# The Turner Diaries

The Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce, the founder and chairman of National Alliance, a white nationalist group, published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It was initially syndicated in the National Alliance publication Attack! from 1975–1978 before being published in paperback form by the National Alliance's publishing arm National Vanguard Books in 1978. As of 2001, the book had sold an estimated 300,000 copies, initially only available through mail order from the National Alliance. In 1996, it was republished by Barricade Books with a foreword that disavowed the novel. The Turner Diaries was described as being "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic" by The New York Times.
It depicts a violent revolution in the United States, caused by a group called the Organization. The Organization's actions lead to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and ultimately a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites and Jews worldwide. Whites viewed as "race traitors" are ultimately hanged in a mass execution called the "Day of the Rope". The novel utilizes a framing device, presenting the story as a historical diary of an average member, Earl Turner, with historical notes from a century after the novel's events.
The book has been influential in shaping white nationalism and the later development of the white genocide conspiracy theory. It has also inspired numerous hate crimes and acts of terrorism, including the 1984 assassination of Alan Berg, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1999 London nail bombings. It is estimated to have influenced perpetrators in over 200 killings. The phrase the "Day of the Rope" has also become popular in far-right and white nationalist circles.

## Plot

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 but not high-ranking member of a white nationalist movement known as the Organization. After the federal government has confiscated all white civilian firearms in the country under the Cohen Act, the Organization goes underground to wage a guerrilla war against what they term 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. In response to the Organization's actions, the System begins by implementing numerous repressive laws, by pushing for new surveillance measures, such as requiring citizens to possess a special passport at all times to permanently monitor where individuals are.
Turner plays a large part in activities in the Washington, D.C. area; a former electrical engineer, he is skilled with technology and plays a large part in the Organization's communications and in setting up weaponry for their terrorist attacks. He plays an important part in the first large scale attack by the Organization, in which they attack an FBI headquarters using a car bomb. Turner's service leads to his initiation into the Order: a secret higher level organization within the Organization, which secretly leads it. Its existence remains unknown both to ordinary Organization members and the System; inductees are given a poisonous capsule to kill themselves with in the event of capture. Later, Turner's hideout is raided by law enforcement after he fails to maintain security practices. During an ensuing gun battle with authorities, everyone in the unit manages to escape but Turner is captured and nearly 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 on the Organization.
Months later, other members of the Order rescue him, and inform him of his punishment for breaking his oath to the Order by failing to kill himself when captured: at some point in the future he will be given a suicide mission. If he completes the mission successfully, he will be forgiven by the Order; Turner accepts this. 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. While in control of California, the Organization ethnically cleanses the area of all non-whites by forcing them into the Eastern United States, 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. The resulting racial conflict in the east causes many whites to "wake up" and begin fleeing to Southern California, which becomes a white ethnostate. Northern California also falls, but is ruled under martial law by a conservative general who refuses to cooperate with the Organization.
The Organization raids the houses of all individuals who have been reported to be race traitors in some way (such as 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. 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. 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 and kill all Israelis. 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 style suicide strike, before the invasion can be ordered. The epilogue summarizes how, following the success of Turner's mission, the Organization went on to conquer the rest of the world and how all non-white races of people were murdered. 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."

## Background

The Turner Diaries was written by William Luther Pierce. Pierce was both founder and leader of the National Alliance organization, which the Anti-Defamation League called in 2000 "the single most dangerous organized hate group in the United States today" (largely as a result of Pierce's authorship of The Turner Diaries). Pierce himself was said by the Southern Poverty Law Center to have been "America’s most important neo-Nazi" as well as "the movement’s fiercest antisemitic ideologue". Pierce was a physicist who received his doctorate from the University of Colorado, and a former professor at Oregon State University.
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. Pierce stated in a 1997 interview that at the time he had written the book he had wanted to put "all of the feminist agitators and propagandists and all of the race-mixing fanatics and all of the media bosses [...] up against a wall, in batches of a thousand or so at a time, and machine-gun them". He also added that he still wanted to do that. Pierce however denied that he had written the book intending for it to function as a model for the depicted violent race war.

