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Editorial Comments
Product Description: At 9:02 AM on Wednesday April 19, 1995, two tons of explosives ripped apart the federal building in Oklahoma City and the psyche of America. The worst case of domestic terrorism in our history, this explosion killed 169 men, women and children. The author of this book has written, "If [this book] had been available to the general public...the Oklahoma bombing would not have come as such a surprise." It has been considered by the Justice Department and other government agencies as the bible of right-wing militia groups, and the FBI believes it provided the blue print for the Oklahoma City bombing.
Ayn Rand for the neo-nazi set In case you don't know, this book is a handbook for all sorts of nasty homegrown terrorist types. Extremely interesting culturally for understanding the crackpot survivalist "teh race war is near. This is are country!" mindset.
Some tense problems, but overrall technically it's really not a bad entry into the sci-fi/future history/dystopia genre (hence the 2 stars). Very quick reading if you can get past the cringe-inducing and highly racist and anti-semitic ideology of its author. It's kind of a shame this guy used his book more as a racist anti-gov't manual than a novel, because I honestly think he could have had a career writing mass market sci-fi books.
Oh, and fwiw this book inspired Oklahoma City. I wouldn't ordinarily judge a book by its effects, but this book is basically a how-to guide on how to do something like the OC bombing (if you read the book you will be SHOCKED by how much of OC was in this book), so it was kind of inevitable at some point, which, frankly, disgusts me. Basically, this is Ayn Rand for domestic terrorists.
Of note strictly to cultural historians, lit scholars studying dystopic fiction, and people who work for law enforcement agencies. Be sure to keep it the hell away from your kids.
Good for situational research I have long found it valuable to no tonly know who your enemies are, but equally to know "why" they "think" the way they do....
Forget The Racism-- Consider the Paradigm I'll skip the racial/religious aspect because it's been discussed to death, both here and in the media.
But consider it from a libertarian, Minuteman perspective. Erase the racial hatred and other nonsense in the book and examine the protagonist purely as a member of an organization opposed to what he views as governmental oppression and a fundamental stripping of his Constitutionally-guaranteed rights. The protagonist-- who is an admittedly flawed individual, a manifestation of the author's own anxieties and fears on a grand scale-- is merely a man who is willing to risk his life, his liberty, and his fortune to strike back at the government for what he feels are crimes. Granted, his perception of "crimes" (so-called race-mixing and the truly ludicrous scenes of Jewish and minority reverse-racism and oppression) is deeply flawed by almost any thinking person's standards, but his methods are deadly accurate.
This book exposes some simple truths. Any well-motivated person can strike back against the government in a variety of ways. Any person who believes absolutely in their cause can prevail, because they are willing to trade their life for an ideal; you can defeat the individual but you cannot defeat the ideal they represent. Disarming citizens gives the government the ability to issue whatever mandate they decree is law, but an armed citizenry can revolt. The Turner Diaries is about a revolt-- unfortunately, most end up getting lost on the racial and religious bigotry within, which does a disservice to the message in this book.
I think John Ross did it better in "Unintended Consequences", which manages to dodge most of the racial and religious issues but still make the point that a micro-revolution can quickly foment into a macro-revolution if the government is vulnerable because it has oppressed its citizenry. Ross focused more purely on gun rights, but on a Constitutional scale, no one can argue against the facts--our rights as free citizens have slowly eroded over the past 50 years. While things have improved greatly for women and minorities, as a nation we are less free despite the successes of the civil rights and feminist movements. Their freedoms were long overdue, but the other rights that have gradually, bit by bit, disappeared right from under our noses are worse crimes by far.
To change things up a bit-- how many illegal wiretaps, restrictions of your rights to gun ownership, suspension of habeas corpus, arbitrary mandatory-minimum sentencing for petty crimes or removal of protections against cruel and unusual punishment will it take before YOU act? Will you act by gnashing your teeth and writing your Congressperson? Or will you fly a bomb-laden plane into the legislature in the middle of a vote? To what degree do you believe in your ideals? These are the questions posed by the book, if one can see past the racial slurs and bigoted diatribes.
Disgusting piece of filth, but valuable for the insight it provides into the White Nationalist community I didn't know what this book was about before I bought it and read it, other than that so-called "White Nationalists" hold it up as an example of the world as it "could" be. So for that, I'm glad I forced myself through it, because it gives a really honest view of what many White Nationalists envision their perfect world to be. (Do they *really*??)
Still, I am disgusted. This book literally made me sick to my stomach in more than a few places, with the gratuitous violence, impersonally-described play-by-play accounts of murder, torture, and terrorist acts perpetrated on their fellow citizens, all set against a background of almost unimaginable racial hatred and unfathomable anti-Semitism. But then again, the racial hatred is what spawned this book I guess (?). Is this really the world that Whites want? One created and fueled by a community of extremists who tear others limb from limb? God I hope not.
It is hard for me to believe that anyone would support this book, let alone recommend it to others. The entire 200+ pages are pure filth. The ONLY value I can see in this text is for use to convert people to Liberalist ideals ~ because it shows how clearly the "other" side is a mass of sick, psychotic, under-educated criminal wannabes waiting for their chance to kill people.
Thank heavens for freedom of speech in the USA Thank heavens for freedom of speech in the USA. Where else can such a wretched book continue to stay in print? Seriously Pooh foraging for honey would read like Tolstoy in comparison to this.
Disregarding the ideological undercurrent the book itself fails on several levels.
Gary Taylor needs requoting on this one.. In terms of literary merit, the book is very simplistic, written for people who operate at a fifth or sixth grade reading level. There are no hard words, no complex plots, and the book tends to be inconsistent in terms of internal logic. It is also very, very badly edited, with one misspelling and typographical error after another. But all of this is really a little beside the point. Simply put, the book is a vicious, paranoid, anti-American, pro-fascist, horrendously racist piece of trash. It is a highly obvious bit of propaganda that exists purely in order to recruit the uneducated into the author's own anti-American, pro-fascist, ultra-racist mindset.
Sociologists and others who wish to obtain insight into the ravings of extremist groups will find THE TURNER DIARIES a good place to begin--but if you read the book from such motives, I strongly recommend that you find a way to do so without actually buying a copy, lest you actually fund the organizations that subscribe to its philosophy. As for casual readers--no, I do not recommend it. THE TURNER DIARIES is a waste of paper that could be used to print something else--and almost anything else would be better... (toilet paper IHMO)
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