Thread by @WatTylerRising

One thing that’s important about stories like this is that it sheds further light on the claim that people from outside the Minneapolis area were traveling to the Floyd protests pretending to be BLM supporters. At the time, a lot of people, left and right, dismissed it.

https://twitter.com/zaleskiluke/status/1475203252920762371

The right's reasons for dismissing it are pretty clear, so I’m not going to spend time on that. But the left's dismissal is more complicated.

Historically speaking, the term "outside agitators" was code for rootless "Commies and Jews" intent on destroying America.

The rhetoric veers directly into replacement theory from the outset - the plot was to overthrow the "natural" racial order and destroy (white) America and its ideals. The "rootless" part specifically references the belief that Jews cannot assimilate into a cultural group.

This framing was used throughout Reconstruction, throughout the US and Europe in the first half of the 20th century, and also during the Civil Rights uprisings.

So, "outside agitators" has a long history of an anti-Semitic dog whistle that dismisses grassroots Black activism.

However, one of the arguments in @kathleen_belew's book Bring the War Home is that how WS groups conceived of themselves in relation to the state changed after the Civil Rights era and Vietnam. Before, these groups acted essentially as undeputized agents of the state.

By the mid-80s, this connection with the state was severed. The success of the Civil Rights movement, tho it did not go far enough, was still enough to cause these groups to stop seeing themselves as agents of the state order. The state and the new order was now their enemy.

This is one reason I take Bannon referring to himself as a Leninist seriously. While to an extent, he was trolling both the left and libs by that framing, it does offer an important insight to how these groups see themselves in their goals in relation to historical actors.

I'm not saying Bannon is inspired a deep understanding of the complete canon ofLeninist philosophy. For him, Lenin = international insurrectionist and the destruction of the state and its reconstruction into a new social order.

For Bannon, the new order is one that is more directly married to white supremacy than past world orders, with the more inclusionary definitions of whiteness that we have today. Creating a new social order requires different tactics than defending an existing one.

Important here is Bannon's connection with conspiracy theory driven media like Alex Jones is important, particularly Jones's focus on declaring Sandy Hook to be a false flag and accusing families of being paid actors. False flags play an increasing role in RW discourse.

The goal of supposed false flags is always some kind of social engineering strategy which quickly veer off into anti-Semitic and anti-Blackness. However, this has made false flags seen as legitimate strategies of RW extremists. The point is two fold.

1) like with most RW propaganda, it is designed to make people question their very perceptions of reality and truth. 2) to exacerbate tensions between a) the existing social order and b) the other movement to change the current social order into something more egalitarian.

And so, we've seen and will see more of members of some of these groups, especially Boogs (though it won’t be limited to them), traveling to protests to create their own false flag events, hoping to further destabilize and increase possibilities for violent confrontations.

These ARE outside agitators and need to be understood as such, and they are also aware of the dog whistles inherent in that phrase. For liberals, this means being very specific about suspicions and not leave it up to people imaginations. Don’t create more "both sides" situations.

For the left, I think this means being aware that the State is dealing with two different social movements opposing it, with one being to ensure that the other movement erupts into as much violence and destruction as possible.

Idk what this looks like tactically and would defer to people with this experience. I'm just trying to name what I see.