A Review Of The Turner Diaries: “The Neo-Nazi Bible”

There has been a lot of talk in the news of late about white supremacists. Earlier this month, there were articles suggesting that Al-Qaeda wants to ally with white militia groups for attacks inside the United States. Some people might think that to be unlikely, but, for reasons you’ll soon see, I think it should be taken very seriously. Additionally, in a much more widely publicized incident, a white supremacist by the name of James Von Brunn launched an assault on the Holocaust Museum that cost the life of a security guard.

Since the Von Brunn attack, there has been a lot of talk about what motivates these people and whose side they’re really on. There’s a book out that I believe answers those questions in a roundabout way and it’s The Turner Diaries.

You may have heard of The Turner Diaries before. The book was written back in 1978 by William Pierce, the former leader of the racist National Alliance. The book has been called “The Neo-Nazi Bible” and it supposedly motivated people like Tim McVeigh and one of James Byrd’s killers to act.

Many people may believe that a book like this one shouldn’t be reviewed or discussed in polite company and maybe twenty years ago, they may have been right. However, in the internet era, everything gets discussed on the net and if mainstream authors won’t touch a topic, the cranks and the conspiracy theorists dominate the conversation. In the case of The Turner Diaries, we’re talking about a book that has reportedly sold over half a million copies and has inspired people to kill. That, along with the window it presents into the mentality of the white power nutjobs, makes the book worth discussing.

Furthermore, the very fact that the book is supposed to be too dangerous to be read is part of its appeal. The very cover of the book I acquired plays on this impulse with the words,

“This book contains racist propaganda.

The FBI said it was the blueprint for the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Many would like it banned. It is being published to alert and warn America.”

Translation: Oooh, this is scary and forbidden. Buy it! Writing about the book demystifies it and takes away much of its appeal.

Getting into the book itself, it’s not a particularly good read. Pierce’s writing style is a bit like Ayn Rand’s, except he’s much more of a hack about it. In other words, Pierce is trying to get across his world view via a fictional story and he’s very ham-fisted and artless about the process. All the characters in his book are two-dimensional cardboard props and worse yet, there are no sympathetic characters in the book. It’s like one of those ugly little South American or African revolutions, where both sides are made up of irredeemable monsters and you’re left to pick between devils.

Nevertheless, let’s move on to the plot. The book begins in 1991 with America declining into a banana republic with a tyrannical government. That undoubtedly seemed like a very genuine possibility in the dog days of the Carter years, which was when the book was written. In the book, the government made the terrible mistake of outlawing guns — which, as it would in real life, set off organized resistance against the government.

The government’s enemies? They’re called “The Organization” and they’re a shadowy, violent, fascistic racist group with leaders who demand unquestioning obedience to their every order. Looking at the group with a post-9/11 perspective, one can’t help but be reminded of Al-Qaeda — you’ll see why as we get deeper into the review.

The protagonist of the book is supposed to be Earl Turner, who’s an obedient foot soldier in “The Organization.” He’s brave, honest, and follows orders. He also hates everyone who’s not white and has zero qualms about murdering innocent people. In other words, he’s probably the rough equivalent of the average German soldier during WWII. Beyond what I’ve already told you, Turner isn’t much developed as a character.

In the book, The Organization leads a campaign that is so similar to the one Al-Qaeda has been running in Iraq that Bin Laden could have read the book. Originally, their numbers are small — but, they engage in terrorist attacks, assassinations, and bombings funded by crime with the goal of causing a breakdown of order. That very breakdown and the government’s clumsy attempts to crack down on the disorder, along with the extraordinary violence The Organization is willing to inflict on all who oppose them, swells their ranks with new recruits.

Like Al-Qaeda, they hate everybody who isn’t explicitly on their side. The minorities and mixed race people, they hate because they’re not white. The others? They hate because they’re don’t agree with their thinking or because of their apathy. They murder conservatives, liberals, libertarians, whites who don’t agree with them, Christians, judges, government officials, police, the FBI, the Washington Post — there is no real distinction with a difference between them.

