You understate things a bit. In the view of rms every aspect of a software project is a sacrifice on the altar of the GPL, if necessary.
It makes sense to have that policy when your goal is eradication of copyright, which is a goal quite a few people do share with the FSF. The trouble is, that's a destructive goal, and software is a creative enterprise, so things are fundamentally at odds and weird results happen, such as the refusal to allow a modular structure in GCC to prevent undesirable uses. A strange definition of freedom indeed!
The FSF's goal in essence is copyleft. Copyleft requires copyright law in order to work. As such, the FSF certainly does not intend to eradicate copyright, very much the opposite is true.
It makes sense to have that policy when your goal is eradication of copyright, which is a goal quite a few people do share with the FSF. The trouble is, that's a destructive goal, and software is a creative enterprise, so things are fundamentally at odds and weird results happen, such as the refusal to allow a modular structure in GCC to prevent undesirable uses. A strange definition of freedom indeed!
Edit: typo