Term "Outside Agitators" Is Used To Demonize Protests

Anytime the media or politicians are discussing the protests against the Gaza War, you will likely hear the term "outside agitators". That is not surprising. It's a term that police and politicians (and sadly, too many in the media) have long used to demonize and de-legitimize protests. 

Why is it so bad for outsiders to join a protest? Don't they also have a right to an opinion in a free society?

Consider the following part of a posting at PolitiFact:

The "outside agitator" term has often been attached to large historical movements.

"It was used as sort of a phrase that would link protesters, no matter how peaceful they were, to Communists and other infiltrators who were causing disruption," said Timothy Zick, William & Mary law professor and author of "Managed Dissent: The Law of Public Protest."

Zick said the term is used by those seeking to discredit protests by casting doubt on the protesters’ sincerity. . . .

"The idea behind the concept of the outside agitator is that dissent can never be coming from the people who are expressing that dissent," said Angus Johnston, historian of student activism and teacher at Hostos Community College in New York City. "There always has to be a shadowy figure behind them.". . .

Some experts have been quick to note the main goal of a protest is to get others to join in. 

"If you’re a protester who’s planned it you want all outsiders to join you," said Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard Law School. "That's the whole point. So that’s why this is such a silly concept.". . .

The narrative of "outside agitators" leading demonstrations has been pervasive in the history of American protests, going all the way back to the Civil Rights era.

"Segregationists in the South claimed that the protests there were the result of so-called outside agitators, indicating that of course the local population wasn't objecting to racial segregation, which wasn't true in all respects," Zick said. "People use (the term) to discredit protest to indicate that there's something not genuine about the objections people are making."

Martin Luther King Jr. was sometimes branded an outside agitator by local and state officials for his travels to cities and towns to join marches against racial segregation. King rejected this label in his now famous 1963 "Letter From Birmingham Jail," 

"I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham," King wrote. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

But the outside agitator narrative is a tried and tested police tactic, Hansford said. "You have to make their protesters bad before you can expect the public to accept a really violent action against them," said Hansford, who was involved in the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown. 

"When I was doing Black Lives Matter protest, we never said we wanted our protest to be something that only Blacks participated in," Hansford said. "It's an imposition of a boundary trying to pigeonhole the protesters in terms of their identity and determine for them who's an outsider to them and who’s an insider to them."