Thread by @JuddLegum

1. Democratic and Republican officials are blaming uprisings across the country on "outside agitators"

It is a gross oversimplification with an ugly racial history

It has been used repeatedly to marginalize grievances and to ignore systemic racism.

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2. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter (D) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) all blamed the violence in their state on outsiders.

The arrest records proved them wrong.

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3. In 1965, notoriously racist Alabama sheriff Jim Clark blamed the unrest in Selma on "outsiders" like MLK Jr.

He said that the "local people" would "settle down" once King and other outsiders left.

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4. King himself broke down the perniciousness of the outsider trope in his letter from Birmingham jail: "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea."

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6. King believed in non-violence, but also warned against dismissing the underlying cause of riots.

"Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots," King said in a 1967 speech

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7. In NYC, Mayor Bill DeBlasio (D) embraced the "outside agitator" trope.

He then went on to excuse police officers who plowed into a crowd of protesters w/their vehicle.

These things are not unrelated.

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8. Trump, predictably, has embraced the outside agitator trope and used it to justify his calls for using "the unlimited power of our Military" against Americans

popular.info/p/the-outside-…