Op-ed by A.D. Nachalo
The most reactionary of the intellectual prostitutes for the ruling class, who are sometimes called “journalists” have taken up the slogan of “outside agitators” raised by the politicians and police to denounce the intensity of the student protest movement. Like most reactionary slogans, it has a purpose and history.
The concept is simple: the students being brutalized on the pages and in the videos of the international news monopolies have been misled and manipulated by forces unknown, and these shadow agents do not belong there and come from “outside.” The same was said of the Black Civil rights struggles in the south; it was argued by the police that Black people are naturally submissive and complacent, and that their uprisings were the fault of the Yankee, the Jew, the Communist and, in a word, the outside agitator.
The police and their lackeys in the media are not asking whether or not other New Yorkers can be considered “outsiders” when they enter Columbia’s campus as non-students; Columbia is not an island, but a part of one. For that matter, how can anyone be an outside agitator in regards to college campuses which primarily attract the attendance of youth from around the world? How and why does one’s origin place one outside of an issue one take sides in? The only logical, rational criteria for an outside agitator would be that of infiltrators, Zionists or police agents who enter the protest movement under false pretext to accomplish certain political results. As for the movement, its diversity of ideas, and the history of Palestinian solidarity in the US, activists in support of the cause do not qualify as outsiders, even if they drive thousands of miles to attend a protest and don’t know anyone there—for the fact that they too, regardless of where they come from, exist within the broad and global solidarity movement.
The claim of outside agitators is not the currency of only the police and other racists in history, but a coin in the pocket of those following identity politics as well. These sorts of liberals love to divide the protest movement into “violent” and “non-violent,” “allies” and “affected persons,” etc., things which do not enrich unity but rather undermine real solidarity.
The criterion provided by the NYC Deputy Police Commissioner is that of people “unaffiliated with Columbia,” that is to say the millions of people who live within two miles of the university are to be deemed outsiders—as if Columbia is not part of the city. The divisive strategies of the police and media do not stand up to much scrutiny.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams—the former police commissioner—put it like this: “I know that there are those who are attempting to say, ‘Well, the majority of the people have been students.’ You don’t have to be the majority to influence and co-opt an operation. That’s what this is about.”
According to Adams, the students who are paying the most money for the “best” education capitalism has to offer are simultaneously unable to develop their own views and have been presumably brainwashed by these dangerous non-students. Reactionaries like Adams cannot figure out the fact that it is not spooks and shadows that influence student militancy, but rather the actions of the genocidal Zionists, the reactionary administration, and the police themselves—no outside agitators needed!
In any struggle there will be the relatively advanced, the relatively intermediate, and the relatively backward. Adam’s tactic is to divide the relatively advanced from the rest, isolate them as fools duped into “extremism,” and then of course to legitimize the violence used to suppress their democratic rights.
“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,” the Mayor says. Indeed, there is a movement to radicalize not only young people but the people more broadly, and police batons do more to accomplish this than pages and pages of The Worker or similar radical newspapers! We, the ‘outside agitators,’ only analyze it in a manner which seeks to be as radical as reality itself.
Stupidly, the current NYC Police Commissioner held up a chain and proclaimed that it was proof of the outside agitators. It did not take long for even the monopoly media to point out that this exact type of chain and lock are sold to students on campus at a discount. If the Police Commissioner was even slightly honest he would realize that nothing on two wheels lasts on the city streets unless it has a similar chain and lock, making it exactly the type of thing a student bring to campus. Furthermore, if the organizers of the occupation, like most people, have access to search engines, they could easily figure out the best chain for the job and quickly obtain it, and this would not indicate some “professional” hiding in the shadows.
Days after the most reactionary journalists took the police narrative at face value as fact, even the monopoly medias have begun to mock the police and their claims, which are just too farcical to continue along with; there are some positions which are too compromising even for the yellow journalists.
Let us hope, and if we pray, then let us do that too, that there will arrive among our struggles these noble figures with great skills needed to push the struggle further than the bounds acceptable to the current order of injustice. Please let the outside agitators, the professional activists, the influential militant arrive and begin their enthusiastic and necessary work—we are waiting! And when they come, trained not outside but from among our best in these very struggles today, let us embrace them warmly and let us recognize them as professional revolutionaries!
If you manage to stay actively fighting for the freedom of the oppressed for long enough, then you too, comrade, will earn the pejorative of “outside agitator.” Wear it proudly then, because to be attacked by the enemy is a very good thing and you have taken up your post in history well.
The forces of repression and the enemies of democracy have only begun seeing what is a maturation of the movement, its steps in organizational skill, and its increasing professionalism. They are completely correct to fear this hysterically, because it will mean the end of them—some day.
The Worker exists to bring the struggle for unity, organization, and ideological clarity to workers’ struggles, internationalism, and anti-imperialism. We exist strategically for the realization and fulfillment of the projected fears of the enemy, as the grave diggers their system has produced. If you would like to become an outside agitator, contact The Worker to learn how you can get involved.
