Outside agitator: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:31, 7 March 2025

Revision as of 04:42, 11 March 2025

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'''Outside agitator''' is a term that has been used to discount political unrest as being driven by outsiders, rather than by internal discontent. The term was popularized during the early stages of the [[Civil Rights Movement]] in the United States, when Southern authorities discounted African-American protests as being driven by Northern white radicals, rather than being legitimate expressions of grievances.<ref name="Milstein2015">{{cite book |author=[[Cindy Milstein]] |title=Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uhbSCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT113 |date=October 21, 2015 |publisher=AK Press |isbn=978-1-84935-232-1 |pages=113–}}</ref><ref name="Tischauser1998">{{cite book |author=Leslie Vincent Tischauser |title=Black/white Relations in American History: An Annotated Bibliography |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7k0cmLCH_mgC&pg=PA93 |year=1998 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |isbn=978-0-8108-3389-0 |pages=93–}}</ref>

[[Martin Luther King Jr.]] criticized the term in [[Letter from Birmingham Jail]], citing it as a phrase designed to dismiss [[civil disobedience]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=King, Jr. |first=Martin Luther |date=16 April 1963 |title=Letter from a Birmingham Jail |url=https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html |access-date=2025-02-22 |website= |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania]] African Studies Center}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=King, Jr. |first=Martin Luther |date=16 April 1963 |title=Letter from a Birmingham Jail |url=https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html |access-date=2025-02-22 |website= |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania]] African Studies Center}}</ref>

The term gained further prominence during the [[George Floyd protests]], with local officials in Minneapolis claiming that most protesters were not from the city, despite jail records and social media indicating otherwise.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Officials blame 'out-of-state' agitators but those at the heart of protests are homegrown |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/05/31/george-floyd-protest-agitators-mostly-homegrown-not-outsiders/5300362002/ |author1=[[Brett Murphy]] |author2=Josh Salman |author3=Dak Le |date=May 31, 2020 |newspaper=USA Today |language=en-US |access-date=2020-06-02}}</ref> The term was also used during the [[Ferguson unrest]] in 2014.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2020-06-10 |title=Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator' |url=https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873592665/unmasking-the-outside-agitator |access-date=2021-03-26 |publisher=[[NPR]] |language=en}}</ref>