Radicalism In The Ranks
June 21, 2018 9:19 AM   Subscribe

“On Monday, Task & Purpose reported that Army 2nd Lt. Spenser Rapone was slapped with an other-than-honorable discharge (and potentially $300,000 in West Point tuition repayments) after a photo went viral last September of him as a West Point cadet with the words “Communism Will Win” written in his cover.” Why Did The Military Keep A Neo-Nazi Marine But Boot That ‘Commie Cadet’? (Task And Purpose) The ‘Commie Cadet’, Spenser Rapone, in his own words “My actions overseas did not help or protect anybody. I felt like I was little more than a bully, surrounded by the most well-armed and technologically advanced military in history, in one of the poorest countries in the world.” (Interview with Rapone on the leftist veteran podcast What Hell Of A Way To Die) While The “Neo -Nazi Marine”, Vasillios Pistolis , at the Unite The Right Rally in Charolettville is likely to be pushed out, he’s only one of many veterans found to be active in or training with white nationalist or Neo-Nazi groups.
posted by The Whelk (24 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
Sentiments such as Rapone's are nothing new in military members current and former, but being something of a clown when professing such sentiments doesn't seem like it is a great recipe for continued involvement there.
posted by Typhoon Jim at 9:34 AM on June 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


This pattern plays out all over the world, from what I've seen. And, with apologies for being glib, the reason for this is also universal: racist nationalists are easy to control, whereas intellectual dissidents present a geniune threat to power.

I hope the sentiment Rapone expresses in the second link isn't as rare as it seems these days.
posted by Alex404 at 9:37 AM on June 21, 2018 [14 favorites]


"You can’t be a communist without calling for the violent overthrow of the American government"

what now?
posted by LiteOpera at 9:38 AM on June 21, 2018 [15 favorites]


This article is weirdly missing a lot of context. Like, what were the actual charges for Rapone? I am intimately familiar with the anti-war active duty soldier crowd, there are a LOT of communists, people do not get OTH’d for being a communist. This is not a thing that happens.

WaPo has a few more details, and says:
that he was reprimanded for conduct unbecoming an officer, and an investigation concluded that he advocated for a socialist revolution while insulting senior military officials.
So, some context: all officers need to be able to possess at least a secret clearance. One of the things that bars you from a secret clearance is “advocating the violent overthrow of the US”, like, you can advocate the US experience thorough governmental change through the voting process with no problem, but if you hope people do it with violence, it’s a no-go. Basically, you can be a communist, just not a revolutionary communist.

You also, as an officer, are not allowed to make contemptuous statements towards officers and officials of the US, and you’re not allowed to publicly disgrace the uniform. So there’s like 3 charges there that could be brought up to court martial. He received an administrative separation for misconduct, which is something that can only be done in the first 18 months - which is why the other guy couldn’t receive one. It is much easier to remove someone in the first 18 months of their military service than afterwards.
posted by corb at 9:41 AM on June 21, 2018 [33 favorites]


Also, Pistiolis /is/ being pushed out, and the military has no control over veterans unless they are retirees. Like, as a retiree, I can still be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but people who did four years and then got out cannot be, because they’re not subject to the code anymore.
posted by corb at 9:44 AM on June 21, 2018 [11 favorites]


If you're drawing any benefit from your military service (retirement pay, disability pay, GI bill), you technically can be called to account by the UCMJ, though in practice this rarely happens. Part of it is that most of the articles refer to actions that only are unregulation within a military unit (insulting senior officers). The other part is that it would be somewhat too much if military courts went after now civilian veterans years after they left the service.

Here are my feelings about the situation:

I'm a military veteran that works now as a DoD civilian. I am a (democratic) socialist, though I didn't identify as such when I was in the service (I was more of a liberal, a progressive, or maybe a social democrat then), but I knew people who did and to no great affect, though I suspect they took more flack for their political beliefs than should have been the case. Revolutionary socialism, communism, or anarchism would be a problem because you're pledging to overthrow the government you're sworn to uphold, which means your word is either paradoxical or just not worth anything.

I work at West Point now and so Rapone was very much on people's minds. The Superintendent (think a college president but a three-star general) readily admitted he got dozens of calls from members of congress when the pictures and statements surfaced, so there was a desire to deal with a very public situation. Now, from everything I can gather, Rapone wanted this to happen (public discharge to make a point), because if he didn't, he wouldn't have been just unwise, but colossally stupid. Since I never taught him, I can only surmise, but I believe that he deliberately and intentionally provoked everything that happened.