### Influences

The novel, being a work of dystopian fiction, is concerned with the collapse of society; this genre emerged prominently in the early 19th century, and early dystopian novels often had racist themes. Terrorism researcher J.M. Berger tied the novel to several other racial dystopia novels, saying they had influenced Turner's development directly or indirectly (i.e. having been directly read by Pierce, or having inspired works that he read). Among the possible influences, Berger listed the antebellum novels A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation, The Partisan Leader, Wild Southern Scenes, and Anticipations of the Future, which all used dystopian elements to criticize anti-slavery activism or North-South tensions. He particularly noted The Turner Diaries as having "striking similarities" with Anticipations of the Future. Pierce grew up a fan of science fiction pulp novels, which have also been viewed as a possible influence on Turner, with the book utilizing some science fiction tropes.
Viewed as a possible influence is Jack London's 1907 novel The Iron Heel, with which The Turner Diaries shares some similar themes, descriptions and its main narrative device (that of a work annotated by a future historian). While The Iron Heel is a pro-socialist novel, some socialists take issue with that label due to the book's racism and pessimistic attitudes. The 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door by black author Sam Greenlee is also seen as a possible influence on The Turner Diaries; the release of its film adaption was controversial and widely publicized. It follows the first black CIA agent, who then uses his knowledge to lead a black insurgency against the CIA. Greenlee described it as "a training manual for guerrilla warfare", and all white characters in the book are racists who have exclusively hostile interactions with the protagonists. There are numerous depictions of violence, though unlike The Turner Diaries the black insurgency's intentions are not genocidal and violence is used in a targeted manner.
In Pierce's authorized biography The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds, the anonymous 1959 novel The John Franklin Letters was cited by Pierce as the most direct inspiration for the novel. Similar to The John Franklin Letters, The Turner Diaries utilizes a framing device where the events are prefaced by an in-universe future historian, though the historian in The John Franklin Letters says he will "step aside" to let the reader judge on their own. Pierce said that he had been given this book by Revilo P. Oliver, considered the most probable author of the novel. Oliver had written a review for Attack!, and in a meeting (likely in late 1974), Pierce expressed to Oliver that he was having difficulty getting people to respond to his message. Oliver asked him if he had considered writing fiction, as the kinds of people who would appreciate Pierce's views just did not read the non-fiction material Pierce had previously written.

## Publication history

The Turner Diaries was published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It was originally published in a serial form in the National Alliance publication Attack! between 1975 and 1978, with one chapter released per issue during this period. Enthusiastic reactions among racist sympathizers led Pierce to self-publish the story as a paperback in 1978, with the distribution done by the National Alliance's publishing arm National Vanguard Books. Its first edition was illustrated by artist Dennis Nix.
The Turner Diaries was initially, until 1996, only sold via mail order from the National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia. Advertisements for the book played on gun rights, and the book was widely spread at gun shows in the United States. It was also sold at some book stores, but its largest method of distribution was through gun shows and venues like the Soldier of Fortune Convention as well as mail order advertisements in related publications like Soldier of Fortune magazine and Shotgun News. It had sold 200,000 copies by the late 1990s according to self-estimates generally considered reliable by scholars. By the end of 1999 estimates were at 250,000 copies, and 2001 estimates were at 300,000 copies. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Pierce was "incredulous" but also pleased that the book, written in haste, attracted as much attention as it did.
In 1996, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Barricade Books published a new edition of the novel, including a foreword by the publisher denouncing it. Lyle Stuart, the owner of Barricade Books, was criticized by several organizations and individuals (among others, the SPLC, Morris Dees, the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center), who told major book chains to refuse to carry it. Dees stated that they had found the book in "almost every single case" of "white supremacy, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan-type activity that resulted in violence that caused deaths and injuries to many innocent people". Stuart defended his decision to republish the book by saying "I felt it was important the average American see how sick these minds are and how dreadful and perverted their thinking process is". By the late 1990s, the book was widely distributed online.
A Finnish translation of the Turner Diaries was published in 1993 and sold by the National Democratic Party of Pekka Siitoin. A decade after the publication of The Turner Diaries, Pierce wrote another novel, Hunter, also under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It was called by historian George Michael "in some ways the sequel to" the book. One interpretation of Hunter is that it is a prequel to the Turner Diaries, with the organization shown there becoming the Organization in Turner. In 1991, the National Alliance published another pseudonymous novel, Serpent's Walk, which for some time was thought to have been written by Pierce, though it was published under a different pseudonym and was not listed in Pierce's official biography.

