The Turner Diaries
From Free net encyclopedia
The Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald), the late leader of the National Alliance, a white supremacist organisation. The novel depicts a violently racist revolutionary struggle in the United States that escalates into global genocide, leading to the extermination of all people who are not white. For novelist Pierce, this was not a dystopian outcome, but rather the fulfillment of his "dream of a White world".
The novel was initially only available through mail order and at gun shows, and partially serialized in National Alliance publications. Sales of the book have been estimated as high as 500,000 copies. Template:Fact However, such figures are very unlikely for a non-mainstream fictional publication of this kind. The novel is now available for sale through mainstream book sources (ISBN 1-56980-086-3), or freely available from hate sites.
According to the book description accompanying the 1996 edition published by Barricade Books, the United States Department of Justice considers the novel to be a manifesto for far right militia groups, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that it served as inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Contents |
Plot
The narrative starts with a foreword set in the year 2099, one hundred years after most, if not all, of the non-whites in the world have been killed and a white supremacist revolutionary world government has been established. The bulk of the book then quotes a recently discovered diary of a man named Earl Turner, an active member of the movement that caused these events. The book details a violent overthrow of the United States federal government by Turner and his comrades and a brutal contemporaneous race war that takes place first in North America, and then the rest of the world.
The story starts soon after the US federal government has confiscated all civilian firearms in the US under the "Cohen Act", and the "Organization" of which Turner and his cohorts are members "go underground" to launch a guerrilla war against the "System", which is depicted as the totality of the government, media and economy that is under "Jewish control". The Organization starts with acts such as the bombing of FBI headquarters and continues to prosecute an ongoing, low level campaign of terrorism, assassination and economic sabotage throughout the United States. Turner's exploits lead to his initiation into the "Order", an inner cadre that directs the Organization and whose existence remains secret to both the System and ordinary Organization members.
Eventually, the Organization seizes physical control of Southern California, including nuclear weapons at Vandenberg Air Force Base; ethnically cleanses the area of all blacks, hispanics, and asians; and summarily executes all Jews and "race-traitors". They then use both this base of operations and their nuclear weapons to open a wider war in which they launch nuclear strikes against New York City and Israel, initiate a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, and plant nuclear weapons and new cells throughout North America. The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to destroy The Pentagon, in order to eliminate the leadership of the remaining military government in the US. The novel ends with an epilogue summarizing how the Organization continued on to conquer the rest of world and to eliminate all people of other races.
The book is graphically violent. All non-whites, which include blacks and latinos, are viciously depicted as being sub-human and bestial. Jews are depicted as conniving and manipulative puppet-masters who control the government, media and economy. Whites who do not support the race war are described as weak "race traitors" who must be terrorized into supporting it or else killed along with the non-whites.
The book depicts the hypothetical US of the mid-1990s as being a bleak, poor, decaying and oppressive society, with an economy on the brink of collapse, a government that has become a police-state, and a society that has taken multiculturalism and liberalism to unlikely and irrational extremes (all of which is cast as the result of "Jewish domination"). It should be noted that the book was first published in 1978, amidst the US economic difficulties of the 1970s, such as stagflation and the gas crunch; at the tail end of the second, "identity politics" phase of the American Civil Rights Movement; and prior to the changes in the US political system and economy that occurred in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. This indicates that the hypothetical US depicted in The Turner Diaries was probably a rather fanciful future extrapolation of the circumstances of the late-1970s that the author believed, and perhaps hoped, would be ripe for future revolution.
It is also posited by many that the book actually represents a sequel to a later book written by William Pierce (again under the Macdonald pseudonym,) "Hunter". A history of the revolutionary Organization is never fully provided in "The Turner Diaries", leading to widespread assumption that it represented a hypothetical "next step" in the evolution of the National Alliance. "Hunter" depicts the actions of a man, Oscar Yeager, obsessed with ridding society of the perceived enemies of the white race: blacks, Jews, and mixed-race couples. Yeager's actions eventually cultivate him a following, a small revolutionary cadre, which many correlate to early incarnations of The Order.
Quotes from the book
- "What is really precious to the average American is not his freedom or his honor or the future of his race, but his pay check. He complained when the System began busing his kids to Black schools 20 years ago, but he was allowed to keep his station wagon and his fiberglass speedboat, so he didn't fight... He complained when they took away his guns five years ago, but he still had his color TV and his backyard barbeque, so he didn't fight... And he complains today when the Blacks rape his women at will and the System makes him show an identity pass to buy groceries or pick up his laundry, but he still has a full belly most of the time, so he won't fight... He hasn't an idea in his head that wasn't put there by his TV set... That, unfortunately, is our average White American..."
