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The Turner Diaries
by "Andrew MacDonald" (William L. Pierce)
The National Alliance, 1978
Approx. 80,000 words
WARNING TO THE READER: This is the most repulsive book I have ever reviewed. Persons offended by descriptions of virulent racism and of the advocacy of genocide may not wish to continue reading.
Bibliographical Note
According to Michael Barkun in Religion and the Racist Right
(p. 225 et seq.), the author of "The Turner Diaries" is one William
L. Pierce, writing under the pseudonym "Andrew MacDonald." Pierce
received a doctorate in physics from the University of Colorado and worked in
industry and as a university instructor before becoming involved with Nazi
groups in the 1960s. "The Turner Diaries" appeared from 1975 to 1978
as a serial in "Attack!," a publication of the National Alliance, an
American Nazi faction led by Pierce. ("Attack" [Der Angriff] was also
the name of the paper Josef Goebbels founded in Berlin in the 1920s.) The book
was first published as a paperback in 1978, and Barkun cites a second edition,
also published by the National Alliance (Washington, DC 1980). The text for
this review was found online, without copyright, at
http://members.tripod.com/~EdgarS/TurnerD/turner.html in December 1997.
"The Turner Diaries" has been around for about 20 years at
this writing. This work has long been of some interest to students of religious
and political cults. What made it famous, however, was the destruction of the
Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. (The date was apparently chosen
to commemorate the destruction of the compound of the Branch Davidian sect at
Waco, Texas, precisely two years earlier.) The crime was committed with a truck
bomb using ammonium nitrate fertilizer as an explosive, a weapon system
described in some detail in this book. While there is no reason to believe that
the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing were working directly from the
historical script set out in "The Turner Diaries," nevertheless the
book is well-known in the circles with which they associated. Echoes of names
and incidents in the story, such as the racist insurgent group known as the
"Order" that appeared in the 1980s, continue to turn up from time to
time.
The book purports to have been published in the year 100 of the New
Era, which is apparently about AD 2100. In form, the book is a commemorative
edition of the diaries of one Earl Turner, a 35 year-old electrical engineer
who became a hero of the Great Revolution that preceded the New Era. The
diaries cover Turner's activities as an insurgent from 1991 to his death in
1993. The revolution was orchestrated by a guerrilla army known simply as
"the Organization." (Its opponents are normally referred to
collectively as "the System.") The heart of the Organization was a
quasi-religious group known as "the Order," into which Turner is
inducted. We learn almost nothing about the governance or history of these
bodies, though the Order seems to be inspired by the Templar-model of the SS
sometimes favored by Heinrich Himmler, under the apparent influence of the
apostate Austrian monk Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels. (See "The Occult Roots of
Nazism" by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1992) For
that matter, there is no systematic exposition of the beliefs of either the Organization
or the Order. The diaries are supposed to provide a ground level view of a
great event, interspersed with occasional reflections.
Before proceeding to an analysis, it would be helpful to look at a full
chronology of the dates and events named in the text. The story is built around
a system of commemorative dates. The major events of the Great Revolution are
almost all timed to coincide with such anniversaries as Hitler's ascension to
the Chancellorship of Germany (January 30), Hitler's birthday (April 20) and,
especially, the Beer Hall Putsch and Kristallnacht (November 9). Some of these
dates, as well as the sophisticated weapons the author describes, may
unfortunately have relevance in the future.
November 9, 1989. Turner's guns seized under the Cohen Act, enacted 18 months before the Revolution begins. Nearly a million citizens detained by the government for weapons possession.
September 16, 1991. Revolution begins.
September 18, 1991. Turner's guerrilla unit (based at first in the
Washington DC area) robs a Jewish liquor store (identified by surname).
September 19, 1991. Turner meditates on the revolutionary value of
official corruption.
September 21, 1991. Turner's unit retrieves weapons stored in buried
oil drums. Move to a new unit base. How-to information on stealing electricity
and water. Assassinations directed against public officials, Jews and
"responsible conservatives."
September 30, 1991. Notes on a radio pager system used by the
Organization. Government develops an internal passport system. Organization
begins developing a bomb to destroy the FBI computer center.
October 3, 1991. Description of a perimeter alarm system, including
photocell and sensitive ground-pads. Escape route prepared through a storm
drain.
October 6, 1991. Detonator for the truck bomb described. Merits of
various explosives considered. TNT preferred, fertilizer bomb a more doubtful
possibility.
