The Evil Genius Behind White Nationalism in America, Part One: The Turner Diaries

I've been spending the last couple weeks deep diving in the intellectual equivalent of a sewage lagoon. To be specific, I've been researching the philosophy of William Luther Pierce. I hope you've never heard of him before, because if you have, there's a very good chance that you are a white nationalist. (That's a fancy term for "racist".)

William Luther Pierce, grand-daddy of the Alt-Right, image c/o Wikimedia Commons. Copyleft, public domain by Robert Hartnell.

Pierce was not your average racist. He was a very smart man. In fact, he was an actual scientist. He had a Phd in physics, had worked at Los Alamos, was an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, and ended up doing advanced materials research for Pratt and Whitney's aerospace division. His first love above all else, however, was to toil in the fields of hate. 

Official logo of the National Alliance.

 

He was comparatively successful in this work. The group he founded, the National Alliance, peaked under Pierce's leadership with 2,500 members and an annual income of about $1 million. (That's very good for a racist group.) Since his death, fortunately, the group has been subject to infighting and both membership and income have collapsed. 

But what Pierce is really known for are two novels he published---under the pseudonym "Andrew Macdonald"---that have served as "handbooks" for racist activity. The first of these, The Turner Diaries, serves the purpose of identifying a "plausible" road map that white nationalists could follow to take over first the government of the USA, and then the world while exterminating all non-whites.  

The book's plot follows the journal entries of Earl Turner who is part of a small group of white nationalists ("The Organization"), who have initiated a violent insurrection against the government of the USA. It is led by a small, self-selected, secret cabal known as "The Order" (which the "hero" is asked to join). They are able to undermine the functioning of the American government and economy (called "The System") through the strategic use of terrorism. The chaos that results from this struggle "politicizes" a relatively small, but still influential fraction of the white population into supporting their cause. This extends to the military, which splits on broadly racial lines. This allows the white nationalists to seize an air force base in California, which gives them access to nuclear weapons and intercontinental nuclear-tipped missiles. 

Control of the nuclear base allows the Organization to establish an enclave in California. They cement their control over this racist's paradise by holding a special "day of the noose". This is when their authority is displayed through the Organization lynching huge numbers of "race traitors"---at least one in every neighbourhood across the state. Names of individuals are placed on a list for actions as minor as a white woman going on a date with a black man, or, as major as being a judge who sentenced white supremacists to prison. (Pierce makes sure the reader sees that the point isn't to punish "criminals", instead it's a show of force. Indeed, he has Turner freely admit that who does or doesn't get on the list is somewhat arbitrary.) The end result is that from just about every part of the state it is easy to see bodies hanging from lamp posts. This cows the majority of citizens into passivity, which allows the Order to effectively become the leaders of the state.  

Meanwhile in the rest of America, the System manages to quell military mutinies by Organization supporters, which the Order believes means that the Californian enclave will eventually be invaded and destroyed. In order to stop this from happening, they launch their stolen ICBMs against the Soviet Union in order to initiate a nuclear war between the two super powers. When the System realizes this has happened, it then launches its own nuclear assets against the Soviets too. (The hope is that by doing this they lessen the ability of the Soviets to retaliate.) The USSR fires back, inflicting severe---yet not quite apocalyptic---damage on the US. The damage is enough, however, for the System to be so weakened that the Organization is eventually able to seize control of the rest of the country. This only happens, however, after Earl Turner flies a stolen small plane carrying an atomic bomb into the Pentagon---which effectively decapitates what is left of the System.

In an epilogue, the book informs the reader that once the new regime was firmly entrenched, it murdered all non-whites and supporters of non-whites in North America and Europe. In addition, it used the remaining nuclear weaponry in it's arsenal to totally wipe out Israel and other pockets of remaining Jewish society. (Toronto is vaporized because it had "too many Jews"---refugees from the US.) Eventually, China attempts to fill the gap left by the Soviet Union, so the USA annihilates the entire population of Asia using atomic, chemical, and, biological weapons. (At the end of the book, most of Asia is known as "the Great Eastern Waste".) After this, the last major campaign alluded to is a genocidal attack on Africa which essential wipes out the last major centre of non-white population on the planet. 

