Former Commie Lieutenant Spenser Rapone Shows the Radical-to-Academic Ratline Is Still in Operation

(Courtesy of Spenser Rapone via AP)

A short four years ago, we had one of those stories that foreshadowed the deep and pervasive rot inside the US military that has since played out in a more dynamic form with US destroyers playing bumper cars in the Western Pacific, a Navy admiral countermanding instructions given by the President of the United States, a Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman musing on how to manage his “white rage” before a Congressional committee, and, today, a re-enactment of Saigon 1975 in Kabul. The story was of a vocally communist cadet at West Point protected by the civilian faculty and the military leadership. How vocal was he?

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AP/Reuters Feed Library
AP/Reuters Feed Library

See my coverage of Tovarisch Rapone

This Army Officer Acted Like a Hipster Douche and the Army Is Not Happy

Why Is the Washington Examiner Defending the Commie West Point Grad?

Who Was Protecting the Commie West Point Graduate And Why?

Is West Point Beginning a Whitewash of the Commie Lieutenant Scandal?

Eventually, enough heat was directed upon the Army’s coddling of Rapone that it was shamed into doing the right thing, though for the wrong reasons. As a result, Rapone was removed from a troop leading position and eventually administratively discharged. READ: The Saga of the Commie Lieutenant Comes to an End.

As so often in these cases, people who should end up living in cardboard boxes and dumpster-diving for food are saved and promoted by their fellow travelers on the left.

Yes, Spenser “with an s” Rapone is now a Ph.D. candidate at that hotbed of communism, University of Texas-Austin. He is also a teaching assistant, which gives him a platform to inflict his twisted worldview upon students who might think that if they don’t go along, their grades could suffer. You can read his bio here or see his detailed curriculum vitae here. I’d just note that those links are to the UTA public site and are not the products of doxxing, hacking, or anything more sophisticated than using the UTA website’s “search” function.

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This shoving of radicals, even violent ones, into academia has become a fashion in the US. Bill Ayers, a Weather Underground commissar in the late-60s and early-70s, was involved in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters (1970), the United States Capitol building (1971), and the Pentagon (1972), he never spent a day in prison. He never had media mouthbreathers calling him an insurrectionist and seditionist, even though that is exactly what he professed to be. Instead, he slid effortlessly from a life of violence to a career as a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. The only good thing you can say about him is that, unlike Jill Biden, he doesn’t demand to be called “doctor.”

Ayers married a fellow terrorist, Bernadine Dohrn. Dohrn also was a leader in the Weather Underground. She was an organizer in the “Days of Rage” riots surrounding the 1968 Democrat convention in Chicago. She has been convicted of aggravated battery, bail jumping, and contempt of court for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating a robbery and murder pulled off by her associates. She has served seven months in jail. When released, even though she was not a member of the Illinois Bar, she was hired by a major law firm based on family connections and eventually ended up as a law professor at Northwestern University.

They were a “power couple” in Illinois Democrat politics and achieved everlasting fame as the mentors of Barrack Hussein Obama.

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Next up, we have Kathy Boudin. She was convicted of felony murder in the famous Brink’s armored car robbery in 1981 that left two New York police officers and a Brink’s guard dead and another Brink’s guard and two more police officers hospitalized. She was released on parole in 2003, earned her Ed. D., as far as I know, she doesn’t demand to be called doctor either and joined the faculty of the Columbia University school of social work, and she is a “scholar in residence” at Columbia Law. As an aside, she gave custody of her son, Chesa, to the Ayers who raised him. He is now the San Francisco, CA, district attorney. He’s the guy to thank for legalizing shoplifting and having a map marking instances of public defecation created for his city.

Another Weather Underground member, Susan Rosenberg, was sentenced to 58-years in 1985 for possession of explosives–she was indicted for her role in the 1983 bombings of the US Capitol, the National War College in 1983, and the New York Patrolmens’ Benevolent Association in 1985.

Bill Clinton commuted her sentence in 2001, and she immediately went to work teaching literature at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. When public outcry forced that school to punt her, she was offered a position by Hamilton University. Public outcry forced her from that position also. But the fact that a dangerous and violent felon was offered a cushy gig by academia is telling.

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Yet another Weather Underground radical, Howard Machtinger, has been tied to the 1970 bombing of a San Francisco police station that left one officer dead and one blinded. Machtinger avoided any jail time and retired as a professor of education from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Ericka Huggins, a former Black Panther Party leader who was tried for the torture-murder of a man suspected of being a police informant (the jury deadlocked, and the prosecution did not retry the case), is Professor of Sociology at Laney College in Oakland and Berkeley City College.

Eleanor Raskin spent 11 years on the run for her role in an own-goal by the Weather Underground in 1970–the townhouse they were using to manufacture bombs blew up and killed three of the animals. She was eventually caught, but the charges were dropped. She teaches at Albany Law School and is a New York State administrative law judge. Read that again slowly.

Mark Rudd was involved in the same explosion as Raskin. He spent seven years on the run, served about a year in jail, and joined Central New Mexico Community College faculty.

No list could be complete without Angela Davis. Davis purchased the weapons used in the bloody shootout in the Marin County, CA, courthouse in 1970. She was indicted, became an international cause célèbre, especially in the Eastern Bloc nations. and was acquitted. She landed as a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

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Heaven only knows how many anti-American radicals who do not have a violent past have been shepherded into guaranteed lifetime sinecures in academia.

I think it is safe to say that we will see more of Gospodin Rapone in the future. He’ll end up in a tenure track position at a major university. Who knows, one day he may even teach “decolonization” to the Defense Department?

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