Who were the 'outsiders' at Columbia University's Hamilton Hall?

[Sympthsical]

9. People need to decide if they want this outsider narrative or not

It's incredibly weird. At first, the argument was that all the bad things that happened at these protests was outsiders. The students would never. And here's the thing - I half buy it. I think a lot of these students themselves are just your standard boring Marxist sociology majors for the most part. They don't need help to say stupid things about decolonization and Zionism - there are plenty of professors who teach them that. Hell, a bunch of them wrote letters and showed up. So it's not like we're starved for evidence here.

However, there are "professional protesters" who will show up wherever there's potential for chaos. Living in the Bay Area, you can find protesters in their 40s and 50s who clearly have not learned or grown in the intervening 30 years and are still shouting the same old slogans. If there's a gathering, there is non-zero chance you'll discover that it's one of these assholes most eager to start throwing the bricks. It's a kind of anarchist, burn-it-all-down, boo to the System tedium. That you expect in much, much younger people, but hey, some people just get emotionally stuck in adolescence. Nothing to be done for it.

I absolutely believe these types showed up. They always show up. It's their Christmas.

But now that the police are saying, "Yeah, there were outsiders here," people are disbelieving, calling it conspiracy, and argue the police are trying to paint things in a bad light by noting the outsiders?

Which is it? Were outsiders responsible for and encouraging the bad behavior or were there few outsiders and it's all a police propaganda plot?

Of course the obvious is obvious. There was bad behavior by both students and outsiders at some of these protests - they worked together because they had aligned interests. I keep hearing the "We Are Hamas!" and "Globalize the Intifada!" and "Hooray for October 7th!" people were all outsiders. Which no one thought to get rid of at any point for . . . reasons. But now, no, that had no effect on anything at all, and why are the police saying that?

Pick. Your. Lane.

But that's just, you know, common sense. And that shit's pretty much outlawed nowadays.