In the very last pages of the book, the "Order" is described as finally able to spread it's "benevolent rule" across the entire earth.

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I don't think the importance of this book to white nationalism can be over-stated. That's because if people are going to devote their lives to the cause of racist idiocy there needs to be some sort of articulation of what a white supremacist society would look like plus some sort of remotely plausible way to get from where we are now to where they eventually want to be. (This is true of all political movements, bye-the-way.) 

This is important because there really are some very significant roadblocks on the way to an American Fourth Reich. 

• First of all, the number of real, self-described, violence-prone racists in America is small and getting smaller, one funeral at a time. (Young people, in general, simply do not buy into racism.)
  
• Secondly, contrary to what racists believe, racial stereotypes are not true. That means blacks are smarter than they are expected to be, and, Jewish people cannot always be easily bought off if enough money is waved in their faces. 
• Third, large numbers of the self-described "vanguard of the master race" are dumb as fence-posts. Moreover, trying to organize them into an effective organization seems to usually be like herding cats.
• The weak, ineffectual "snowflakes" that support liberal social policies are often far from passive and often have much harder spines than the purported  "super men" who oppose them believe.
• Finally, contrary to what white nationalists tell each other, America really isn't becoming a sort of dysfunctional Hell-hole. Instead, it's just changing---in some ways for the worse, it's true, but in other ways for the better. That's just like all nations in human history and around the world.

The Organization creates a significant fighting force in The Turner Diaries by playing to two fears that loom large in the rightward fringes of the American psyche: gun confiscation and urban crime. When the novel begins American inner cities are melting into violent puddles of goo as criminal justice reforms consistently tie the hands of police and allow gangs of black thugs near impunity to rape white women and rob white businesses. (This is a profoundly racist book and it's description of both blacks and Jews would be laughable if the results of this propaganda weren't so horrible.) At the same time, new gun laws result in confiscation of all weaponry from the white population. These new rules are enforced by a specially created new police force that deputizes black thugs to break into people's homes without warning to search for illegal weaponry (think violent slobs with clubs).  We are introduced to Earl Turner when he and a small group of friends are forced to go "underground" by their determination to not give up their weapons.

A key point to understand is that even in the bizarro, fever-dream America that forms the backdrop for Pierce's book, support for the Organization is very small. That's not because he believes there is very little racism in American society, but because he believes most of it is latent. That's because the average citizen has been lulled into complacency by a good-paying job, a full refrigerator, and, the television. (After all, the book was first published in 1978---hardly halcyon days, as I recall, but still good enough for lots of---especially middle-class---white men.) The operating assumption of the book is that as the economic plight of ordinary people (ie: white men, or, as Trump would say "real Americans") declines, the more willing they are to support the vision promoted by Pierce, the Order, the Organization, and, Earl Turner.

To this end, the Organization embarks on bold attacks on both the government and the economy. Earl Turner is intimately involved in three "keystone" events in this campaign: 

• the destruction of a nuclear power plant in Michigan using a "dirty bomb" that spreads radioactive material all over the site---rendering it useless
• exploding a huge truck bomb at the headquarters of the FBI (this event seems to have been copied by Timothy McVeigh when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building---more about this later)
  
• the creation of high-quality, high-production counterfeiting to both finance the Organization and to create inflation 

The economic sabotage (like the destruction of power plants) reduces the efficiency of the American economy, which results in hardship. In addition, attacks on the government result in more and more restrictive laws and onerous regulation. A curfew is imposed, people are routinely stopped at road blocks, have to show papers, new "irregular" police agencies are given the power to search without warrants and torture suspects. All of these progressively erode what support the populace may have once had for the status quo. 

As  pressure increases, most people direct their anger towards the Organization, but a trickle of new supporters are drawn in---which allows it to dramatically expand it's reach. And the expanded membership allows for more spectacular acts of sabotage, which builds the Organization even further. Eventually, they are able to seize control of California---and a stockpile of nuclear weapons. And this is what allows the Order to initiate it's strategic move that results in control of the USA and eventually the world.

In effect, this is a fever dream of how a very small number of people can take over the most powerful nation in the world---and the majority of citizens can't do anything about it. It is the victory of the gun over the ballot box.

