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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
[5] 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".
[17] 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.
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.
[14] 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".
"[14] John Sutherland, in a 1996 essay for the London Review of Books, wrote: "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.
"[16] The New York Times noted its influence on white supremacists, describing some of its appeal as stemming from the book's "far-fetched" plot.
[31] 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.
"[31] 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.
[37] 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 White Power band Bound for Glory referred to the phrase in their 1994 song "The Hammer Falls Again (Ragnarok)", with the lyrics saying:[40][41]Politicians to Pope, there'll be no hope / There is no escaping the Day of the RopeThe book has inspired numerous hate crimes and acts of terrorism.
[42][43] Following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, whose perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, was fixated on the novel, the book was brought to greater public attention.
[45] In the wake of the January 6 United States Capitol attack, historian Kathleen Belew argued that the book was an inspiration to the rioters.