To give you an idea of the mentality, here’s a passage from the book. I am sure that many members of Al-Qaeda have probably thought something similar about other Sunni Muslims at some point or another,

“In thinking of Saturday’s events, what surprises me is that I feel no remorse or regret for killing those two White whores. Six months ago I couldn’t imagine myself calmly butchering a teen aged white girl, no matter what she had done. But I have become much more realistic about life recently.” — P.77

Their view of different minorities was also a bit surprising, although I suppose it shouldn’t be. They didn’t focus much on Hispanics — but blacks, the book portrayed as violent, dumb muscle — and of course, they were hated. However, as much as they hated blacks, it didn’t compare to the venom sprayed at Jews who weirdly, were practically seen as evil super men. Of course, if you believe a few million Jews are really pulling the strings of the government, big business, the media, and most of the nations in the world, then you practically have to also believe they have capabilities beyond those of other humans to pull it off.

Getting back to the plotline, the guerilla warfare eventually pays off, The Organization gets some help from rogue parts of the US military, and they capture control of California. This also happens to give them control of nuclear weapons, which they threaten to immediately use if a conventional attack is made on them. Of course, their ambitions are bigger than just California and so, they continue their terrorist attacks against the rest of the United States (There’s a lesson there about what we may see if Iran get nukes. It’s very possible we will see more terrorist attacks, not less, including terrorist attacks aimed at the US, after they get a nuclear shield to protect them.).

This is about the time that the mass murder on a scale reminiscent of the Nazis starts in the book. The Jews, everyone of mixed race, whites who lived with or dated non-whites in California, and politicians, preachers, TV personalities, and government officials who couldn’t be controlled? They’re liquidated, shot, and hung from lamp posts as all of California falls under martial law.

If this sounds like some sort of “Hitler comes to America” version of history, it is. It’s pure evil and The Organization has no interest whatsoever in any sort of freedom, democracy, or the Constitution,

“Didn’t the old fool understand that the American people voted themselves into the mess they’re in now? Doesn’t he understand that the Jews have taken over the country fair and square, according to the Constitution? Doesn’t he understand that the common people have already had their fling at self-government, and they blew it?

Where does he think new elections can possibly lead now, with this generation of TV-conditioned voters, except right back into the same Jewish pigsty? And how does he think we could have solved our problems down here, except by the radical measures we used?” –P.173

Soon thereafter, they set off nuclear bombs in Miami, FL and Charleston, SC. From there, things were really ramped up as The Organization launched missiles at New York & Israel in an effort to kill Jews and the Soviet Union, in hopes of prompting a counter-strike. The Soviets responded by firing nukes back at the United States, killing 60 million Americans.

At this point, The Organization still holds California, although LA was destroyed by a nuke and the military has control of the rest of the country. So, Earl Turner is sent on a suicide mission — one that will seem eerily familiar to you,

“It’s still three hours until first light, and all my systems are “go.” I’ll use the time to write a few pages — my last diary entry. Then it’s a one-way trip to the Pentagon for me. The warhead is strapped into the front seat of an old Stearman and rigged to detonate either on impact or when I flip a switch in the back seat. Hopefully, I will be able to manage a low-level air burst directly over the center of the Pentagon. Failing that, I’ll at least try to fly as low as I can before I’m shot down.” — P.202

From there, the book goes on to describe the wonderful dream that society becomes after The Organization takes over the country and starts eliminating everyone who isn’t white across the planet.

“Therefore, the Organization resorted to a combination of chemical, biological, and radiological means, on an enormous scale, to deal with the problem. Over a period of four years some 16 millions square miles of the earth’s surface, from the Ural mountains to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, were effectively sterilized.”

From their perspective, then they could begin their dream society, which apparently consisted of an all white race, living in an impoverished and war-torn world, ruled by iron-fisted despots. In other words, a boot stamping down on a white human face, forever. The fact that this is a Neo-Nazi vision of an ideal world, one that they believe is vastly preferable to the world we live in today, tells you more than you’ve ever wanted to know about how they think and how little they have in common with any mainstream political ideology in the United States.

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