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I hope that it's obvious how much work I've been putting into these articles. I write and publish them because I think it's really important for citizens to have some idea of the "big picture" and "long term trends" that exist behind the day-to-day events that the mainstream news tells us about. If you think that this is as important as I do, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? I can use the money, and Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy to send as little or as much as you'd like. 

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I mentioned in passing that there are so many similarities between Timothy McVeigh's attack on the Alfred P. Murrah building and Earl Turner's fictional bombing of the FBI building that it's easy to think that he got the idea from Pierce's book. I thought that this was an interesting avenue to follow, so I went to the trouble of doing some research on the fellow. 

 

According to the only authorized biography of McVeigh, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, The Turner Diaries was a constant companion in his life---from when he first found out about it shortly after entering a college. 

Tim, who bought the book by mail order after seeing it advertised in Soldier of Fortune magazine, maintains that it was the book's strong advocacy of gun rights, rather than its racist content, that captured his imagination. He gave the book only to friends who seemed to share his feelings about gun ownership. For him, the selling point of the The Turner Diaries was a question he often saw posed in ads for the book: "What will you do if the government comes for your guns?"

American Terrorist, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, p-90

   

I really have a hard time believing McVeigh when he said he wasn't racist. That's because the racism is so odious and over-the-top in The Turner Diaries. Black people are portrayed as being little more than bestial, and, Jewish folks are depicted as being disgusting, money-grubbing perverts who are unified in a no-holds-barred struggle to undermine American society. I simply cannot believe that anyone except a dyed-in-the-wool racist could read the book without being repelled by it. 

Another suggestion that McVeigh had significant sympathies for racists comes from his choice of attire when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building. He wore a t-shirt with an image of Abraham Lincoln with the motto Si Semper Tyrannus underneath. ("This is what always happens to tyrants"---what John Wilkes Booth said after assassinating Lincoln.) It seems to me that only a racist wouldn't be repelled by quoting Booth. 

I don't know if this is the exact same shirt that McVeigh wore, but you get the idea. (Michel and Herbeck, p-347)

And vile as The Turner Diaries are, McVeigh seems to have always had copies of it around him. He sold copies at gun shows. He was constantly recommending it to friends and fellow soldiers when he was in the army. He even photocopied a section from it and placed it in an envelope with other "inspirational tracts" that he left in his "get away" car so the police clearly understand his motives.

Perhaps most telling, though, was the inclusion of a quote from Earl Turner, the protagonist of The Turner Diaries, whose protest of gun laws and political correctness culminated in the bombing of the FBI headquarters and other government buildings.

"The real value of our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties," Turner writes in his diary. "More important, though, is what we taught the politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks in the city, and they can hide behind the concrete walls of their country estates, but we can still find them and kill them."

Michel and Herbeck, p-350

Equally suggestive of a hidden racist motivation was a last-minute attempt to contact The National Alliance (the racist organization that Pierce ran up until his death in 2002) in hope of it being willing to hide him after the bombing. 

In the final days before leaving the Imperial Motel in Kingman, McVeigh tried calling Richard Coffman, a representative of the National Alliance. If any group might be willing to suggest a place he might seek refuge after the bombing, McVeigh figured, the National Alliance---an organization chaired by the author of The Turner Diaries---would be it. 

McVeigh left three messages on Coffman's answering machine. Identifying himself as Tim Tuttle, he said he would be leaving the Kingman area soon. McVeigh knew that he had to play it cautiously in asking for help, though; he didn't want to tip his hand. He'd tell the National Alliance that he was making a "serious request for a safe haven," but would remain vague about why, if he spoke with Coffman. But he never left a number where Coffman could reach him, and ultimately failed to connect with the group.

Michel and Herbeck, p-320

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Having pointed out why I suspect that McVeigh was more of a racist than he liked to let on, I think it is important to take him at his own word when he said that his primary motivation was his love of guns. I'll have more to say about this---and how it fits into the worldview articulated by Pierce and which has infected the far right---in my next instalment. 

In the mean time, get your third vaccine shot and remember that this dumb pandemic will end eventually! Be good to each other---we're all a little frazzled by now.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!