October 11, 1991. Bombing to proceed with ammonium nitrate to preempt
the passport system as quickly as possible.
October 12, 1991. FBI Headquarters in Washington DC largely destroyed
at 9:45 a.m. by a bomb in a hijacked delivery truck, parked in a sub-basement
loading area. 700 people killed.
October 16, 1991. Accounts of successful weapons thefts, often with the
help of Army sympathizers.
October 23, 1991. Hundreds of raids and assassinations since the FBI
bombing. Presses of the Washington Post wrecked. Editorial Page editor
assassinated. Radio station in the DC area briefly seized.
October 27, 1991. Section leader tried and executed for refusing an
order to assassinate a priest and rabbi.
November 4, 1991. Complaints about slow pay.
November 8, 1991. Account of modifications to a stolen mortar. How to
cannibalize a large bomb for explosives.
November 9, 1991. Capitol building severely damaged during a joint
session of Congress by a mortar barrage. Simultaneous attack with automatic
weapons on the Los Angeles City Council. Jet bound for Tel Aviv from New York
destroyed by a bazooka.
November 14, 1991. Copycat bombings spread. Turner meets hippies and
considers recruiting them.
November 16, 1991. Roadblocks proliferate.
November 27, 1991. Turner given The Book to read (apparently a
quasi-sacred ideological text). Inducted into the Order (involves probationary
period and a "terrible oath").
November 28, 1991. Trouble with black junkies. All killed, along with
their white prostitutes.
November 30, 1991. Huge anti-racist rally-riot held in Chicago.
December 4, 1991. Visits with hippies. Accounts of a Jewish white-slaver.
Hippies inform police about location of Turner's unit. House raided. All escape
but Turner, who fails to kill himself as per instruction. Turner taken prisoner
and tortured by an Israeli intelligence officer.
September 11 and 12, 1992. Fourteen major bombings destroy much of the
shipping and industrial capacity of Houston, Texas. Explosions begin with the
destruction of a munitions ship bound for Israel.
March 21, 1993. Turner and other insurgents released in a raid on a
federal prison.
March 24, 1993. Turner tried and convicted for Oathbreaking. Remains in
the Order but sentenced to perform unspecified suicide mission.
March 25, 1993. Strategy of destroying economic targets explained.
March 28, 1993. Turner's unit now based in a printing shop in Washington,
DC. Notes on the difficulty of counterfeiting. Identification taken from
assassinated Jews used by Organization members. Mafia used by government to
assassinate aboveground Organization members.
April 2. Currency ink stolen.
April 10. Visit to Chicago.
April 14. Notes on a tour of a nuclear power plant at Evanston,
Illinois (Chicago area) and plans to disable it with a mortar using a
radiological shell.
April 20, 1993. Israeli embassy attacked with a mortar during important
reception.
April 25, 1993. Dissension between blacks and Jews grows.
May 6, 1993. Account of a visit to an arms warehouse in New York City.
Description of the infiltration of the armed forces.
May 23, 1993. Account of the bombing of the Dallas telephone exchange.
June 8, 1993. Account of the killing of a sheriff in the Denver area
who had arrested an Organization member.
June 21, 1993. Concern expressed that not enough is happening.
June 27, 1993. Orders to go to California for an unspecified action.
July 1, 1993. Arrival in Canoga Park, northwest of Los Angeles. Plans
revealed for coordinated attacks on 600 targets nationwide. Organization has
only about 5000 members, only 1,500 fighters.
July 4, 1993 (Approx.: events related July 7). Attacks launched
nationally, the most successful and concentrated in Los Angeles. Police
stations seized, water and power utilities destroyed or damaged. Some
high-ranking military officers declare for the revolution. Racial fighting
engineered in units remaining loyal to the government. Vandenberg Air Force
Base seized, along with a considerable nuclear stockpile.
July 11, 1993. Review of results of the July 4 offensive. Southern
California under the control of the Organization, Northern California under a
rebellious military faction. Rebel areas in a strategic nuclear standoff with
the federal government. Successful attack on the Evanston power plant
mentioned.
July 14, 1993. Disaster relief organized for Los Angeles. Black
population separated out into holding areas.
July 19, 1993. Blacks and Chicanos driven east out of the southern
California enclave into government controlled areas.
July 24, 1993. Jews and mixed-race persons marched to canyons around
Los Angeles and shot. Bucolic interlude with teenage volunteer farm-workers.
