The Turner Diaries

The protagonist, Earl Turner, takes part in the apocalyptic overthrow of the United States federal government (referred to as "the System" throughout the novel). Turner and his fellow insurgents wage a race war which begins in North America and spreads to the rest of the world.

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A framing device which takes place in 2099 (100 years after the events depicted) gives the novel's main text a historical context, which is presented as the journal of Earl Turner, an active member of a white nationalist movement known as the Organization. After the federal government has confiscated all civilian firearms in the country under the Cohen Act, Turner and his colleagues take their movement underground to wage a guerrilla war against what he terms the "System", a loose network of America's most powerful institutions of government, media, society and finance, which are depicted as all being led by Jews who collude among each other.[5] The System begins by implementing numerous repressive laws against various forms of prejudice: by making it a hate crime for white people to defend themselves when crimes are committed against them by non-white people, even after all weapons have been confiscated; and pushing for new surveillance measures to monitor its citizens, such as requiring them to possess a special passport at all times to permanently monitor where individuals are. The "Organization" starts its campaigns by committing acts such as the bombing of the FBI headquarters, then carrying on a relentless, low-level campaign of resistance, assassination, and economic sabotage throughout the United States.

Turner plays a large part in activities in the Washington, D.C. area. When the President of the United States delivers a speech denouncing racists and demanding that all members of the Organization be brought to justice, Turner and other Organization members launch mortars into the streets of Washington from far away, forcing the President and other government officials to be evacuated. In another scene, Turner watches an anti-racism parade on television in which whites who are not part of the parade are pulled aside and beaten (sometimes to death) by non-white marchers; the march eventually turns into a full-scale riot. At one point, the crowd focus on a white cat, leading a protestor to yell "Get the honky cat!" Turner's exploits lead to his initiation into the "Order": a secret neo-Nazi rebel group. The Order is secretly leading the Organization and their existence remains unknown both to ordinary Organization members and the System.[5] Later, Turner's hideout is raided by law enforcement. During an ensuing gun battle with authorities, everyone in the unit manages to escape but Turner is captured after nearly being killed. He is arrested and sent to a military base for interrogation by the FBI and an Israeli intelligence officer. He is tortured in an effort to coerce the release of information, but resists. The interrogators fail to extract the most valuable pieces of information from him, lacking awareness of the existence of the Order. However, he does reveal some information to them. Months later, other members of the Order rescue him from the prison. They inform him that he will be punished in the future for failing to commit suicide to avoid capture and interrogation. He acknowledges the authority of the Order and pledges to accept whatever punishment they impose, whenever they impose it.

Eventually, the Organization seizes the nuclear weapons at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California and targets missiles at New York City and Tel Aviv.[12] While in control of California, the Organization ethnically cleanses the area of all non-Aryans by forcing them into the East, which is still controlled by the System. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of African Americans are forced into the desert to cause an economic crisis on the System's welfare system and all Jews are beaten, lynched, or shot.[12] The resulting racial conflict in the east causes many whites to "wake up" and begin fleeing to Southern California, which becomes a white ethnostate. This deliberately fomented racial conflict, referred to as "demographic warfare", starts to bring in new recruits to both the Organization and the Order.[13] During this time, the Organization raids a black sanctuary and discovers a cannibalism operation where black people kidnap, butcher, and eat whites.

The Organization raids the houses of all individuals who have been reported to be race traitors in some way (such as judges, professors, lawyers, politicians, clergy, journalists, entertainers, etc.), and white people who "defiled" their race by living with or marrying non-whites. These individuals are dragged from their homes and publicly hanged in the streets in Los Angeles in an event which comes to be known as the "Day of the Rope" (August 1, 1993). Most of these public executions are filmed for propaganda purposes.[12][5] The Organization has little use for most white "mainstream" Americans. Those on the left are seen by the narrator as dupes or willing agents of the Jews. Conservatives and libertarians are regarded as merely self-interested businessmen or misguided fools, because, the Organization states, the Jews "took over according to the Constitution, fair and square." Turner and his comrades save their special contempt for the ordinary people, who are depicted to care about nothing beyond being kept comfortable and entertained. Once the Organization instigates a nuclear war, the Organization opens compounds where food and shelter are available—but those seeking admittance are given a bayonet and told to come back with "the freshly cut head of a non-white person;" those unable or unwilling to pay such an "admittance price" are left to starve, as their death would "improve the race."

