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 "revolutionary" movement. As the story begins, the federal government has confiscated all civilian firearms in the country under the Cohen Act. Turner and his cohorts take their organization underground in order to wage a guerrilla war against the System, which is depicted as being under Jewish control.[4] 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 people who aren’t white even after all weapons have been confiscated, and pushing for new surveillance measures in order to monitor its citizens, such as requiring them to possess a special passport at all times and in all places in order to permanently monitor where individuals are. The "Organization" starts its campaigns by committing acts such as the bombing of the FBI headquarters, then executing an ongoing, 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. Turner's exploits lead to his initiation into the "Order", a secret rebel group that consists of an elite group of masterminds of the revolution, who are secretly leading the Organization and whose existence remains unknown both to ordinary Organization members and the System.[4] 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 sometime in the future for failing to resist while in captivity. He acknowledges the authority of the Order and pledges to accept whatever punishment they impose, whenever they impose it.

Eventually, the Organization seizes physical control of the nuclear weapons at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California and targets missiles at New York City and Tel Aviv.[10] 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.[10] The resulting racial conflict in the east causes many whites to "wake up" and begin fleeing to Southern California which now becomes a white sanctuary. Deliberately fomenting racial conflict is referred to as "demographic warfare" which begins bringing in new recruits to both the Organization and the Order.[11] During this time, the Organization raids a black sanctuary and discovers a cannibalism operation where blacks 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 being married to non-whites. It drags these individuals from their homes and publicly hangs them 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.[10][4] The Organization has little use for most white "mainstream" Americans. Those on the left are seen as dupes or willing agents of the Jews, while conservatives and libertarians are regarded as mere businessmen out for themselves 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 seen to care about nothing beyond being kept comfortable and entertained. Once daily life is completely disrupted by the nuclear war it instigated, 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 US and the 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 begin to 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 of the Israelis. The governments of France and the Netherlands collapse, and the Soviet Union falls apart while it is seeing 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 Jewish 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 were eliminated. 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 its with nuclear, chemical, radiological and biological weapons which render the entire continent of Asia uninhabitable and rife with "mutants". In the United States, the last remaining non-whites 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. The Organization gladly 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."[4]

The Turner Diaries was originally published in a serial form in the National Alliance publication Attack! between 1975 and 1978,[12] with one chapter released per issue during this period.[13] Enthusiastic reactions among racist sympathizers led Pierce to self-publish the story as a paperback in 1978.[14] Artist Dennis Nix contributed to the illustrations.[15] 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.[13]

The Turner Diaries was initially only sold via mail order from the National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia.[16] It had sold 200,000 copies by the late 1990s according to self-estimates generally considered reliable by scholars.[17][18] Other estimates have gone higher, giving a figure of 500,000 copies sold as of 2000.[16][1]

John Sutherland, in a 1996 essay for the London Review of Books, wrote that "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."[10]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center calls it a "hate book".[19]

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

• The Turner Diaries at archive.org
• "The Turner Legacy" (PDF, 50 pages) International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague, Netherlands