The Turner Diaries

The Turner Diaries is a 1978 short novel by Andrew Macdonald (pseudonym of William Luther Pierce, leader of the white supremacist National Alliance). The book depicts a violent revolution in the United States leading to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and ultimately a genocide (via the systematic extermination of non-Europeans in the USA) committed by a revolutionary movement known as the Organization. The book was implicated in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, perpetuated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, among other acts of terrorism.

Quotes

 * Looking at it philosophically, one can’t avoid the conclusion that it is corruption, not tyranny, which leads to the overthrow of governments. A strong and vigorous government, no matter how oppressive, usually need not fear revolution. But a corrupt, inefficient, decadent government — even a benevolent one — is always ripe for revolution. The system we are fighting is both corrupt and oppressive, and we should thank god for corruption.


 * What is really precious to the average American is not his freedom or his honor or the future of his race, but his pay check. He complained when the System began busing his kids to Black schools 20 years ago, but he was allowed to keep his station wagon and his fiberglass speedboat, so he didn't fight.


 * He complained when they took away his guns five years ago, but he still had his color TV and his backyard barbecue, so he didn't fight.


 * And he complains today when the Blacks rape his women at will and the System makes him show an identity pass to buy groceries or pick up his laundry, but he still has a full belly most of the time, so he won't fight.


 * He hasn't an idea in his head that wasn't put there by his TV set. He desperately wants to be "well adjusted" and to do and think and say exactly what he thinks is expected of him. He has become, in short, just what the System has been trying to make of him these past 50 years or so: a mass-man; a member of the great, brainwashed proletariat; a herd animal; a true democrat.


 * That, unfortunately, is our average White American. We can wish that it weren't so, but it is. The plain, horrible truth is that we have been trying to evoke a heroic spirit of idealism which just isn't there any more. It has been washed right out of 99 per cent of our people by the flood of Jewish-materialist propaganda in which they have been submerged practically all their lives.


 * 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. They had the range now, and the projectiles began raining down at four-to-five second intervals. Practically everyone, including most of the TV crews, had scrambled for cover, but one intrepid cameraman remained at his post.


 * 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.


 * Knowing fully what was demanded in character and commitment of each man who stood before me, my chest swelled with pride. These were no soft-bellied, conservative businessmen assembled for some Masonic mumbodumbo [sic]; no loudmouthed, beery red-necks [sic] letting off a little ritualized steam about "the goddam niggers"; no pious, frightened churchgoers whining for the guidance or protection of an anthropomorphic deity. These were real men, White men, men who were now one with me in spirit and consciousness as well as in blood.


 * As the torchlight flickered over the coarse, gray robes of the motionless throng, I thought to myself: These men are the best my race has produced in this generation — and they are as good as have been produced in any generation. In them are combined fiery passion and icy discipline, deep intelligence and instant readiness for action, a strong sense of self-worth and a total commitment to our common cause. On them hang the hopes of everything that will ever be. They are the vanguard of the coming New Era, the pioneers who will lead our race out of its present depths and toward the unexplored heights above. And I am one with them!


 * Today has been the Day of the Rope — a grim and bloody day, but an unavoidable one. Tonight, from tens of thousands of lampposts, power poles, and trees throughout this vast metropolitan area the grisly forms hang.


 * In the lighted areas one sees them everywhere. Even the street signs at intersections have been pressed into service, and at practically every street corner I passed this evening on my way to HQ there was a dangling corpse, four at every intersection. Hanging from a single overpass only about a mile from here is a group of about 30, each with an identical placard around its neck bearing the printed legend, "I betrayed my race." Two or three of that group had been decked out in academic robes before they were strung up, and the whole batch are apparently faculty members from the nearby UCLA campus.


 * [...]


 * The first thing I saw in the moonlight was the placard with its legend in large, block letters: "I defiled my race." Above the placard leered the horribly bloated, purplish face of a young woman, her eyes wide open and bulging, her mouth agape. Finally I could make out the thin, vertical line of rope disappearing into the branches above. Apparently the rope had slipped a bit or the branch to which it was tied had sagged, until the woman's feet were resting on the pavement, giving the uncanny appearance of a corpse standing upright of its own volition.


 * I shuddered and quickly went on my way. There are many thousands of hanging female corpses like that in this city tonight, all wearing identical placards around their necks. They are the White women who were married to or living with Blacks, with Jews, or with other non-White males


 * There are many thousands of hanging female corpses like that in this city tonight, all wearing identical placards around their necks. They are the White women who were married to or living with Blacks, with Jews, or with other non-White males. There are also a number of men wearing the l-defiled-my-race placard, but the women easily outnumber them seven or eight to one. On the other hand, about ninety per cent of the corpses with the I-betrayed-my-race placards are men, and overall the sexes seem to be roughly balanced.