White supremacy is baked into society and so it manifests in the military as well. Dangerously, violent racists are inured to a military life (fascists gonna fash). While white supremacism is antithetical to our current military composition and ethos, there are probably many who turn a blind eye thinking an iron cross tattoo is youthful idiocy or a slur is a lapse in judgment not understanding these people are very purposeful. On the plus side, the military is becoming browner and more female, so while old crusts complain about the current military, these are whines from those who know they are in a culture battle that they are losing. No reason for us to stop until the last nazi is removed from government service, but still, we go onward.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 10:30 AM on June 21, 2018 [32 favorites]


corb, his OTH discharge was outside of 18 months, so it's not that. He had several years of prior Enlisted time, plus his Cadet time (which at the Academy is AD), plus roughly two more years since his Commissioning. From what I've been able to gather, they had just enough juice for the misconduct charge, and he likely knew (plus if he didn't counsel would have told him) that a court martial would have reamed him because of the photos and his other public statements, so they offered OTH if he was willing to resign and he took it. OTH is still significant, though, because it wipes out any claims to veteran's benefits (except service-connected disability already earned) he may have otherwise gotten, especially since he had a prior Honorable discharge from his Enlisted time.
posted by mystyk at 10:34 AM on June 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


I thought openly repping even boreass Republican or Democrat was forbidden, never mind any of this totalitarian edgelord foolery?
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 10:43 AM on June 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I thought openly repping even boreass Republican or Democrat was forbidden, never mind any of this totalitarian edgelord foolery?

You're not supposed to appear at political rallies or other events in uniform, or otherwise comport yourself in a way that appears to lend the color of official approval to partisan actions or positions. (Just another norm annihilated in these years of active-duty general officers on the White House staff, speaking ex cathedra in all kinds of distinctly and offensively partisan ways.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:27 AM on June 21, 2018 [14 favorites]


Listening to the Hell of a Way To Die podcast now, and I really appreciate the depth of his thinking on the subject, and the perspectives of the two (active duty) podcasters as well.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:04 PM on June 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


White supremacy is baked into society and so it manifests in the military as well.

Don't you have the arrow of causality backwards? Society certainly contains and condones white supremacy, but in the military the culture and leadership come from the top, and should take responsibility on that basis.
posted by rhizome at 1:20 PM on June 21, 2018


If you're drawing any benefit from your military service (retirement pay, disability pay, GI bill), you technically can be called to account by the UCMJ, though in practice this rarely happens.

Per UCMJ Article 2, I don’t think disability pay or the GI Bill render one subject to the UCMJ. They’re different pots of money. The mechanism for applying the UCMJ to retirees is putting them in the “Retired Reserve” (which also makes them subject to recall). I think this also applies to medical retirement, which is like disability pay but is much rarer than regular retirement or disability pay. And generals / admirals are in a whole different kind of retired status that theoretically makes applying the UCMJ to them even easier.
posted by Etrigan at 2:55 PM on June 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


If you enjoy the hosts in What A Hell Of A Way To A Die check out this Previously about leftists veterans and a good episode of their show “What’s the role of a standing army in a socialist utopia?”
posted by The Whelk at 4:53 PM on June 21, 2018


"Sentiments such as Rapone's are nothing new in military members current and former, but being something of a clown when professing such sentiments doesn't seem like it is a great recipe for continued involvement there."
He may indeed just be an edgelord dumbass who has no idea what revolutionary communism has really meant for the societies who have lived thought it, much less the world ending horror of what it would really mean in the US; and hey, the substanceless theater of all of this is maybe a big clue. If he lacks the gonads to say anything to the faces of his comrades or superiors, maybe thats a clue that he'd find that the totalitarianism, conflict, and senseless blood he is advocating for just isn't his cup of tea after all very quickly should he ever get his way?

Regardless, the questions of whether he really is that naive or really is that evil are pretty irrelevant to the question of whether he has any business being an officer in the US military. He is plainly unfit either way, and it is entirely appropriate that congressional pressure was applied to ensure that he saw justice and that the military was rid of him. The absence of any coherent, much less credible, plan for what should fill the gap he wants left behind is a hallmark of revolutionary communist activism in western democracies. The goal is never the naive bullshit being spouted, it is always the weakening of any credible alternative to centralized power and totalitarianism. American liberalism hasn't fallen for this kind of bullshit over the last century, despite the eager imaginings of American conservatives or their present predicament, and we sure as hell shouldn't fall for it now.

