The Turner Diaries
Encyclopedia
The Turner Diaries is a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written in 1978 by William Luther Pierce
William Luther Pierce
William Luther Pierce III was the leader of the white separatist National Alliance organization, and one of the most important ideologists of the white nationalist movement. Pierce originally worked as an assistant professor of physics at Oregon State University, before he became involved in...

 (former leader of the white nationalist organization National Alliance) under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 "Andrew Macdonald". The Turner Diaries depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the United States federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

, nuclear war, and, ultimately, to a race war
Race war
Race war is a term referring to developing hostilities between ethnic groups divided on the basis of racial group or skin color. The term may refer to specific violent acts or to general overt or covert hostilities between ethnic groups; compare ethnic conflict.-Manson:The murders perpetrated by...

 leading to the extermination
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

 of all Jews and non-whites. The book was called "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic" by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

and has been labeled the "bible of the racist right" by the Southern Poverty Law Center
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...

.

The novel has been associated with a number of real-life violent crimes. Most notably, many believe that a scene depicting preparation for the bombing of the J. Edgar Hoover Building
J. Edgar Hoover Building
The J. Edgar Hoover Building is located in Washington, D.C. It is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation . The building, named for former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, is located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The building received its official name, the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I...

, the FBI national headquarters, served as the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing
Oklahoma City bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19...

 in 1995 by Timothy McVeigh
Timothy McVeigh
Timothy James McVeigh was a United States Army veteran and security guard who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995...

, who had promoted the book.

Plot summary

The narrative starts with a foreword set in 2099, one hundred years after the events depicted in the book. 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 militant
Militant
The word militant, which is both an adjective and a noun, usually is used to mean vigorously active, combative and aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in 'militant reformers'. It comes from the 15th century Latin "militare" meaning "to serve as a soldier"...

 comrades and a brutal contemporaneous race war
Race war
Race war is a term referring to developing hostilities between ethnic groups divided on the basis of racial group or skin color. The term may refer to specific violent acts or to general overt or covert hostilities between ethnic groups; compare ethnic conflict.-Manson:The murders perpetrated by...

 that takes place first in North America, and then the rest of the world.

The story starts soon after the federal government has confiscated all civilian firearms in the country under the fictional Cohen Act, and the Organization to which Turner and his cohorts belong goes underground and engages in guerrilla war
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

 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
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

, assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

 and economic sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...

 throughout the United States. Turner's exploits lead to his initiation into the Order, a quasi-religious 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 the nuclear weapons at Vandenberg Air Force Base
Vandenberg Air Force Base
Vandenberg Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base, located approximately northwest of Lompoc, California. It is under the jurisdiction of the 30th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command ....

; ethnically cleanses
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....

 the area of all blacks and summarily executes all Jews and "race traitor
Race traitor
Race traitor is a pejorative reference to a person who is perceived as supporting attitudes or positions thought to be against the interests or well-being of their own race...

s". The Organization's response to a white woman who had a black man as a lover is summary execution. The Organization has little use for most white Americans. Those on the Left are seen as dupes or willing agents of the Jews, while conservatives and libertarians are regarded as misguided fools, for, after all, the Jews "took over according to the Constitution, fair and square." Turner and his comrades save their special contempt for the ordinary people, who care about nothing beyond being kept comfortable and entertained.

The Organization then uses both the Southern California base of operations and their nuclear weapons to open a wider war in which they launch nuclear strikes against New York City and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, initiate a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, and plant nuclear weapons and new terrorist cells throughout North America. The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...

 equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to destroy The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

, in order to eliminate the leadership of the remaining military government
Military government
Military government can refer to conditions under either Military occupation, or Military dictatorship.-Military Government:Military government is the form of administration by which an occupying power exercises governmental authority over occupied territory.The Hague Conventions of 1907 specify...

 before it orders an assault to retake California. The novel ends with an epilogue summarizing how the Organization continued on to conquer the rest of the world and how people of other races (mainly the Chinese) were eliminated.

