Eric Rudolph

[Smart]

man, less than a week ago actually spent 5 minutes reflecting on this fellow and his possible capture/death... I decided he wasn't dead, based on the FACT (there you go Seeking) that I know somw folks from Murphy and one even turned into a SEAL, so... anyway, the caught Rudolph, but...

 

They talk about how he bombed the olympics and the abortion clinics but, there's one... they keep calling it a 'gay bombing'... I guess he bombed a gay bar too, but... 'gay bombing'... it sounds so lah-tee-dah...

[Guest sneak]

i read about that in the paper this morning. he survivied for how long? 5 years....fuck

 

its funny to think he was only caught because the arresting officer thought he was a tramp looking for food. sucka.

[KaBar]

Word among the miltia right wing

 

Is that he basically "allowed" himself to be captured. Living on the run is exhausting, and although just about every "underground" fugitive imagines he would rather be free and hungry rather than captured and warm and fed, the truth is that as the months and years go by, the prospect of capture begins to look more and more attractive.

 

In Rudolph's case, his increased risk-taking (by coming into town) demonstrates the isolative nature of his existance on the run. He could not afford to approach any known ultra-right person in North Carolina, or anywhere in the South, because there is a strong likelihood they were under surveillance. He acted independently, since that is really the only way he could insure he would not be compromised and betrayed to the authorities. This also insures, however, that he would have no support network and few refuges in which to winter.

 

Being a terrorist (there's no doubt whatsoever that Eric Rudolph is a terrorist) requires access to large sums of money, in order to carry out one's terrorist attacks without coming "above ground" and exposing oneself to identification and capture. Either one leads an impoverished, hermit-like existance, or one begins to scheme out ways to acquire the required sums.

 

Typical American terrorist groups (Black Liberation Army; Weather Underground; Bruder Schweigen/The Order; Covenant, Sword & Arm of the Lord, Eco-terrorists, etc.) often combine a supportive "aboveground" organization with a campaign of bank robberies, armored car robberies, etc. Bruder Schweigen was probably the most successful of all of them at armored car robbery. The leader of "The Order," Robert Jay Matthews, managed (totally by luck) to recruit an angry, white, Brink's armored car company shift supervisor in San Francisco, when the supervisor's ex-wife ex-wife (also an employee there) began dating a black Brink's employee. This supervisor was so angry, he virtually handed over to "The Order" the security plans of the armored car transport from San Francisco to Ukiah, CA. The Order's second armored car robbery netted $3.8 million. All total, they raised more than $4 million dollars for their racist, hate-filled cause. THIS MONEY HAS NEVER BEEN RECOVERED, and is very likely still out there in the hands of neo-Nazi groups scattered around the country. Some people claim that the fact that the National Alliance and Aryan Nations/ "Church of Jesus Christ, Christian" organization gave in so easily when sued by a woman and her son whose civil rights they violated, is because they could easily afford to purchase more land, or had already done so, and wanted to appear to be "defeated".

 

Eric Rudolph acted without much of a support network. He was well-known as a radical anti-abortion activist and a hate-filled racist long before he ever began bombing gay bars and abortion clinics.

 

Contrast that with the Unabomber. Theodore Kaczinsky. He reduced his level of consumption to very little, operated from a fixed location in a small Montana town, attacked individual targets at a great distance (hundreds of miles) from his home, went to insane (literally) lengths to avoid detection and for twelve years he attempted to avoid the public eye. It wasn't until he forced the media to publish his manifesto that he was immediately identified and captured. In the end, it was HIS THOUGHTS that identifed him to the FBI. How's that for ironic? He assembles bombs wearing surgical gloves, creates them out of scraps he finds in dumpsters all over California and the Northwest, brews up his own explosives from scratch, builds his own detonators from copper tubing and potassium chlorate from match heads, builds his devices out of wood and disguises them as common, ordinary, everyday objects, and in general goes to great lengths to avoid leaving evidence, but get captured because his "manifesto" mirrors ideas that he and his younger brother have been arguing about for years.

 

Comparatively, Rudolph was recklessly open and public, not only about his politics and prejudices, but also about his intent.

 

These types of terrorists and murderers will always be caught. Their motivations are internal (i.e., their victims do not "cause" them to act violently, the cause comes SOLELY from within themselves) and they cannot easily rid themselves of the desire to continue to act out their impulses. They get caught because they simply cannot resist the temptation to continue, and to tell the world about it. This is bad (for them,) in that they cannot stop, but good (for us) because they will always be caught.

 

Regardless of his alleged motivations, Eric Rudolph is a terrorist and a murderer. The police officer who arrested him seems like a decent sort of fellow. I hope there are no repercussions--quite frankly, the racist right wing is completely crazy, and they are definately capable of killing a police officer in revenge for something like this.

 

Lastly, I'd like to point out that NONE of the militia internet boards, sites, etc., that I have hit are supporting Rudolph. If they mention it at all, it's more like "Eric Rudolph got busted---sure took them long enough."