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Thoughts on The Turner Diaries-- A thread. There have been a lot of references to The Turner Diaries in the last few days (with good reason). 1/19
Historian and scholar of the white power movement @kathleen_belew has posted an excellent thread on the topic, so I’ll not repeat those points here. (2/19)
One thing that’s been on my mind since Wednesday that keeps coming back every time I see photos of the gallows erected in front of the Capitol building is the book’s justification for violence. (3/19)
This may have been said already and I just haven’t seen it, but an important component to the book is that the “patriots” who plan and execute the "Great Revolution" do so because they perceive themselves to have suffered so greatly under the “System.” (4/19)
They feel they have no other alternative. The revolution begins, in fact, because the government forcibly takes the “patriots" guns in the "Gun Raids"— and sent Black men, the "Equality Police," to do it. (5/19)
Once the guns were rounded up, bands of Black men purportedly took to robbing white families and raping white women. (6/19)
Because of all this, the characters in the book feel justified in reclaiming the country— and, indeed, the world— through guerrilla warfare. Importantly, they are willing to sacrifice themselves to do so. (7/19)
It is a “sacred” privilege to have your name “inscribed in the Record of Martyrs.” That is one of the overarching narratives of the book, which is framed as the posthumously published diary of the greatest martyr of them all— (8/19)
a man who faltered along the way but redeemed himself by carrying out a suicide mission at the Pentagon and, thus, becomes “immortal.” (9/19)
This is obviously a powerful affective narrative for certain groups, which is why it’s rightfully been called “the bible of the racist right." (10/19)
It also feeds into contemporary backlash politics (especially, against widespread multiculturalism and feminism) and aggrieved white male victimhood in ways that are important to our current moment. (11/19)