July 25, 1993. Recruiting.
August 1, 1993. The Day of the Rope. Summary executions of white
persons who cooperated with the System or had sexual intercourse with
nonwhites. Special attention given to actors, journalists and academics.
Killings of Jews in the canyons accelerated. Harboring of Jews a capital crime.
August 8, 1993. Turner made temporary director of utilities and public
services. Remaining population organized into work units. Denunciation of Lt.
Gen. Arnold Harding, commander of Travis Air Force Base and dictator of
northern California, for attempting to implement conventional conservative
policies.
September 16, 1993. Lt. Gen. Harding assassinated by the Organization.
August 23, 1993. Turner prepares to leave for Washington with four 60
kiloton nuclear warheads. 200 such warheads are distributed around the country.
August 26, 1993. Bomb detonated in Miami Beach, Florida. Organization
issues ultimatum to stop government plans to retake California.
August 27, 1993. Charleston, South Carolina nuked.
September 4, 1993. Account of cross-country trip with a team disguised
as soldiers.
September 8, 1993. Organization fires a barrage of missiles at New York
City, Israel and the Soviet Union. Federal government forced to launch a first
strike against the Soviet Union to diminish consequent counterstrike. 60
million Americans killed, but retaliation ragged. Both Organization and
Washington survive.
September 18, 1993. Account of nuclear exchange and its aftermath.
October 28, 1993. Organization creates an enclave in the ruins of
Baltimore. Government forces act only defensively. Pogroms reported in Russia,
Western Europe, South Africa and Australia. Arabs overrun Israel.
November 2, 1993. Further review of the situation. US under military
junta. Discussion of how to bomb the Pentagon by air.
November 9, 1993. Turner pilots a small plane with nuclear weapon into
the Pentagon and destroys the building. [November 9 is Day of the Martyrs.]
[Further entries provided in an Epilogue]
The Dark Years begin.
Mid-December 1993. Major enclave established in Detroit area.
January to April 1994. General race war. More enclaves established.
June 1994. Pittsburgh Massacre: enclave retaken by government forces,
white population slaughtered. Surviving local Organization staff officers shot
for incompetence.
August 1994. White population of US falls to 50 million.
November 9 [?], 1994 Toronto nuked to destroy Jewish refugees.
January 30, 1999. Truce of Omaha. Government junta surrenders to the
Organization.
Summer/Fall 1999. Local Organization cells take power in Europe.
December 1999. Asia east of the Urals sterilized with weapons of mass
destruction.
2000 New Era Begins [?]
What kind of a book is this?
Readers familiar with the literature of Alternative History may be
reminded of Norman Spinrad's famous 1972 novel, "The Iron Dream." The
premise of that book was that Hitler had emigrated to the United States after
the First World War and established himself as a writer and illustrator for
pulp science-fiction magazines. "The Iron Dream" is supposed to be
Hitler's masterpiece, the account of an imaginary world war in which a
fascist-type political movement conquers the world. Since Spinrad's novel
antedates "The Turner Diaries" by a few years (and was, frankly, the
kind of thing that an imaginative Nazi physicist might be inclined to read
anyway), the possibility of influence cannot be excluded. The difference is
that Spinrad was kidding.
Among the many things that can truthfully be said about "The
Turner Diaries," perhaps the oddest is that it often reads like a
home-improvement manual. While its descriptions of bombs and other deadly
devices are not detailed enough to allow readers to make their own, still it is
clear that the author likes nuts-and-bolts. He rarely misses an opportunity to
explain how something works. The pager-system he describes is either his own
invention or represented cutting-edge technology at the time the book was
written. More generally, one may note that the book is not your average
political rant. The writing is literate if wooden, and the ideological
digressions are usually kept to moderate proportions. In this it greatly
differs from, say, "Mein Kampf," which it occasionally quotes without
attribution. (On the other hand, Pierce cannot characterize people any better
than Hitler could draw them. Turner's love interest is occasioned by a chance
encounter with a woman in a cold communal shower he had just installed.) For
that matter, the book is surprisingly sparing even in its use of ordinary
racial epithets. Violent political writers usually express themselves in
harshly-worded opinions that are really screams. In "The Turner
Diaries," the screams are expressed in what the characters do.
