West Point grad who wrote 'Communism will Win' under military cap is now a Ph.D. candidate at UT Austin

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-09-23 15:19:29 | Updated at 2024-09-30 13:32:29 6 days ago
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West Point grad who wrote 'Communism will Win' under military cap is now a Ph.D. candidate at UT Austin
Campus Reform ^ | 09/19/2024 | Emma Dayton

Posted on 09/23/2024 7:55:48 AM PDT by DFG

A West Point graduate who first made headlines for his “Communism will win” message written in his uniform cap is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) studying “Modern Arab intellectual history.”

In 2017, Spenser Rapone displayed various Marxist messages, such as wearing a Che Guevara shirt beneath his official West Point uniform and posting “#VeteransForKaepernick” on social media.

According to UT’s website, Rapone entered the Ph.D. program in 2020. His university biography cites his interests as “decolonization, revolution, metaphysics, [and] consciousness,” with his research topics focusing on “question of the self, soul, and spirit in modern Arab thought.”

“Specifically, he engages with the intellectual contributions of the Ba’th Party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and other anticolonial nationalist formations that sought to construct a new order and bring about a liberated life and authentic existence in the Arab World,” his biography reads.

Two investigations were launched after Rapone’s communist sentiments were exposed: one by his unit of assignment, the 10th Mountain Division, and another to examine United States Military Academy policies regarding “his suitability for graduation and commissioning.”

Rapone also made headlines in 2018, when he left the U.S. Army under other-than-honorable discharge after a full investigation. As reported by The Associated Press, Rapone resigned due to “conduct unbecoming of an officer” and admittedly advocated online for a socialist revolution.

“I consider myself a revolutionary socialist,” Rapone told The Associated Press at the time. “I would encourage all soldiers who have a conscience to lay down their arms and join me and so many others who are willing to stop serving the agents of imperialism and join us in a revolutionary movement.”

(Excerpt) Read more at campusreform.org ...


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: austin; rapone; socialist; texas; utaustin; westpoint
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1 posted on 09/23/2024 7:55:48 AM PDT by DFG


To: DFG

Arab and intellectual in the same sentence?


2 posted on 09/23/2024 7:59:51 AM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Finish the damned WALL! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH! )


To: JimRed

They can’t take away his diploma. He won.


3 posted on 09/23/2024 8:03:10 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET


To: DFG

Wonder who’s paying his bills?

Always interesting to find out who’s money a socialist is spending. It is rarely their own.


4 posted on 09/23/2024 8:04:18 AM PDT by larrytown (A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Then they graduate...)


To: DIRTYSECRET

Wonder if they considered requiring him to pay back tuition to USMA.


5 posted on 09/23/2024 8:04:27 AM PDT by Fury (I )


To: DFG

He may yet be right. And no doubt he’s as smug and self-righteous as he was back the


6 posted on 09/23/2024 8:04:28 AM PDT by j.havenfarm (23 years on Free Republic, 12/10/23! More than 8,000 replies and still not shutting up!)


To: DFG

He will do well in the revolution. But after the revolution he will cross someone higher up and end up facing a wall in a tiled cellar.



To: Fury

*Wonder if they considered requiring him to pay back tuition to USMA.*

Yeah right.


8 posted on 09/23/2024 8:05:30 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET


To: DFG

Dirty, little, insignificant, attention whore.


9 posted on 09/23/2024 8:05:56 AM PDT by HYPOCRACY (Brandon's pronouns: Xi/Hur)


To: JimRed

I can’t figure out why this smartass went to West Point in the first place.


10 posted on 09/23/2024 8:06:16 AM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")


To: DFG

Meets every single point in the definition of “TREASON”.

Why is this guy still breathing US air?


11 posted on 09/23/2024 8:06:53 AM PDT by Dead Corpse (A Psalm in napalm...)


To: GOPJ; poconopundit; Jane Long; Diana in Wisconsin; Grampa Dave; Godzilla; Vaduz; null and void; ...

In 2017, Spenser Rapone displayed various Marxist messages, such as wearing a Che Guevara shirt beneath his official West Point uniform and tweeting “#VeteransForKaepernick,” is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) studying “Modern Arab intellectual history.”



