Eric Rudolf: Unrepentant Terrorist
Eric Rudolph has led an interesting life. He started his path towards infamy by carrying out bombings at abortion clinics, gay bars, and most notably the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Several of these bombings deliberately targeted law enforcement personal, and resulted in two deaths as well as several serious injuries. Sensing that the FBI was closing in, Rudolph fled to the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains, were he successfully evaded capture (possibly with the help of others) for five years. Rudolph accepted a plea deal in 2005 that spared him the death penalty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Rudolph has put the time to good use, writing several lengthy essays that have been published his website. The articles paint Rudolph as being much more intelligent than one might initially think. His justifications for his terrorist acts as logical and consistent, if rather warped in their premises. He writes an engaging article dismissing pacifism as being an inherently illogical and hypocritical creed, while bashing feminism using good old-fashioned conservative misogyny. Speaking of conservatism, Rudolph is surprisingly hard to pin down ideologically. It would be easy to write him off as a Protestant fundamentalist nut, especially since his website is hosted by the charming folks over at the Army of God website. Rudolph is a practicing Catholic, once attended a Christian Identity church, and peppers his webpage with biblical passages. However, he expresses an admiration for Friedrich Nietzsche, which is to say the least unusually for a right-wing Christian. In fact, his fusion of Catholic thought and his survival-of-the-fittest, pro-terrorist outlook makes him unique in the annals of right wing extremism. Of course, his intelligence and interesting worldview do not lessen the horror of the crimes he committed. Rudolph shows absolutely no remorse for his actions, and in fact offers condescending criticisms to his victims. I for one am glad he will die in prison.
posted by Henry Garfield at 10:36 PM
1 Comments:
no way to e-mail you... found a post from 2005 that i needed to respond to. maybe you should revisit since we are now having annual conferences...i find your blog pretty interesting. check it out. a response to http://extremepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/06/anarchists-for-jesus.html
disciple13 said...
as a christian anarchist who has run with affinity groups and direct action cells comprised of predominantly "contemporary anarchist" I can tell you that I have never been attacked for my beliefs (although some conversations are pretty comical, and I get always get 'the rev' or 'pope' for a nickname). surprisingly, despite an often athiestic philosophy, many of the anarchists I have run with have had a church background and would admit that their anarchists beliefs rose out of their church experiences. and, i think you are incorrect in your assessment that most anarchists operate from an extremely anti-christian viewpoint. a percentage of the visible mainstream anarchist activity in the u.s. today are rooted in mennonite and quaker theology. the fact that mainstream anarchists and christian anarchist seek the same final solution, a society based on mutual aid and respect, creates an acceptable relationship for most of those that I have come into contact with. additionally, their are more brands of anarchists than beer in the world, and you tend to find most of them working together. Also, not many 'brands' are 'pure'. although i subscribe to christian anarchist as a sufficient enough title for where i stand, fully i'd say that i'm something like a social green christian anarchist.
anyway, as a jesus radical registered user, i'm glad you found us. spend some time there...you might be very surprised at the level of intelligence and the real desire to discern not only exact theory but dilligent practice to create the world we want to see. plus, it's a cool community and pretty funny at times...
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