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Would-be terrorists allegedly found inspiration in online novel

Prosecutors in Georgia are alleging that a group of four would-be terrorists found inspiration for planned attacks in a violent online novel called Absolved. Written by Mike Vanderboegh, a former leader of a militia group in Alabama, the novel, about a confrontation between a violent militia group and the government, includes, among other things, characters who drop explosives out of crop dusters.

From the Associated Press:

[F]ederal prosecutors accused four elderly Georgia men of plotting to use [Absolved] as a script for a real-life wave of terror and assassination involving explosives and the highly lethal poison ricin.

The four suspected militia members allegedly boasted of a “bucket list” of government officials who needed to be “taken out”; talked about scattering ricin from a plane or a car speeding down a highway past major U.S. cities; and scouted IRS and ATF offices, with one man saying, “We’d have to blow the whole building like Timothy McVeigh.”

The four accused terrorists are remarkable for their ages: the youngest of them is 65; the oldest, Frederick Thomas, is 73.

For his part, the book’s author told Fox News that the four suspects “misinterpreted” his work. From the Los Angeles Times‘ Nation Now blog:

“What kind of moron uses the phrase ‘save the Constitution’ and then goes out to try and distribute ricin?” Vanderboegh told the news channel. “This has got to be the Alzheimer’s gang. What political point is made there? I don’t understand what was going on in the minds of these Georgia idiots.”

This is not the first time Vanderboegh has been accused of inciting violence. Last year, he encouraged Americans to toss bricks through the windows of Democrats’ offices to protest president Barack Obama’s health care initiative, the AP reports.

Meanwhile, the LA Times‘ books blog more or less misses the point entirely by questioning whether Vanderboegh’s self-published novel even qualifies as a book:

But is an “online novel” really a book? It is not for sale at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or used book vendor Alibris. It does not have a publisher. It was not self-published. It was not available in a portable e-book format. Vanderboegh began posting Absolved on his blog in 2009. Does putting words on a blog and call[ing] them a book make them a book?

Quillblog would respectfully suggest this is the least pressing issue in this case.

By

November 7th, 2011

5:17 pm

Category: Book news