Who is an “Outside Agitator”?

[TBF]

Who is an “Outside Agitator”?

by Richard Seymour
The media bashing of “outside agitators” in Ferguson plays into the hands of the Right.

In Ferguson, Missouri, there are “outside agitators.” On this, the reactionaries and liberals agree.

Of course, there are all sorts of racialized rumors flying around in the guise of reporting about what is taking place in Ferguson. We are well used to this — we remember Hurricane Katrina. There will be time to properly sift through and catalog all that. For now, I simply want to ask a quick question: what is an “outside agitator?”

The metaphor of exteriority, of being outside, has two important connotations. First, one is transgressing the spatial ordering of the state. States constitute social spaces like districts, wards, and counties — a process that is historically far from racially innocent in the US.

Second, is that one’s political being is “outside,” and thus traitorous and disloyal. It is not just that one traveled from one city to another — that’s fine, provided the political agenda one brings is benign for the system — but that one brought ideas that are not only not native to the destination, but actually foreign to the nation, the free world, civilization itself.

Understandably, then, this language is common in situations of high racial tension. The “outside agitator” line reeks of good old boy vigilantism, the commingling of race-baiting and red-baiting that was typical of Southern counterrevolution in the dying days of Jim Crow. Because racial situations unfold in heavily structured political spaces in which the definitions and boundaries of the “local” serve existing forms of dominance ...

More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/who-is-an-outside-agitator/

Richard Seymour's Blog (Lenin's Tomb): http://www.leninology.co.uk/

[2banon]

1. I think the question might be

What does "Liberal" even mean in current times?

The Political Spectrum here is skewed so far to the Right, that to be a "Liberal" is nearly unrecognizable in the context of socio-economic and political terms. 40 years ago, I would never have been considered as a hard core "leftists". By today's standards I'm accused of being a Marxists (as if that were an insult, but definitely intended to be an insult) by people who've never even read Marx, by folks who claim to be "Liberals".

I'm not surprised that today's "Liberals" would adopt the Right Wing Pro-Authoritarian meme of "outside agitators". That's just who/what they are now. Pro-Authoritarian, Racists. Misogynists Right Wingers.

Edit to add: wrapped up in the blanket of White and Class Privilege.