A controversial University of Texas professor who was repeatedly threatened by Antifa over a domestic violence incident from 2016 was found dead in his home on Thursday. The cause of death is unknown.
Richard Morrisett, 57, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of strangling his girlfriend off campus, which prompted outrage from a coalition of UT parents. In response to the incident, UT President Greg Fenves announced in a Thursday letter that employees who commit crimes off campus could face discipline, even if found not to pose a threat to campus safety, security or other operations.
Armed extremist Antifa group, “Revolutionary Student Front“ repeatedly threatened Morrissett following the incident, defacing the door of his lab with graffiti reading “GET Out Morrisett OR ELSE” and “WATCH YOUR BACK RICHARD.”
BREAKING: UT Austin Professor, Richard Morrissett, who was repeatedly threatened by Austin #Antifa group found dead in his home. pic.twitter.com/8QQ6vNCsu4
— Far Left Watch (@FarLeftWatch) April 6, 2018
As one of several militant Antifa groups detailed by watchdog organization Far Left Watch, Revolutionary Student Front Austin is affiliated with armed extremist Antifa group Red Guards Austin.
Revolutionary Student Front – Austin is a self described “revolutionary anti-capitalist student movement” that organizes at the University of Texas – Austin. This militant student group recently made headlines for holding self-defense training on campus and tweeting about killing police officers. Earlier this month they published a comprehensive document outlining their so-called “Revolutionary Mental Health Program (RMHP)”. This 13,000+ word document covers the formulation, goals, failures, and successes of this program and why the ultimately decided to end it . Below are some of the more alarming excerpts from this document:
Their stated goal for this program was to address the mental health needs of student and to ultimately recruit and radicalize students with mental health issues in order to “make them into active fighters”:
“The primary goal of this program was to address the mental health needs of students in a way that would primarily serve to politicize and strengthen them, to become more committed to revolution and more capable of carrying it out.”
Through many hours of discussion with students while tabling and at our public meetings, and through regular contact with disgruntled students, we uncovered numerous pressing needs facing the general student body and working-class students alike. From this point, we sought to determine a site of struggle that would appeal to the sections of the student population most ripe for radicalization and to develop a plan to address those needs in a way that would politicize these students, with the goal of course being to make them into active fighters in the revolutionary class struggle.”
They also admit that this idea was partly inspired by the Socialist Patient’s Collective (SPK), a German neo-Marxist group that attempted to re-frame “mental illness” as a product of capitalist oppression and believed that the sick formed a revolutionary class of people who could be radicalized to join their cause:
“Over the winter of 2016 and in the early spring of 2017, the leadership of RSF spent a significant amount of time studying the work “Turn Illness into a Weapon,” which recounts the experiences of the Socialist Patients’ Collective (SPK) of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1970. “
Here they explicitly outline that every project they do is designed to “recruit fighters”:
The goal of every initiative and program launched by a revolutionary organization should be for the purpose of recruiting fighters into its ranks and forging them in the fiery furnace of class struggle.
Here they suggest that some of their own organizers suffer from mental illness:
Orienting recruitment toward those suffering from qualitatively more intense mental illness, a population whose conditions in general serve as barriers to reaching the point of being continuous fighters (we say “in general” because many of the best organizers in the revolutionary movement and our organization also suffer from these conditions) does not accomplish the task of drawing from the most advanced sections of the people.
Throughout the document there are multiple pictures of armed communist militants, quotes from communist revolutionaries and dictators, and repeated affirmations to their commitment to political violence and preparation for war:
“Because our forces can only be built through the militant, violent struggle against the enemies of our class, we know that these fretful cowards will never reach that point. Making war will prepare us for the war to come, rally around us and bring into our ranks those who realize the necessity of violence to achieve a classless society free from exploitation, and unmask the real enemies of the people. We reaffirm our commitment to the principle of revolutionary violence that is necessary to confront the enemies of the people”
…
The knowledge that prison or death awaits us as revolutionaries aiming to destroy capitalism should be enough to encourage us to develop our organization in a thorough and well-rounded manner
And the document concludes with an unapologetic promise for more political violence:
“The actions to come in the following year will draw clear lines in the sand between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries. We will make no apologies for the necessary violence of our struggle and will spare no sacrifice for the battles to come because we are revolutionaries committed to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a classless society. We live for the people, we fight for the people, and we die for the people. This is what it means to be a revolutionary and this is what we uphold from this point until the final dying breath of capitalism.”
So let’s unpack this. A heavily armed communist militia group:
- openly supports a communist dictator who brutally killed millions of people
- openly advocates for targeted political violence against “capitalists”
- openly encourages armed insurrection against the U.S. government
- openly recruits at the University of Texas at Austin
- openly admits to targeting students with mental health issues to become “fighters”
- and openly admits that some of it’s own organizers suffer from mental health issues
UT President Greg Fenves released a statement regarding the professor’s death Friday:
Professor Morrisett’s death is a tragedy. We support his family and loved ones as they grieve during this time. We recognize these are difficult times on campus and the university will offer all the support we can to students, faculty and staff members.
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