I was
reading a crazy book, when the craziness started spilling over into
the real world:
Donald Trump annouced that he's running for president, and mentioned
Mexicans: “They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
A young
man named Dylann Roof told a group of black people in the Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, most
of whom were women, “You're
raping our women and taking over the country,” and killed them.
On
Facebook, Ishmael Reed said the The Turner Diaries were
“Required reading. If you want to know what motivated this church
killer read this book.”
The
crazy book? The Turner Diaries,
the infamous novel written by Nazi William Luther Pierce, under the
pseudonym Andrew MacDonald. It inspired Timothey McVeigh to blow up
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
I'm
happy to report that it doesn't work as a manual for guerrilla
warfare. Developments in communications, surveillence, and military
technology have made the practical advice in the book obsolete. Whew.
The
Turner Diaries is not a literary
masterpiece. It's not even good fiction. Pierce tells more than
he shows, avoiding drama for monologue. There isn't much dialogue.
The one attempt to show “the negro dialect” is pathetic. And all
the characters are one-dimensional.
The
narrator/hero Earl Turner has no past, no family, no motivation. The
mere existence of Jews, Blacks, and other non-Whites is presented as
enough for his rage. As for plot, entire chapters could be cut
without taking away from the “story.” This is partially due to
the details that are gone into about making an ammonium-nitirate bomb (the book begins with all guns being confiscated by Black agents
of the government after they are banned by the Cohen Act) and
counterfeiting that is done to destroy the American economy (because
apparently the efforts of the Jews and non-Whites to do so isn't
working fast enough). There's also a Mansonesque/hippie counterculture
that sells White girls to Jewish-run white slave rackets.
Dispite
the racist agenda – Blacks are shown as criminals/rapists/cannibals,
and are killed like vermin – “racism” is often put in quotes, a "lie" that the liberal media is spreading. And though at first the word
“patriot” is used, later the U.S. Constitution is sneered at, and
conservatives are mocked as weak. Hitler is mourned and defended.
As if
all this wasn't enough to boggle the mind, when the Great Revoltuion
finally starts, after the Organization gives up on winning over the
public and decides that terrorism is the way to go, Jews and
race-traitors hanging from every lampost in L.A. are just the
beginning. It's a sadistic orgy of bloody vengence. Over and over,
we are told that it's all “their” fault. After all, they aren't
human, er, White . . .
Refusing
to recognise the humanity in others is the core of The Turner
Diaries. It's the most
single-minded book I've ever read. There are no real characters. No
one is human. Mass slaughter is reasonable, if it helps make Earth
into the Planet of the White People.
So,
what's the appeal? It's feel-good reading for racists.
And
it is ridiculous. Like the White teenagers who happily
take the place of Mexican migrant workers. (Would Dylann Roof take
the job?) Like the very idea of an all-white planet.
Yet, we
hear such ideas being taken seriously.
This
book should not be banned, but brought out into the light. Let
everyone see how absurd it is.
Chester Himes said, “Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of
American blacks one cannot tell the difference.”
But if
we don't try, we all become absurd, and the Dylann Roofs of the world
win.
