You can tell when the PolitiFact website is going to negotiate around the facts. On May 7, their top headline on the home page asked: “Are ‘outside agitators’ co-opting campus protests?”
This isn’t quite the right question. The media have presented these events as “student” protests, so if half the participants aren’t college students, how would they describe the non-students? PolitiFact writers Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu and Loreben Turquero offered this summary:
1. Police, city and university officials nationwide have blamed “outside agitators” for campus protests but have provided little evidence for their claims.
2. Law enforcement experts say police often consider “outside agitators” to be people who move from city to city and are paid to be agitators.
3. Historians say government and law officials commonly use the “outside…
