Exactly what is an "outside agitator"?

[bluestateguy]

Because last I checked we all lived in the same country. Is someone who lives in St. Louis, but not Ferguson, an outside agitator? Or just the next town over from Ferguson? Or what is someone lives in the StL metro area, technically in Illinois? Is that person an outside agitator?

Or is someone who is an American citizen,living under the same Constitution, living hundred of miles from Ferguson also an outside agitator?

[merrily]

1. As best as I have been able to discern, an "outside agitator"

is anyone who has not lived in the place in question for a while and who is annoying the person or persons using the term "outside agitator."

If you come into town on "their" side, no one says anything about "outside agitators."

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. It can mean anything form people form outside the area.

It is a phrase that will be used to give cover to police who react with violence because they were attacked by "outside agitator's and forced to protect themselves and property."

[Scuba]

3. Means liberal protester.

[el_bryanto]

4. It's a way to paper over differences in a community

People don't want to think that people living in the same town are being systematically mistreated or treated as second class citizens. In order to avoid confronting that truth, they have to believe that local blacks or other minorities are generally happy with what is going on. This pleasant fiction lets them pretend that everything is fine.

But then, some event threatens to shatter this pleasant illusion. Whatever to do? You certainly don't want to confront the possibility that you are wrong and you really are an asshole treating your neighbors like crap. So to avoid that you pretend that your local blacks (or other minorities) are happy as clams, and it's just outside agitators who have come into create the problem.

See also feminist - in some ways the term feminist and outside agitator fulfill the same societal role- they enable men to believe that only outside women are unhappy with how things are.

Bryant

[hootinholler]

5. In my current state of brain death I kept reading this as outside alligator

Then wondering, aren't they all outside?

[2naSalit]

6. :)

Well of course they are, except for the ones in the zoo.