The Turner Diaries is a novel written in 1978 by William Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald), the late leader of the white separatist group National Alliance.
Although The Turner Diaries was only available by mail order and at gatherings and gun shows, it is believed to have sold half a million copies, and to have had many more readers, because it was handed from one person to another. The novel is now available through mainstream sources (ISBN 1569800863) and online.
Plot
The narrative starts with an account set some time in the future, in which all people of non-European ancestry, as well those as of Jewish and Hispanic ancestry, have been killed. The bulk of the book then quotes a recently discovered diary of a man named Earl Turner, an active member of the white separatist underground, who helped bring this future about. The book details a violent overthrow of the United States federal government by white separatists and also describes a brutal race war that takes place simultaneously.
The story starts with the bombing of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters, which many have suggested served as a model for the Oklahoma City bombing. The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to hit The Pentagon, which is depicted as a courageous and patriotic act. The novel ends with an afterword summarizing how white separatists later succeeded in conquering the rest of world and in eliminating all people of other races.
The book is graphically violent. Non-whites are depicted as being sub-human. Whites who do not support the race war are described as "race traitors" who must be killed along with the non-whites.
Quotes from the book
- "About 45 seconds after the second round the third one landed on the roof of the south wing of the Capitol and exploded inside the building... We saw beautiful blossoms of flame and steel sprouting everywhere, dancing across the asphalt, thundering in the midst of splintered masonry and burning vehicles, erupting now inside and now outside the Capitol, wreaking their bloody toll in the ranks of tyranny and treason."
- "Then, of course, came the mopping-up period, when the last of the non-White bands were hunted down and exterminated, followed by the final purge of undesirable racial elements among the remaining White population... But it was in the year 1999, according to the chronology of the Old Era — just 110 years after the birth of the Great One — that the dream of a White world finally became a certainty."
(In the book "The Great One" refers to Adolf Hitler. Some white separatists argue that the "White world" actually only refers to the White Western World, not the whole world, but nothing in the text of the book supports this assertion.)
Actions claimed to have been inspired by the book
To date, several actions have been claimed to be inspired by this book:
- At the time of his arrest, Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted for the Oklahoma City bombing, had a copy of The Turner Diaries in his possession. McVeigh's bombing was strikingly similar to the event described in the book where the fictional terrorist group blows up FBI Headquarters.
- The Order, 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 murdered Alan Berg, a Jewish talk show host, and engaged in other acts of violence in order to hasten the race war described in the book. The Order's efforts later inspired another group, The New Order, which planned to commit similar crimes in an effort to start a race war that would lead to a violent revolution.
- The Turner Diaries provided inspiration to John William King, the man convicted for dragging an African-American man to his death in Jasper, Texas. As King shackled James Byrd's legs to the back of his truck he was reported to have said, "We're going to start the Turner Diaries early."
- The suicide mission to bomb the Pentagon at the end of the book is eerily similar in some people's minds to the suicide bombing of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 by members of Muslim extremist group Al Qaeda. It has been suggested by some that the book only serves as a model of how a local grass-roots movemnent can overthrow a powerful and tyrannical central government, and that this has led to some groups that do not even agree with the white separatist/supremacist movement using it as a model or blueprint for revolution.
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