 * Those wearing the latter placards are the politicians, the lawyers, the businessmen, the TV newscasters, the newspaper reporters and editors, the judges, the teachers, the school officials, the "civic leaders", the bureaucrats, the preachers, and all the others who, for reasons of career or status or votes or whatever, helped promote or implement the System's racial program. The System had already paid them their 30 pieces of silver. Today we paid them.


 * Then, of course, came the mopping-up period, when the last of the non-White bands [in "North America", by which the author appears to mean the US and Canada] were hunted down and exterminated, followed by the final purge of undesirable racial elements among the remaining White population.


 * When, during the summer and early fall of 1999, one European nation after another was liberated by the Organization, the Chinese decided to make a grab for European Russia. The Organization countered this move massively, using nuclear missiles to knock out the still-primitive Chinese missile and strategic-bomber capabilities, as well as hitting a number of new Chinese troop concentrations west of the Urals. Unfortunately, this action did not stem the Yellow tide flowing north and west from China.


 * The Organization still required time to reorganize and reorient the European populations newly under its control before it could hope to deal in a conventional manner with the enormous numbers of Chinese infantry pouring across the Urals into Europe; all its dependable troops at that time were hardly sufficient even for garrison duty in the newly liberated and still not entirely pacified areas of eastern and southern Europe.


 * Therefore, the Organization resorted to a combination of chemical, biological, and radiological means, on an enormous scale, to deal with the problem. Over a period of four years some 16 million square miles of the earth's surface, from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, were effectively sterilized. Thus was the Great Eastern Waste created.


 * Only in the last decade have certain areas of the Waste been declared safe for colonization. Even so, they are "safe" only in the sense that the poisons sowed there a century ago have abated to the point that they are no longer a hazard to life. As everyone is aware, the bands of mutants which roam the Waste remain a real threat, and it may be another century before the last of them has been eliminated and White colonization has once again established a human presence throughout this vast area.


 * 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 [referring to Adolf Hitler, born in 1889] — that the dream of a White world finally became a certainty. And it was the sacrifice of the lives of uncounted thousands of brave men and women of the Organization during the preceding years which had kept that dream alive until its realization could no longer be denied.


 * Among those uncounted thousands Earl Turner played no small part. He gained immortality for himself on that dark November day 106 years ago when he faithfully fulfilled his obligation to his race, to the Organization, and to the holy Order which had accepted him into its ranks. And in so doing he helped greatly to assure that his race would survive and prosper, that the Organization would achieve its worldwide political and military goals, and that the Order would spread its wise and benevolent rule over the earth for all time to come.

About The Turner Diaries

 * The Turner Diaries reached its pinnacle of popularity in 1995, after it was widely reported that pages of the novel were found in a plastic baggie in [Timothy] McVeigh's car shortly after the bombing that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City. McVeigh, who sold copies of his favorite novel at gun shows across the country, later said that while he didn't subscribe to the book's racism, he was inspired by its "pro-gun rights" message.
 * Camille Jackson "The Turner Diaries, Other Racist Novels, Inspire Extremist Violence", Intelligence Report: Southern Poverty Law Center (October 14, 2004/Fall 2004)


 * Moving closer to the hard core of the Organisation, Turner is recruited to blow up the FBI national headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is to be done with a truck-bomb loaded with 44 100lb bags of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, sensitised with oil, triggered by 400lbs of dynamite. (In his Playboy 'confession', McVeigh recalled that his Ryder truck was loaded with 80 50lb bags of ammonium nitrate and 55 one-gallon barrels of nitromethane racing fuel, triggered by dynamite stolen from a quarry.) Turner parks his truck in the building’s basement and the subsequent explosion kills 700 people. Turner is momentarily disturbed by the civilian casualties, but decides that "there is no way we can destroy the System without hurting many thousands of innocent people ... if we don't cut this cancer out of our living flesh our whole race will die."
 * John Sutherland "Higher Man", London Review of Books, 19:10 (May 22, 1997)


 * At some point not long after high school, McVeigh obtained—via the National Rifle Association's magazine, American Hunter—a mail-order copy of The Turner Diaries, which offered him a worldview that he never relinquished.
 * Sean Wilentz "American Carnage", New York Review of Books (August 17, 2023)
 * Timothy McVeigh was born in April 1968. Convicted on 11 counts of murder and conspiracy, he was executed by lethal injection in June 2001.