The Turner Diaries--- blueprint for Oklahoma City and 9/11? The bible of the racist right is what the FBI calls this notorious book. It is said to have inspired terrorist Timothy McVeigh's
bombing in Oklahoma City. Though it contains vile racist and anti-Semitic attitudes, the book is often peddled to the naive as a simple adventure story for advocates of
gun rights. The book is a near-future science fiction novel telling the story of the Great Revolution--- the conquest of the USA by a
white racialist organization--- in the form of the diary of one of the revolutionaries, Earl Turner. The first chapter is barely begun when the author starts a prolonged flashback of Turner's memories of the Gun Raids, when (non-white) government troops invaded everyone's homes to take their guns. As a result, Turner and others in the
organization go
underground and plan to attack 'the system'. The acts of Turner's underground cell include the robbing of a liquor store and the killing of its Jewish owner and his wife, and the bombing of the FBI building in a manner very similar to McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing. Turner also participates in the execution of an Organization member deemed to be insufficiently radical. He has an emotionless love affair with a female Organization member who later is killed off to provide Turner more reason for anger at the system. As the
race war continues the Organization gains
control of Los Angeles, and underground Organization members come out of the woodwork with their hate lists of 'race traitors' to be executed. This includes a description of the hanging of a teenaged white girl based on gossip that she slept with a black man. The book's narrator Turner coldly defends these hangings--- even of hanging victims who are innocent and the victims of mistaken identity--- as needful for the sake of the revolution. The blacks of Los Angeles are confined to ghettoes, accused by the author of resorting to cannibalism, and then driven off into the desert. In a chilling scene, Turner comes across a long column of people, described as being either mixed race or 'Jewish looking'. These people are marched off into a canyon, apparently to be killed. The book climaxes with Earl Turner's suicide mission--- flying an explosive-laden plane into the Pentagon. Remembering this scene gave me chills on Sept. 11, 2001 when I heard that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, and caused me to wonder if the terrorists had read this book. The style of the book is rather ungainly. There are also logical contradictions such as the book describing high inflation rate and high prices of the time, yet having hero Turner saving his dimes in a glass milk bottle. And the message the author is trying to get across is repugnant to practically everyone--- even white racialists will take exception to the wanton killings of white girls perpetrated by the Organization's heroes based on rumors of interracial relations. (Whatever happened to the protection of white womanhood?) Yet this book remains important because it is so widely read among members of certain radical political elements. Few of these readers are willing to advocate anything as extreme as that of the Organization in the novel--- the popularity of the book in these circles is more to be explained by the book's underground status. Being forbidden fruit, it attracts.
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