombed out of their homes, their livelihoods destroyed, their children dying from violence, and starvation rampant?
These students are doing what they have been taught to do…think critically. By that, I mean they have analyzed a very complex situation in the Middle East, understood that there are no binary choices, that Israel’s government is acting capriciously, and Hamas is a terrorist organization. They have synthesized that matrix and have come down on the side of humanity and acting humanely. They are not antisemitic…they are pro-humanity.
The simpletons are the ones trying to paint them with the broadest of brushes. Trying to pin the label on them as antisemitic is akin to what has happened time and again in history. For example, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the ultimate outside agitator, was labeled a “communist.” The same goes for the current Black Lives Matter movement…outside agitators who are secretly commies.
In other words, standing for equality, humane treatment of Black people by the police, and an end to discrimination in American institutions…is a “communist plot?” See the irony?
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, labor struggles and labor strife were key examples of "outside agitator" labels. It allowed morally reprehensible acts of violence against labor activists in the Haymarket riot in Chicago and the Homestead strike in Pennsylvania to take place with impunity.
Want to go further back in time? Guess who the biggest outside agitator of the 19th century was: Frederick Douglass! If there were any enslaved tension or uprisings in the South, it had to be the fault of that radical, outside agitator, Douglass. He was blamed for just about everything that went wrong for slaveowners. Never mind that the institution of enslavement was the problem, that owning human beings was a moral outrage and sin that needed to be corrected. Any trouble on Southern Plantations had to have come from someone in the North…abolitionists like Douglass and their ilk.
This trope is an old tactic used by those without moral arguments to defend their immoral policies and positions. So, when you hear people calling student protestors “outside agitators,” begin immediately to analyze what policies, practices, and actions it is they are protecting and defending…it is likely indefensible. They are simply trying to switch the table onto the students and hide their own immoral and indefensible arguments.
Yeah, I’m with the students on this one, and if I could find that “outside agitator” website, I’d join it in a second.
Good read Dan. Thank you.