Fuck this clown, fuck his bullshit, and fuck what he really wants regardless of whether he is smart enough to see it. If liberalism and democracy are going to survive, much less life on Earth which sure as hell now relies on them, we're going to need to be both smarter than this and better than this.
posted by Blasdelb at 3:59 AM on June 22, 2018


Having a coherent or credible plan for what should fill the gap after you destroy a government is definitely not a requirement for being an officer in the U.S. military.

On and off during the past year I've been watching episodes of The Mike Wallace Interview since a partial set of episodes is available in various places online and I've been amazed to discover that McCarthyist politicians appeared to actually distinguish between communism and socialism and occasionally had some insightful things to say about the characteristics of the communism they opposed and what was wrong with it. It's a dramatic contrast with modern U.S. conservatives (present company excepted, of course) many of whom I've tried to talk to about fascism with and are revealed to believe that Hitler was a communist, and hence for whom "communist" appears to be a pretty much a meaningless word that's just a synonym for "super duper bad".

Needless to say the one thing modern U.S. conservatives are really stellar at in comparison to McCarthyists appearing on TV in the 50s is that they don't conflate Russia and communism. I'm kind of curious if, were I able to do some kind of empirical psychological study on it, whether the conservatives who have said things about communism to me in the past actually regard North Korea as a communist country any more now that it's gotten the slobbering ass-kissing seal of approval from their dear leader.

(...actually, the thing to do would be to have them rate various American citizens on how communist they are and throw Kim Jong-un into the survey as well. I'm fairly sure that many would rate a neighbor who thinks that U.S. public schools should have enough money to keep their bathrooms supplied with TP as more communist than Kim, and might praise Kim for his fiscal responsibility.)
posted by XMLicious at 5:42 AM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Having a coherent or credible plan for what should fill the gap after you destroy a government is definitely not a requirement for being an officer in the U.S. military.

Advocating for the destruction of a government is a good reason to not be in that government's military, however.

I am not sure why this is confusing.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:10 AM on June 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


Having a coherent or credible plan for what should fill the gap after you destroy a government is definitely not a requirement for being an officer in the U.S. military.


Ouch. Well played.
posted by clauclauclaudia at 8:24 AM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Suggesting that I'm "confused" is overwrought rhetoric. We don't kick "drown government in a bathtub" Grover Norquist acolytes out of the military, despite the fact that we can now see—if anyone even questioned it before—that the right end of the political spectrum associated with that kind of stuff is shot through with white nationalists, willing agents of foreign governments, and willing collaborators to those first two sub-categories.

I mean—as has been repeatedly pointed out in racism-related threads and politics threads, if you adore the Confederate battle flag you are openly idolizing a polity that actually, specifically committed violent insurrection against the U.S. government.

I downloaded the podcast link from the OP and listened to it in case I was missing something, but I'm still not seeing any indication that Rapone has expressed as much animosity to the existence of the U.S. government as the kinds of right-wingers who don't even get kicked out of CPAC, much less the military, readily express. (Even getting temporarily kicked out of CPAC requires making claims such as government-baby-drowner Grover Norquist is "a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.")

(Just to be clear, I've never been a member of the military, and so I would rely on others in this thread for the verdict on whether the specific way that Rapone violated rules of conduct was exceptional and if the administrative and legal process against him was orthodox. But unless the accusation is based on something not linked to in the OP, the opinions he is expressing are not at all some radical antipathy to the U.S. government of a kind which is routinely extirpated from the military or from anywhere else in American society.)
posted by XMLicious at 8:34 AM on June 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


But unless the accusation is based on something not linked to in the OP, the opinions he is expressing are not at all some radical antipathy to the U.S. government of a kind which is routinely extirpated from the military or from anywhere else in American society.

So I think I'm the only one in this thread who has actually been on the process towards court-martial for political statements, so let me explain how the process often works.

Something happens that is flagrant or offensive to other people enough that your command is alerted. In my case, some retired dude saw me giving a speech at a protest and was mortally offended and tracked down the sergeant major of INSCOM, so I had a special hell to live with that I think is at least equivalent to the amount of high level scrutiny Rappone did. In Rappone's case, it was undoubtedly the 'communism will win'/'superman Che Guevara' pictures.