Contact The University of Texas at Austin
web site https://www.utexas.edu
General Information Main Building (MAI)
110 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712
Tele 512-471-3434
Campus Admissions Welcome Center 512-475-7399

12 posted on 09/23/2024 8:07:06 AM PDT by Liz (Faith is believing what you cannot see; its reward is to see what you believe. St Augustine)


To: DFG


13 posted on 09/23/2024 8:10:42 AM PDT by Delta 21 (If anyone is treasonous, it is those who call me such.)


To: Jamestown1630

I can’t figure out why this smartass went to West Point in the first place.

"My task was to organize defeat, so as to hasten the onset of revolution. I enlisted under the name of Petrov. The party looked to the peasant conscript soldiers - many of whom were wearing their first real pair of boots. When the boots had worn out, they'd be ready to listen. When the time came, I was able to take three whole battalions out of the front lines with me - the best day's work I ever did."

14 posted on 09/23/2024 8:11:22 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)


To: DFG

How is this not “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”?


15 posted on 09/23/2024 8:11:55 AM PDT by bigbob


To: DFG

His university biography cites his interests as “decolonization, revolution, metaphysics, [and] consciousness,” with his research topics focusing on “question of the self, soul, and spirit..

A lost soul, in need of repentant salvific faith in the risen Lord Jesus, as does a feminist wordcrafter in wokeducation who he would likely find some kniship with, warring against what God ordained, teaching that:

"...intersections with race, ethnicity, coloniality, class and ability, the sex/gender system of oppression has long served as a taxonomizing apparatus. And yet, the literary, in league with anticolonial, civil rights and LGBTQ social movements,...animates the liberatory potential of imagining embodied relations otherwise... representations of gender and sexuality can leverage critiques against normativity...Taking our transnational cue from subjugated knowledges and intersectional epistemologies, we’ll constellate the diverging genealogies and methodologies...
Against the traffic of binary opposition, we’ll index the possibilities of intimacy and performativity... As a class collective, our aim is to read and reread as well as write and rewrite texts that interrogate and complicate how gender and sexuality, as contested sites of pleasure and pain, are embodied and experienced." This counts toward the methods requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Open only to first-year and sophomore students.

Author is Brianna Thompson, who teaches courses in American women’s literature, queer theory and utopias/Afrofuturism at Kenyon college (founded by Episcopal Bishop in 1824). Course is Reading and Writing Gender and Sexuality ENGL 214, https://www.kenyon.edu/academics/departments-and-majors/english/academic-program-requirements/courses-in-english/

Her college was founded in 1824 by Episcopal Bishop Philander Chase, who now has a potential candidate ("Brianna Thompson") for the office of implementation of WOKE policies under the auspices of a Council of Transexuality:

16 posted on 09/23/2024 8:13:02 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)


To: DFG

Back in the early 70s I had a college class dealing with the limits of Gov’t power. The professor came in, maybe 5’2” and shaped like the Pillbury doughboy.

He said he felt that he should tell the class that he was a Socialist and that communism would defeat capitalism. He appeared to be eager for outraged response, ready to do battle.

Nobody said anything. The girls were filing their nails, looking bored. Guys were doodling in their notebooks.

I was embarrassed for the little guy. I felt like I should jump up and shout that he was a communist traitor or some such, at least give him a little recognition as a radical.

The class ended up being excellent. He didn’t let his political views influence the content, he was a good teacher. He also had the good sense to give me an A on the final when I argued unlimited Gov’t power would lead to totalitarianism and unlimited corruption.



To: Jamestown1630

IIRC: Spenser Rapone enlisted in the Army, joined one of the Ranger battalions, saw at least one combat tour in Afghanistan(?), graduated Ranger school, and THEN applied to USMA before he turned 22. Hard to say when he flipped to the dark side. But I remember that even in those days you could find pictures of cadets giving “black power” salute (or whatever a raised fist is these days) in photos in their parade uniforms.


18 posted on 09/23/2024 8:17:19 AM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)

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