"The Turner Diaries" is clearly an apocalyptic text. It has
many of the mechanics of ordinary premillennialism; Michael Barkun notes its
apparent links to the Christian Identity Movement. We have a seven year
Tribulation in the form of the Dark Years from 1993 to 2000. The latter year as
the point of the great transition from one age to another is too familiar to
require comment. We may have a weak analogue to the Pre-Tribulation Rapture of
the Saints, in the form of the establishment of the Organization enclave in
southern California a few months before the nuclear exchange. The haven, like
the Rapture, allows a respite before the final process of transformation
begins. In any case, the rejection of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture itself is
typical of Identity thinking. Readers may find some analogies in the more
popular (and explicitly antiracist) eschatology of Pat Robertson as expressed
in his novel, The End of the
Age.
This apocalypse, on the other hand, is unusually participatory. Some
apocalyptic texts call on their readers simply to have patience, since the old
order of things will be overthrown without their help. Others call on the
reader to rise up to carry out a transformation that is nevertheless mandated
by higher powers. The Turner apocalypse is clearly of this nature. We get a
hint, in Turner's brief remarks about the contents of the Book, of the larger
historical scheme that gives the Great Revolution its importance. The
imperative to overthrow the System is in some sense both biological and
theological, an inevitable necessity imposed by evolution itself. In fact, it
is only this ontological imperative that justifies it. Considered simply in
themselves, the people of the United States had shown they deserved to be
slaves. The Great Revolution would free them incidentally, but only for a
higher purpose.
This is not the Nazism of Goering's circle of plutocrats, or even of
Goebbel's "national bolshevism." What it most closely resembles is
the Nazism of Hitler's inner thoughts, as described by Hermann Rauschning in
"The Voice of Destruction" (1940) (a book, by the way, of which it is
fashionable among historians to be suspicious). While described as
"right-wing" for lack of a better term, there is nothing at all conservative
about this ideology.
In Turner's book, the dictator General Harding is derided for wanting
to restore the constitutional republic of the Founding Fathers. From what few
glimpses we get of the economic system established by the Organization, the new
order seems to be quite as communist as that of Pol Pot's Cambodia. (In fact,
considering the period in which the book was written, one wonders whether there
may not have been some influence.) This is the sort of radical vision in which
no institutions from the former regime survive, and in which minimizing
civilian casualties is simply not a consideration. One of the goals of the
revolution is precisely to reduce the people to a pure remnant, what the Yellow
Turban millenarians of Latter Han China called "seed people."
The true participants in the cosmic drama are the members of the Order
and the (presumably Jewish) masters of the System. The mass of the people, even
of the racially favored, is simply the medium in which these two elites fight.
There is a strong anarchist streak in the strategy of the Organization. While
the Organization is of course closely disciplined itself, for society as a
whole the principle is "the worse the better." The assumption is that
very few people really have political opinions, but simply support the
powers-that-be because that is the easiest way to remain comfortable.
Revolutionaries should therefore attack people's livelihoods, because then the
people will have no reason to support the system. It should also seek to kill
prominent establishment figures of all descriptions, simply to demoralize the
rest.
When there is sufficient chaos, the next step is not persuasion but
fear. That is why the Organization begins its administration in southern
California with public mass executions. Turner sees the value of the Stalinist
principle that the law should be so phrased that anyone can be arrested at any
time. The fact that almost everyone is a "race-traitor" for having
cooperated with the System is necessary to help establish the new regime. The
Organization and the Order do, of course, need to recruit. However, even when
the regime is in power, it is no part of statecraft to seek popularity in the
electoral sense.
Despite the many connections between "The Turner Diaries" and
familiar books and ideas, even the best-informed readers are likely to find
that their horror is tinged with puzzlement. The ability to compile an implied
bibliography for a book is not the same as understanding it. Where does this
story come from? The killing of the Jews is nowhere argued for: it is just
assumed to be obviously the proper thing to do. One can only assume that this
is the case among the audience for which it was written. As to the book as an
apocalyptic document, we are faced again, on a smaller scale, with the mystery
that surrounds the Third Reich itself. What is the great historical imperative
that made all this misery necessary? What were they really trying to do?
There is a type of nightmare in which fear after fear is realized and
then finally the monster catches you. "The Turner Diaries" has this
quality. It starts with a liquor store robbery and ends with the incineration
of most of Eurasia. The book is not hard to read, but the experience will
please few people. The problem is that it is not safe to simply turn the book
over to the psychologists. The nightmare has repeatedly proven its capacity to
leak into daylight.
END
Copyright © 1998 by John J. Reilly