First and second editions

The Turner Diaries was first serialized in the mid 1970s in the National Alliance's tabloid paper, Attack!. The first printing in paperback was May 1978. Pierce originally set his story in the 1980s. Its reprinting (September 1980) took the form of a slightly altered second edition that moved the setting forward ten years. Although subsequent printings of The Turner Diaries have featured different cover art or back cover copy, they have kept to the second edition's text.

In keeping with the new 1990s time frame, 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.
  • The Order's "nearly 58 years of existence" is increased to 68, making the date of its founding 1925, a reference to the SS.
  • 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.

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.

Impact

According to the Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...

, it is "probably the most widely read book among far-right extremists; many have cited it as the inspiration behind their terrorist organizing and activity." The Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

 calls it a "hate" book.

The novel was initially only available through mail order
Mail order
Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer...

 and partially serialized in National Alliance publications. As of 2000 it was reported to have sold about 500,000 copies.

Crimes associated with the book

  • The Order
    The Order (group)
    The Order, also known as the Brüder Schweigen or Silent Brotherhood, was an organization active in the United States between 1983 and 1984...

    , 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 committed one of the biggest highway robberies of all time, then murdered radio host Alan Berg
    Alan Berg
    Alan Berg was a Jewish American attorney and Denver, Colorado talk radio show host. Berg was notable for his largely liberal, outspoken viewpoints and confrontational interview style....

     and engaged in other acts of violence in order to hasten the race war described in the book.
  • John William King was convicted of dragging James Byrd
    James Byrd, Jr.
    James Byrd, Jr. was an African-American who was murdered by three white men, asserted to be white supremacists, during a racially motivated crime in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged Byrd behind a pick-up truck along an asphalt road after they...

    , an African-American, to his death in Jasper, Texas
    Jasper, Texas
    Jasper is the county seat of Jasper County, Texas, in the United States. The population was 8,247 at the 2000 census. Jasper is situated in the Deep East Texas subregion, about northeast of Houston. The city is best known for the 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr., an event which gained national...

     in 1998. 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."
  • During the course of a federal trial relating to charges of conspiracy to violate civil rights and assault under color of law of Frank Jude, Jr.
    Frank Jude, Jr.
    Frank Jude, Jr., a.k.a. Frankie Lee Jude, Jr., is a Wisconsin man who was severely beaten by off-duty Milwaukee police officers in the early-morning hours of October 24, 2004...

     in 2004 by several off-duty police officers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a copy of The Turner Diaries was found during a search of the home of one of the officers charged and later convicted.
  • A copy of The Turner Diaries was found (amidst other Neo-Nazi propaganda) in the home of Jacob D. Robida
    Jacob D. Robida
    Jacob D. Robida was a Massachusetts teenager who attacked three patrons at a New Bedford gay bar on February 2, 2006. He fled the state and drove to Charleston, West Virginia, where he allegedly kidnapped a female companion and drove southwest. He was stopped by Gassville, Arkansas Police Officer...

    , who attacked 3 men at a gay bar
    Gay bar
    A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...

     with a hatchet and a gun. Robida fled, killing a hostage and a police officer before committing suicide.
  • David Copeland
    David Copeland
    David John Copeland is a former member of the British National Party and the National Socialist Movement, who became known as the "London Nail Bomber" after a 13-day bombing campaign in April 1999 aimed at London's black, Bangladeshi and gay communities.Over three successive weekends between 17...

    , a British Neo-Nazi who killed three people in a bombing campaign against London's black, Asian and gay communities in April 1999, quoted from The Turner Diaries while being interviewed by police.
  • Photocopies taken from The Turner Diaries were reportedly found alongside Timothy McVeigh
    Timothy McVeigh
    Timothy James McVeigh was a United States Army veteran and security guard who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995...

     when he was arrested in a traffic stop following the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995.

See also

  • Hunter, a novel with similar themes also written by Pierce under the nom de plume "Andrew Macdonald".
  • The Iron Heel
    The Iron Heel
    The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...

    by Jack London
    Jack London
    John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

    , a novel with a similar diary style (which was Pierce's inspiration for The Turner Diaries)


External links

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