- "About 45 seconds after the second round the third one landed on the roof of the south wing of the Capitol and exploded inside the building... We saw beautiful blossoms of flame and steel sprouting everywhere, dancing across the asphalt, thundering in the midst of splintered masonry and burning vehicles, erupting now inside and now outside the Capitol, wreaking their bloody toll in the ranks of tyranny and treason." (describing an Organization mortar attack on the US Capitol)
- "These were no soft-bellied, conservative businessmen assembled for some Masonic mumbo-jumbo; no loudmouthed, beery red-necks letting off a little ritualized steam about "the goddam niggers"; no pious, frightened churchgoers whining for the guidance or protection of an anthropomorphic deity. These were real men, White men... the best my race has produced... combin[ing] fiery passion and icy discipline, deep intelligence and instant readiness for action... They are the vanguard of the coming New Era, the pioneers who will lead our race out of its present depths... And I am one with them!" (describing the Order)
- "Then, of course, came the mopping-up period, when the last of the non-White bands were hunted down and exterminated, followed by the final purge of undesirable racial elements among the remaining White population ... But it was in the year 1999, according to the chronology of the Old Era — just 110 years after the birth of The Great One (Adolf Hitler) — that the dream of a White world finally became a certainty." (from the book's epilogue)
(Some white separatists argue that the "White world" actually only refers to the White Western World, not the whole world, but nothing in the text of the book supports this assertion.)
Actions allegedly inspired by the book
To date, a number of actions are alleged to have been inspired by the novel:
- At the time of his arrest, Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted for the Oklahoma City bombing, had a copy of The Turner Diaries in his possession. McVeigh's bombing was similar to the event described in the book where the fictional terrorist group blows up FBI Headquarters.
- The Order, an early 1980s white supremacist group involved in murder, robberies and counterfeiting, was named after the group in the book and motivated by the book's scenarios for a race war. The group murdered Alan Berg, a controversial and outspoken Jewish talk show host, and engaged in other acts of violence in order to hasten the race war described in the book. The Order's efforts later inspired another group, The New Order, which planned to commit similar crimes in an effort to start a race war that would lead to a violent revolution.
- John William King was convicted for dragging James Byrd, an African-American, to his death in Jasper, Texas. As King shackled Byrd's legs to the back of his truck he was reported to have said, "We're going to start the Turner Diaries early."
- The suicide mission to bomb the Pentagon at the end of the book is eerily similar in some people's minds to the suicide attack of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001(Dr. William Luther Pierce's Birthday) by members of Muslim extremist group Al Qaeda. It has been suggested by some that the book only serves as a model of how a local grass-roots movement can overthrow a powerful and tyrannical central government, and that this has led to some groups that do not even agree with the white separatist/supremacist movement using it as a model or blueprint for revolution.
- A copy of The Turner Diaries was found (amidst other Neo-Nazi propaganda) in the home of Jacob Robida, who attacked a gay bar and then committed suicide in 2006.
First and second editions
In its first printing, dated May 1978, The Turner Diaries was set in the 1980s. Its reprinting (September 1980) brought a second edition that retained the essentials of the novel, but moved the setting forward ten years. Although different printings of The Turner Diaries have featured different cover art or backcover copy, subsequent printings have kept to the second edition text.
In keeping with the new 1990s timeframe, events in the past are generally aged by ten years, though not always. Some examples:
- Turner's diatribe about the "long string of Marxist acts of terror 10 to 15 years ago" is changed to "20 years ago."
- Turner's lament at the success of the System's brainwashing "these past 50 years or so" remains unchanged.
- A reference to the Order's "nearly 58 years of existence" is increased to 68, even though the Order is fictional.
- Turner's astonishment at "how many dark, kinky-haired Middle Easterners have invaded this country in the last decade" is not changed.
- The epilogue's exultation that in 1989, "exactly a century after the birth of The Great One... the dream of a White world finally became a certainty," becomes "just 110 years" after Adolf Hitler's birth.
Also to make the book fit its later date, prices are usually doubled, and sums of money are also often doubled, but not consistently. Some examples from the second chapter:
- Turner's cell is forced to go underground with only about $37 in their pockets. The second edition changes this to $70.
- A note by the future historian tells readers that in Turner's day, a dollar could buy "a half-kilo loaf of bread or about a quarter of a kilo of sugar." The second edition reads two dollars.
- Another Organization cell has $200, and helps out Turner's unit with a car and $50. In the second edition, they have $400, but still give $50.
- The price of black market gasoline doubles from $5 a gallon to $10.
- A robbery nets Turner's unit $1426, described as enough to feed them for "more than two months." This remains unchanged.
The second edition retains one major artifact of the original setting: in the first edition, dates fall on the same day of the week as their real-world 1980s dates. The later edition does not change days of the week, putting them out of sync with their 1990s dates. Another minor change is that a short passage, where Turner's lover spots his Order pendant, is moved a few pages earlier to the end of Chapter X. The first edition also featured illustrations by Dennis Nix. Later printings dropped the illustrations, used a smaller typeface, and switched from bold to italics for emphasis.