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The Turner Diaries... a thread (if you really must read the book, please don't pay for it bc it may fund extremist groups): 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)
The Turner Diaries is not only a blueprint for domestic terrorism (though, it is that), it also functions as a sort of post-facto “evidence” for aggrieved (almost universally heterosexual) white men (and, by extension, some white women) (12/19)
that there is a concerted effort to take away the guns of U.S. citizens (their sacred and protected right), that BIPOC folks don’t “know their place” (as evidenced by last summer’s protests), that white women and children are in physical danger from immigrants and Others (13/19)
(one need not look very far in white nationalist community for threads on ethnic and/or LGBTQ crime committed against white women and children). White supremacists see the real-life “System” as leaving them no other choice but to begin the real-life “Great Revolution,” (14/19)
hence the insurrection Jan. 6, hence the noose in front of the Capitol building, hence the ongoing planning toward an upcoming “war.” Obviously, I in no way agree with any of the movement’s ideologies, find its rhetoric both dangerous and appalling, (15/19)
and strongly condemn incitements to violence, but if we are ever to find ways to de-fang the movement, it is important to acknowledge that they FEEL justified in their actions and that those feelings can be difficult to change. (16/19)
To white supremacists, the liberals, the “race traitors,” the RINOs, have brought this on themselves. (17/19)
This is part of the reason why we’re now seeing calls of physical violence to white women and children from the movement itself, which would seem antithetical if one didn’t understand how the movement frames its justification for revolution. (18/19)
If you aren’t with them, you are against them and so you’ll get what’s coming to you. That should concern us all. (19/19)
