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This Q&A is provided courtesy of the human rights organisation the Anti-Defamation League. Scroll down to the bottom to read my review of TTD.
What is The Turner Diaries?
The Turner Diaries, first published in 1978, is a novel popular among far-right extremists. Written by William Pierce (under the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald), it po rtrays the violent overthrow of the Federal Government, and the systematic killing of Jews and non-whites in order to establish an "Aryan" world.
What influence has The Turner Diaries had on violent, far right extremists?
It is kn own that accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was an avid reader and enthusiastic promoter of The Turner Diaries. There are remarkable similarities between the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma city and a scene in The Turner Diaries which graphically describes the preparation of a bomb which is used to destroy the national headquarters of the FBI.
Similarly, The Turner Diaries is seen as the likely inspiration for the violent extremist group known as "The Order," which in the early 1980's committed a series of crimes including murders, robberies, counterfeiting, and the bombing of a synagogue. Robert Mathews, the leader of this terrorist gang, told an acquaintance that the bank robberies committed by The Order were the beg inning of the American Nazi revolution depicted in The Turner Diaries. Mathews was killed in a fire resulting from a shootout with FBI agents in 1984, and most of the other leaders of The Order are serving long prison terms.
What are some representative quotes from The Turner Diaries?
"My day's work started a little before five o'clock yesterday, when I began helping Ed Sanders mix heating oil with the ammonium nitrate fertilizer in Unit 8's garage. We stood the 100 pound bags on end one by one and poked a small hole in the top with a screwdriver, just big enough to insert the end of a funnel. While I held the bag and funnel, Ed poured in a gallon of oil. . . It took us nearly three hours to do all 44 sacks, and the work really wore me out.
Meanwhile, George and Henry were out stealing a truck. With only two-and-a-half tons of explosives we didn't need a big tractor trailer rig, so we decided to grab a delivery truck. . ."
". . .If the White nations of the world had not allowed themselves to become subject to the Jew, to Jewish ideas, to Jewish spirit, this war would not be necessary. We can hardly consider ourselves blameless. We can hardly say we had no choice, no chance to avoid the Jew's snare. We can hardly say we were not warned."
". . .the people had their share of the Jews and their tricks. . . If the Organization survives this contest, no Jew will - anywhere. We'll go to the utmost ends of the Earth to hunt down the last of Satan's spawn. . ."
Who is William Pierce?
William Pierce is the leader of the West Virginia based National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group. Under the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald, he is the author of the racist and anti-Semitic fantasy novel The Turner Diaries. Pierce holds a Ph.D. in physics, and formerly held a teaching position Oregon State University. He has, at various times, been affiliated with George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party, and Willis Carto's National Youth Alliance (Carto now heads the Washington, D.C. based Liberty Lobby, the largest and most well funded Anti-Semitic organization in America today), though Carto and Pierce are currently rivals.
Pierce is also a founder and trustee of the "Cosmotheist Church," a "Christian Ident ity" group which shares membership and organizational space with the National Alliance. (The pseudo-religious Identity Church movement holds that whites are the "chosen people" of the Bible, and that Jews and blacks are "mud people" and the children of Sa tan)
What is the National Alliance?
Since the 1970's Pierce has run The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization based in West Virginia, which actively promulgates racist and anti-Semitic propaganda. Its subsidiary, National Van guard Books, pushes such notorious titles as Mein Kampf, The International Jew, and of course, Pierce's own The Turner Diaries. In 1983, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, agreeing with an amicus brief submitted by ADL, the American Jewish Co ngress, and the NAACP, found that National Alliance was not an educational organization and upheld an I.R.S ruling stripping it of its tax exempt status.
What else has Pierce written?
In addition to The Turner Diaries, Pierce (aga in under the pen name Andrew Macdonald) has written a similar racist fantasy novel entitled Hunter. Hunter depicts the story of a drive-by killer who begins murdering inter-racial couples and eventually begins assassinating Jews in order to "cleanse" Amer ica and save the future of white civilization. The book is dedicated to Joseph Paul Franklin, a fire bomber of synagogues who is serving multiple life sentences for the sniper murders of at least two black men.
Pierce is also the editor of National V anguard, and the National Alliance Bulletin, both published by the National Alliance, and appears regularly on his own short-wave radio program called "American Dissident Voices."
How does Pierce try to recruit or attract new supporters?
New World Order Comix is a comic book published by National Vanguard Books. Aimed at white teenagers, the goal of the comic is to recruit young people to the National Alliance neo-Nazi cause. The book is replete with racist and anti-Semitic sentim ents. For example, "New World Order Comix #1" is subtitled "The Saga of. . . White Will," the name of the young "hero" of the story, who has conflicts with the blacks and Jews in his class and is eventually turned on to the National Alliance by the father of a friend.
The National Alliance also maintains a site on the World Wide Web of the Internet, where computer users can download written materials, and request information about the organization.
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry. This Q&A may be reproduced in part or in whole with proper credit to the Anti-Defamation League. However, with regards to balance of arguement, the ADL is not the public-minded charity it professes to be. It's main purpose is to smear with allegations of Anti-Semitism anybody who criticises the neo-fascist regime in Israel and US support for it See this Page
The path of 'future history' is now well trodden, and one of the best examples of this literary style is Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Mars Trilogy' describing the colonisation of Mars as historical fact. The series begins with 'Red Mars' and is replete with guerilla war and revolutions a la 'The Turner Diaries' (TTD). There, however, the comparison ends. Unlike the author of TTD - William (Andrew MacDonald) Pierce - Kim Stanley Robinson is sensitive to the realities of politics, rather than to the fantasies of utopian daydreaming. Robinson describes political infighting, the splitting of groups into factions and fractions, and eventually, a 'revolution' which, like all revolutions, is simply a brutal crisis brought about by divided interests. Pierce, on the other hand, describes a typically American Imperialist 'Us verses Them' conflict. Much like George W Bush's 'War on Terror', a childlike pettiness and simplistic worldview are much in evidence. Pierce describes a guerilla-style assault on 'The System' by the fascist 'Organisation' which is headed by an elite group of robe-wearing klansmen called 'The Order'. In his desire for order and authority, Pierce mocks the System for it's lack of cohesivity and loyalty while describing his nazi underground as a kind of group-mind, where all footsoldiers and stormtroopers think in exactly the same way and have exactly the same goals as the powerful 'elite' that guides them. There are no hidden agendas or factionalism in Pierce's Organisation, because dissent or free-thinking are impossibilities in a fascist state. As a result, the narrative and dialogue are unnatural and the characters (if you can call them that) simply not beleivable.
Neither is this book a 'Handbook for Terror' as the ADL or Bush's elite would have you think. TTD is a third-rate thriller. Anybody expecting to be able to build a bomb after reading it will be sorely mistaken. Munitions details are left unusually vague and the 'guerilla tactics' described simply mimic the popular image of terrorism garnered from watching a thousand late-night Channel 5 movies. This is not Frederick Forsyth.
In conclusion, by all means read The Turner Diaries - I pesonally beleive in freedom of information and the dictum Know your Enemy - but for God's sake don't buy it! If you want a copy, there are several websites where you can download it for free. Here is a link to one of them: The Turner Diaries. Also, keep in mind as you read it that real people (Whites, Jews, Blacks, Hipanics, and other normal people) don't actually act this way - only in the head of a warped fantasist daydreaming about a fascist utopia.