They then consider what charges they can give you based on the inciting incident. For me, it was considered as a violation against the appearance of political support while representing the US Army. For him, I would wager some improper use of uniform and the same charge. These charges are...honestly small potatoes.

Then they investigate your entire life that they can have access to. They investigated friends of mine who hadn't seen me in years. They pulled up blog posts for the entirety of my career. They haunted YouTube looking for people who might have been me.

So he was being charged with supporting a socialist revolution in the US and insulting senior officials. A casual google reveals that the insulting senior officials is absolutely founded in fact. You cannot do that as an officer: it is a violation of Article 88 of the UCMJ.
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
And it's worth noting this also has happened to right wing military members who do this - a Marine got an OTH, for example, for saying 'Screw Obama, I will not follow all orders from him.'

As far as the charges of supporting a revolution, yet another casual google - and I am nowhere near as thorough as the Army would be - reveals:
“I consider myself a revolutionary socialist,” the 26-year-old Rapone told the Associated Press in a series of interviews. “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.”
So...yeah, I'd say they had enough evidence to take him at court-martial, even without going through every statement he's ever made, which probably added extra counts on. It's important to remember that what is judged is not how dangerous or anti-government his statements were, but whether they fit the specific, somewhat arcane constructions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which only barely in some cases aligns with civilian law.
posted by corb at 8:59 AM on June 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


In the podcast he also talks about the Carnation Revolution, a military coup against the fascist government of Portugal in the 70s, in which several people died.
posted by XMLicious at 9:21 AM on June 22, 2018


“You can’t be a communist without calling for the violent overthrow of the American government, which makes me think he’s more communist-leaning than an actual communist.”

Seems like a necessary end to that quote.
Frankly, this is all rather confusing. If he's a revolutionary socialist, he probably should have been quitting the military before they could discharge him. He should have been getting information from his party on what his position meant politically and how they could expect the government to react, as well as good ways for him to act.

Upon further searching, I've found a photo of what is purportedly his DSA membership. I'm somewhat less confused. People criticise the DSA for weak structure and a lack of a party programme, but I hadn't expected to find someone like Rapone in it.
I guess part of the reason for a party programme is to excise liberalism, but it's also important for avoiding Stalinism in your communism. Not sure where Rapone stands, as the DSA contains all sorts.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 9:55 AM on June 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


He may indeed just be an edgelord dumbass who has no idea what revolutionary communism has really meant for the societies who have lived thought it, much less the world ending horror of what it would really mean in the US; and hey, the substanceless theater of all of this is maybe a big clue.

I mean, he's not? If you go by one post on social media that got picked up as outrage clickbait, then sure. If you listen to the podcast, Rapone thoughtfully discusses the role of leftist veterans in the broad coalition of leftist voices in the US advocating for social democratic policies. A criticism of imperialist actions by those who carried out the military imperialism is a valuable perspective to have, indeed. He's a member of DSA, which is hardly an authoritarian or tankie organization.

We're in an era where active white supremacists involved with murderous activities are allowed to remain in the military, and where pizzagate dipshits get to continue their role in the reserves, but this guy gets kicked out for a few social media posts. I think your concerns about the threat to liberal democracy from this guy are a bit overwrought.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:57 AM on June 22, 2018 [6 favorites]


We're in an era where active white supremacists involved with murderous activities are allowed to remain in the military, and where pizzagate dipshits get to continue their role in the reserves, but this guy gets kicked out for a few social media posts.

We are in an era, unless you have some cites, where people who break very specific laws and then go "nah, I don't care about those laws, fight me bro" get cycled out of the military. We are not in an era where leftist veterans get kicked out for being leftists. I know a metric fuck-ton of leftist veterans, many of which who did media as well as social media about it. The ones who colored inside the lines are still in the military or got out with an honorable or general discharge.
posted by corb at 4:20 PM on June 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


I know a metric fuck-ton of leftist veterans, many of which who did media as well as social media about it. The ones who colored inside the lines are still in the military or got out with an honorable or general discharge.

I believe you. In the interview, it's clear that Rapone was pretty much done with the military, and I don't doubt that his discharge reflects this. However, the interview also makes clear that the photo incident happened quite some time ago (maybe a year or more?) and that pressure from the right wing media machine pretty much forced the issue of him being removed from the Army.

My comment was more aimed at the "edgelord dumbass" comment above, and the idea that his communist beliefs made him unfit for military service, which I would reject. I'm guessing the leftist veterans you know would also prove that military fitness and socialist beliefs can coexist.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:32 PM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


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