The Turner Diaries
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==Synopsis== | ==Synopsis== | ||
| − | The book includes crude [[racist]] stereotyping on almost every page, acts of [[terrorism]] such as blowing up a federal building, a sickening scene where all white women who married black men are hung in public, and in the end once the white supremacist revolution is successful, [[Israel]] being nuked. The book's protaganist is Earl Turner, who joins the "Organization" fully committed to giving his life to the revolution. Trying to find allies for the revolution, he makes the mistake of contacting a left-wing hippie commune thinking they would be sympathetic, and the hippies of course spill the beans to the police for which Turner is assigned the punishment of flying a suicide mission involving a nuclear bomb. (Apparently William Pierce intended this as a "very strong warning" against neo-Nazis trying to make allies on the far left. In another place the book has a similar "very strong warning" against trying to make allies among [[New World Order]] conspiracy types and [[John Birch Society|John Birchers]], who are portrayed as obstructionists getting in the way of "white revolution".) | + | The book includes crude [[racist]] stereotyping on almost every page, acts of [[terrorism]] such as blowing up a federal building, a sickening scene where all white women who married black men are hung in public, and in the end once the white supremacist revolution is successful, [[Israel]] being nuked. The book's protaganist is Earl Turner, who joins the "Organization" fully committed to giving his life to the revolution. Trying to find allies for the revolution, he makes the mistake of contacting a left-wing hippie commune thinking they would be sympathetic on the grounds they both have a common enemy in "the system", and the hippies of course spill the beans to the police for which Turner is assigned the punishment of flying a suicide mission involving a nuclear bomb. (Apparently William Pierce intended this as a "very strong warning" against neo-Nazis trying to make allies on the far left. In another place the book has a similar "very strong warning" against trying to make allies among [[New World Order]] conspiracy types and [[John Birch Society|John Birchers]], who are portrayed as obstructionists getting in the way of "white revolution".) |
==Influence== | ==Influence== | ||
Revision as of 10:24, 27 March 2008
The Turner Diaries is a novel by William Pierce and a favorite on the right-wing loony bin circuit. The book was published under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald. It is a fictional account of a guerrilla war waged by a white supremacist cadre organization to overthrow the United States government and set up a neo-Nazi regime. Although on the surface "just" a novel, every plot device in the book appears carefully and coldly calculated to impart the positions of the National Alliance, the neo-Nazi group which William Pierce led. And, perhaps, to serve as a blueprint for white supremacist revolution in the U.S.
The book was self-published by Pierce's neo-Nazi group and mostly sold via mail order and word of mouth, until Lyle Stuart Books decided against all better judgment to give it a mainstream reprinting and it wound up on the shelves of every Barnes & Noble and Borders for most of the late 1990s.
Synopsis
The book includes crude racist stereotyping on almost every page, acts of terrorism such as blowing up a federal building, a sickening scene where all white women who married black men are hung in public, and in the end once the white supremacist revolution is successful, Israel being nuked. The book's protaganist is Earl Turner, who joins the "Organization" fully committed to giving his life to the revolution. Trying to find allies for the revolution, he makes the mistake of contacting a left-wing hippie commune thinking they would be sympathetic on the grounds they both have a common enemy in "the system", and the hippies of course spill the beans to the police for which Turner is assigned the punishment of flying a suicide mission involving a nuclear bomb. (Apparently William Pierce intended this as a "very strong warning" against neo-Nazis trying to make allies on the far left. In another place the book has a similar "very strong warning" against trying to make allies among New World Order conspiracy types and John Birchers, who are portrayed as obstructionists getting in the way of "white revolution".)
Influence
The Turner Diaries quite likely played a role in inspiring at least two different terrorist activities in the U.S.:
- "The Order", a violent splinter group of Aryan Nations active circa 1983-1985
- Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995
It also appears to have inspired, at least to some degree, several recent anarcho-libertarian novels which have the same dystopian anti-government revolution theme minus the racism; for example, Unintended Consequences by John Ross and Enemies Foreign and Domestic by Matthew Bracken.
Scholars who have analyzed The Turner Diaries have, interestingly, noted that the novel appears to draw heavily from two speculative political novels of the left, The Iron Heel by Jack London and Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach.
Sequel
William Pierce followed it up with another novel, Hunter, which features senseless and random sniper activity in the Washington, D.C. area (shades of the 2002 Beltway Sniper spree except in this case the sniper targets interracial couples). The sniper is a lone nut whom both the FBI and a white supremacist group try to co-opt for their own ends.