### Censorship

The book is prohibited in Canada as "obscene" and "hate propaganda" literature. The book was made illegal in France in 1999 because of its advocacy of racism, anti-semitism and the use of violence. It has been banned in Germany since April 2006.
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. The book had previously been on Amazon with a disclaimer noting its history of being associated with terrorist acts.

## Analysis

John Sutherland, in a 1996 essay for the London Review of Books, said of the work that it "is not the work of a Holocaust-denier (although Pierce gives us plenty of that) so much as a would-be Holocaust-repeater." The Turner Diaries was described as being "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic" by Peter Applebome of The New York Times. Applebome called it "by almost any standard [...] a chilling read", "almost compulsively violent". Ted Daniels said the characters were "pure cardboard, amounting to nothing more than names and actions, heroic or squalid according to Pierce’s racist morality" and that "death is the only life in this book." Whites not of the Organization are presented in a harsh manner, portrayed as brainwashed and apathetic in contrast. Despite the book's explicitly racist messaging, any time the word racist appears in reference to the Organization, it is done in quotations as if a false accusation. Noah Berlatsky of the Los Angeles Review of Books said the book drew much from science fiction, saying that Pierce had "radicalized readers in part by radicalizing the tropes of popular pulp." Berlatsky argued that while recounting the plot it seemed cold, but that within the book Pierce justified it through science fiction concepts and references.
Historian Kathleen Belew described the book as a valuable lens which researchers should look through in order to understand white nationalists, but she argued that it must be understood in context when it is studied, because "It’s a book that has been used to kill a lot of people, over and over and over. [...] People should understand that’s what it is." Renee Brodie, writing for the Journal of American Culture, viewed the novel as having a premillennialist Christian ideology, with a "primarily apocalyptic" worldview as a whole, with the ethnically cleansed world at the end of the novel being paralleled by Macdonald with the Kingdom of God. Brodie wrote that by correlating Christian views with the Organization, the narrative shows the members of the group as having a "single-mindedness of purpose" that is "one of the main attractions found in The Turner Diaries". The System in the book is basically analogous to the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) conspiracy narrative.

## Legacy

The book was greatly influential in shaping white nationalism, and the later idea of the white genocide conspiracy theory. Terrorism analysts Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware said in their book God, Guns, and Sedition that "no other book has had so pervasive or sustained an influence over violent far-right extremism in the United States as The Turner Diaries." The New York Times noted its influence on white supremacists, describing some of its appeal as stemming from the book's "far-fetched" plot. The Anti-Defamation League identified The Turner Diaries as "probably the most widely-read book among far-right extremists; many [of them] have cited it as the inspiration behind their terrorist organizing and activities." Researcher Martin Durham argued that despite the instances of terrorism inspired by the book, Pierce's intention in writing it had probably not been to inspire such isolated cases earlier than he had wanted, with his aim instead having been to inspire "real, organized terrorism done according to plan, aimed at bringing down the government".
It was allegedly labeled the "bible of the racist right" by the FBI. While it is widely quoted, that statement is apocryphal and was likely authored by Pierce, not the FBI, for the purpose of publicity. The label was included on the back of the book in its 1985 edition. An actual 1991 memorandum from the FBI described it as "a significant work and foundation document closely embraced by the leadership as well as rank and file members of the Right-wing, White Supremist [sic] Movement".
The phrase "Day of the Rope", in reference to the mass execution of "race traitors" in the novel, has also become common in white nationalist circles. The "Day of the Rope" concept is classified as a hate symbol in the Hate on Display hate symbols database of the Anti-Defamation League. The White Power band Bound for Glory referred to the phrase in their 1994 song "The Hammer Falls Again (Ragnarok)", with the lyrics saying:
   Politicians to Pope, there'll be no hope / There is no escaping the Day of the Rope