The Organization then uses both its southern Californian base of operations and its nuclear weapons to open a wider war in which it launches nuclear strikes against New York City and Israel, initiates a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union, and plants nuclear weapons and new combat units throughout North America. Many major U.S. cities are destroyed, including Baltimore and Detroit. While the United States is being engulfed in a nuclear civil war, governments all over the world fall one by one, and violent anti-Jewish riots break out in the streets. After the nuclear weapons are launched against Israel and Tel Aviv is destroyed, the Arabs take advantage of the opportunity and proceed to swarm into Israel, mostly armed with clubs and knives, and kill all Israelis. The governments of France and the Netherlands collapse, and the Soviet Union falls apart while experiencing a surge in anti-Semitic violence. Meanwhile, the United States is put in a state of absolute martial law and transformed into a military dictatorship. The United States government decides to launch an invasion of the Organization's stronghold in southern California. The leaders of the Order now inform Earl Turner of his punishment for having failed to resist his interrogators during his captivity: he must pilot a crop duster equipped with a nuclear warhead and destroy the Pentagon in a kamikaze-type suicide-strike, before the invasion can be ordered.

The epilogue summarizes how the Organization went on to conquer the rest of the world and how all non-white races of people were murdered. Africa was invaded; all of its black inhabitants were killed. Puerto Ricans (described as a "repulsive mongrel race") were killed and Puerto Rico was recolonized. After China attempts to invade European Russia, the Organization attacks with nuclear, chemical, radiological, and biological weapons, which render the entire country of China uninhabitable and rife with "mutants". In the United States, the last remaining non-white people are hunted down, along with all of the individuals who are involved in organized crime (such as the Mafia). One of the last steps in the Organization's victory is its truce with the remainder of the American military's generals, who agree to surrender if the former swears not to harm them or their immediate families, which the Organization accepts. The epilogue concludes with the statement that "just 110 years after the birth of the Great One, the dream of a white world finally became a certainty... and the Order would spread its wise and benevolent rule over the earth for all time to come."[5]

The Turner Diaries was originally published in a serial form in the National Alliance publication Attack! between 1975 and 1978,[14] with one chapter released per issue during this period.[15] Enthusiastic reactions among racist sympathizers led Pierce to self-publish the story as a paperback in 1978.[16] Artist Dennis Nix contributed to the illustrations.[17] The main story was originally set in the 1980s; Pierce changed it to the 1990s when the series was compiled to be published as a book in 1978.[15]

The Turner Diaries was initially only sold via mail order from the National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia.[18] It had sold 200,000 copies by the late 1990s according to self-estimates generally considered reliable by scholars.[19][20] Other estimates have gone higher, giving a figure of 500,000 copies sold as of 2000.[18][1]

• John Sutherland, in a 1996 essay for the London Review of Books, wrote: "The Turner Diaries is not the work of a Holocaust-denier (although Pierce gives us plenty of that) so much as a would-be Holocaust-repeater."[12]
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center calls it a "hate book".[21] The book has received criticism from The New York Times which noted its influence on white supremacists.[22]
• Kathleen Belew wrote that some actions in the 2021 United States Capitol attack appeared to be inspired by the book's "Day of the Rope" and an attack on Congress in the book. She wrote that the book "really becomes a clear point of reference if you look at the photographs of the action".[23]

In late 2020, online bookstore Amazon removed all new and used print and digital copies of The Turner Diaries from its bookselling platform, including all subsidiaries (AbeBooks, The Book Depository), effectively stopping sales of the title from the digital bookselling market. Although Amazon did not state a specific reason for the removal, it followed the company's purge of a number of self-published and small-press titles connected with QAnon from its platform.[40] Social cataloguing and book review website Goodreads, another subsidiary of Amazon, also purged the metadata from its record for all editions of The Turner Diaries, replacing the author and title field with "NOT A BOOK", a designated moniker normally used by the platform to weed non-book items with ISBN numbers, as well as plagiarized titles, from its catalogue.[41]

In Canada, The Turner Diaries is one of many titles considered by the Government of Canada to be "obscene" and "hate propaganda" under the Criminal Code.[42] The title is one of numerous titles to be confiscated when discovered in postal deliveries within Canada's extensive Quarterly List of Prohibited Publications, although print copies of the book still arrive to Canadian buyers without confiscation, generally by being marked simply as "Used Book" on shipping labels rather than listing The Turner Diaries by specific title. According to Ryerson University, "Today, officials of the Canada Border Services Agency prohibit publications that they regard as obscene or as hate propaganda. Officials derive their power from Tariff Item 9899.00.00. Most of their decisions are never appealed to an open court."[43]

• Hunter (1989), another novel by William Luther Pierce
• The Camp of the Saints (1973) by Jean Raspail
• Imperium (2016), film directed by Daniel Ragussis (the book is mentioned as the inspiration for white supremacists)
• The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London
• Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory
• Siege by James Mason
• Talk Radio (1988), film written by Eric Bogosian, directed by Oliver Stone (the main character, who is based on Alan Berg, mentions the book)

Notes

Bibliography

• "The Turner Legacy" Archived February 3, 2023, at the Wayback Machine (PDF, 50 pages), International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague, Netherlands