Consider This from NPR - What's behind the 'outside agitator' narrative

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

The term "outside agitator" has staying power.It's been used against protestors throughout history, from the Civil Rights Movement, to the anti-Vietnam War protests and now during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses."Outside agitator" was also used to describe some of the people who protested the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri In 2014.Who exactly are the "outside agitators" and what purpose does it serve to call them out? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We're learning new details about the outside agitators. They called them professional agitators. Now the NYPD's counterterrorism unit looking into the involvement of outside agitators and professional protesters. Outside agitators. Those two words, we've been hearing them a lot the last few weeks as protests against Israel's war in Gaza have spread across college campuses nationwide. Police have arrested more than 2,100 people during pro-Palestinian protests. And in New York City, where protests at Columbia University have been in the spotlight, dozens upon dozens of protesters have been arrested.

You have been warned as per City College to leave the campus. If you refuse to leave, you may be placed under arrest. There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I'm not going to wait until it's done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it. That's New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He says, quote, outside agitators infiltrated pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University. Here's Mayor Adams again at a press conference last week. Outside agitators were on their grounds training and really co-opting this movement.

Adams says these outside agitators are the reason why police have been present. New York City officials say nearly half of the 282 people arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on two campuses this past week are not currently affiliated with either school. But this narrative of outside agitators co-opting protests, it's actually not new. Across the nation, thousands of Americans are taking to the streets to voice their anguish over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Outside agitators, that was used in 2020 after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But police say small bands of so-called professional agitators are hijacking peaceful demonstrations. The phrase outside agitators was also used even further back during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Now shoot! Now shoot! after the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Even Martin Luther King Jr. was labeled as an outside agitator during the Civil Rights Movement because of his involvement in protests outside of his home state of Georgia. He wrote about this in his 1963 letter from Birmingham jail. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. King goes on to say, quote,

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. Consider this. The term outside agitator has been used throughout history. But who are these so-called outside agitators? And what purpose does it serve to label them in that way? From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Consider This from NPR. The term outside agitator has staying power. It has been used against protesters

throughout history, from the civil rights movement to the anti-Vietnam War protests, to now during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. It was also used to describe some of the people who protested the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri back in 2014. Justin Hansford is one of those people. He's also a law professor and director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University. I spoke with him about this outside agitator narrative. So I just want to start by defining what a so-called outside agitator is. Like when we hear people such as New York City Mayor Eric Adams

saying that outside agitators are the reason why there's such a heavy police presence, who is Adams talking about? Who are these outside agitators? The first thing I would say is it's not always clear who is being discussed. You know, probably when an outside agitator is being described, it's a bad person, right? It's not a person that is seen to be a legitimate part of the group of protesters. So in this case, probably not a student, not someone who legitimately shares the goals of the students. So, you know, they are illegitimate and there are people who are seen as nefariously trying to

rouse the students to create harm. And so they're seen as being manipulative. They have a number of negative characteristics and they're more sophisticated than the outsiders in the sense that they are infiltrating and causing this havoc. Yeah. And the thing is, this phrase, outside agitators, it's not brand new, right? Like, we've heard this phrase used to describe people at protests throughout history, as recently as the demonstrations against police brutality in 2020, during the Ferguson, Missouri protests in 2014, which I understand you participated in, right? And it was also a phrase that came up during the civil rights movement. Can you tell me more about that, about the evolution, the development of this phrase as it's popped up in history?

In all of those three examples that you used, the phrase represented people who had those characteristics. They were bad. They were more sophisticated in a lot of ways, at least in the view of the public than the actual protesters themselves. And there was a racial aspect to it as well in that in all of those situations, these outside agitators seem to be not black. In all of those situations, though, you see the same narrative unfolding. And of course, the goal of that is ultimately in the end to justify more aggressive policing and more aggressive intervention on the grounds that it's not really an issue of the actual, in those three cases, African-American civil rights protesters who needed to be controlled, which needed to control the motivations behind choosing to employ a phrase like outside agitators. When we hear that phrase, what do you think is the intent ultimately behind using that phrase? Well, choosing to employ a phrase like outside agitator

plays a political role in setting the stage for the use of more harsh force by the police, because from a political perspective, all of the other groups that we mentioned, whether civil rights protesters or student protesters speaking out against war, all of those groups have large constituencies that sympathize with them. So it becomes a political risk to be seen as cracking down really harshly on folks who are sympathetic. But if you can make it seem like the crackdown is really directed towards these nefarious outside agitators, it then goes over more smoothly politically. So I think at the end of the day, the use of these narratives to justify power, it's a core part of how politics works. And I think that's something a lot of folks may not have a natural understanding of. You know, this idea of mobilizing narratives to justify policy is something that has a long history in American politics. Well, Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement was

labeled as an outside agitator, right? Like, what was the purpose behind labeling him that way? Dr. King, as you know, during the Civil Rights Movement, marched in a number of locations throughout the South. That question about Dr. King really gets to this really strong point. How do you determine who is an insider for the purpose of labeling them an outside agitator? I guarantee you that most of the Black folks in Birmingham or Memphis did not see Dr. King as an outsider, who was part of the civil rights community, African-American preacher.

But that ability of the authorities to be the ones to determine the criteria of who's an outsider or an insider really gets to the farce of this phrase outside agitator, because I think history has shown that very few of the civil rights activists at that time saw Dr. King as an outside agitator coming into their community. You know, they had the right to determine who was an outsider or an insider, not the police, not the governor or the media. And that's something that we should keep in mind today as well. Well, how much truth is there to the idea that outside agitators, so-called outside agitators, are present at these protests that we're seeing unfold across college campuses

right now? Are they out there? There is some truth to the presence of outside agitation. Of course, it's not exactly the way it's being described. And I've spent some time at some of these camps. And what I've seen is that when outside agitation happens, it usually happens, in this case, from people who support the war in Gaza. Usually the outside agitation that takes place happens on the initiative of the political opponents of the protesters. So it's usually not a third party that does the outside agitation. It's usually a group that wants to

undermine the protests themselves, usually the protesters' opponents. So how should city and state leaders talk about this idea of other people being present at a protest that maybe are not sympathizing with the exact same message that is at the heart of the protest? How should officials talk about that idea without perpetuating the idea of the boogie man narrative? The way that I think officials should talk about it involves explaining that some of the opponents of the protesters are engaged in agitation. That would explain the fact that something is happening called a heckler's veto. This is something that's a term that we use to describe a situation where you know people are coming together to make their voice heard and then you have a essentially a heckler who comes and changes the nature

of the situation from peaceful or positive to antagonistic and then if it gets so antagonistic that there's risk of violence then the whole thing has to be broken up so that it would be a more accurate way to describe the situation to make it clear that these outside agitators are the political opponents of the protesters right now what is happening is you're you're painting them as this mysterious nefarious third party-party group that is out to foment violence. Number one, that's inaccurate. But number two, what that does, it undermines and delegitimizes the legitimate speech of the students.

And I think that's deeply unfair. It goes against our constitutional principles of free speech. That was Howard Law professor Justin Hansford. And just a reminder that you can enjoy the Consider This newsletter. We still help you break down a major story of the day, but you'll also get to know our producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. This episode was produced by Brianna Scott. It was edited by Courtney Dourning, and our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.