### Terrorism

The book has inspired numerous hate crimes and acts of terrorism. It is estimated to have influenced the perpetrators of over 200 murders.
In 1983, inspired by The Turner Diaries, three members of The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord plotted to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building using a truck bomb; this plan did not go into action. Over a decade later in 1995, Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing killing 168 people, targeting the same Aldred P. Murrah building. He was found with pages from The Turner Diaries in a plastic bag in his car after the attack. McVeigh stated while that he didn't agree with the book's racism, he agreed with its message on gun rights; J.M. Berger noted there was "no clear indication that [McVeigh] subscribed to any specific white nationalist ideology, despite his fixation on the text." The book was the first piece of evidence introduced during his trial; witnesses testified that he was "obsessed" with the book, and sold it at gun shows. His attack was very similar to the truck bombing of the FBI headquarters in the book. After the bombing the book was brought to greater public attention. Mark Potok of the SPLC said in the aftermath that "William Pierce doesn’t build bombs. He builds bombers". Pierce's stated opinion on the bombing varied; at one time Pierce denounced the bombing as a "desperate and foolish" action, as it was not part of a sustained campaign of terror designed to overthrow the government and it had not been at the right time. At other times, he said he did approve of the bombing.
The book also inspired the formation of several violent groups. The Order (1983–1984) was a white supremacist, terrorist organization which named itself after the organization in the book. It formerly called itself The Organization. The Order murdered three people, including the talk radio host Alan Berg, and committed numerous robberies, counterfeiting operations, and acts of violence in an effort to provoke a race war in the United States. In 1994, the Aryan Republican Army committed a string of armed bank robberies, at least 22; they were inspired both by the fictional The Order within the book and The Order organization that had itself been inspired by The Turner Diaries. One statement they recorded encouraged watchers to read the book. Members were also linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. Chevie Kehoe formed the white supremacist group the Aryan People's Republic after he read The Turner Diaries, and eventually began a murder spree in which he killed five people before he was captured in an armed shootout with police in 1997. The German terrorist group National Socialist Underground used a German translation of The Turner Diaries (Turner Tagebücher) in forming at least part of their ideological basis. Several members murdered at least ten people in a decade long murder spree. A copy of the Turner Tagebücher was found on a computer used by the group, and most members had read it.
In 1996 Larry Wayne Shoemake committed a mass shooting against black people in Jackson, Mississippi, killing one and injuring seven. He had read both The Turner Diaries and Hunter. His wife stated that after Shoemake had read The Turner Diaries, he had never been the same. This resulted in Pierce being sued by the victims' families for inciting the attack (among other defendants in the suit), but Pierce was eventually dropped from the suit after the judge ruled the plaintiffs had failed to tie Pierce to the shooting.
In the wake of the January 6 United States Capitol attack, historian Kathleen Belew argued that the book was an inspiration to the rioters. She wrote that some actions in the 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". Terrorism analysts Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware noted it as evoking the image of the "Day of the Rope".
Other individual acts tied to the book include:
* John William King, was convicted of dragging James Byrd, an African American, to his death in Jasper, Texas, in 1998. As King shackled Byrd's legs to his truck, he was reported to have said, "We're going to start The Turner Diaries early."
* David Copeland, a British neo-Nazi who killed three people in a bombing campaign against London's black and gay communities in 1999, quoted from The Turner Diaries while being interviewed by police.
* Jacob D. Robida, who attacked a gay bar in Massachusetts in 2006, before fleeing and killing his ex-girlfriend and a police officer before committing suicide, was found to have a copy of The Turner Diaries and other Nazi propaganda in his home.
* Paul Ross Evans, who attempted to bomb an abortion clinic in 2006, was found to have the book in his apartment.
* Peter Mangs, a serial killer who targeted immigrants in Sweden from 2009–2010, had read both The Turner Diaries and Hunter.
* Pavlo Lapshyn, a Ukrainian who committed a racist murder in Britain in 2013, had an audiobook of The Turner Diaries and he also had a Russian translation of Hunter in his possession.
* White supremacist activist Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., who shot and killed three people at a Jewish community center in 2014, had praised the book.
* Zack Davies, who attempted to murder a Sikh man in a racist attack in Wales in 2015, was found to have a copy of The Turner Diaries and a copy of Hunter in his house.