Axar.az presents an article ''The Tieman Chronicles'' by John Samuel Tieman.

I just read “The Turner Diaries” by Andrew Macdonald, the nom de plume of the Neo-Nazi leader William Luther Pierce. One thing that bothers me about the novel is this. It's a good read. The book has all the qualities of a thriller. There's one other thing that bothers me about the book. It scares me. The violent racism is as astonishing as it is consistent.

The “Diaries” are widespread. Nonetheless, finding a copy was difficult. Amazon won't sell it, nor will most American distributors. I was going to buy one from an English site until I finally found a copy in the United States. Before Amazon removed the “Diaries”, the book got hundreds of five-star reviews. It was first published in 1978. By 2000, it had sold over half-a-million copies.

In brief, the novel depicts Earl Turner's view of a violent revolution in the United States, a revolution that leads to the overthrow of all federal authority. Then there's a worldwide race war. “The Turner Diaries” outlines an Aryan nation that is global, one in which Jews, non-whites, politicians, interracial couples, liberals, and civil rights activists are all killed. Earl Turner's diary is discovered 100 years after these events.

The FBI calls the book “the bible of the racist right.” So I read it. Before buddies disown me and folks “unfriend” me, consider this. We must be thoroughly informed about that which we most loathe. I loathe racists and insurrectionists. “Many of the ideas that are central to ‘The Turner Diaries’ have turned into memes and proliferated online in right-wing media,” says Cassie Miller of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “There are books that are required reading for people who are enmeshed in the movement, and ‘The Turner Diaries’ is at the top of the list.”

Anyone looking for motivation, anyone wondering “Why would anyone think this?” – you're going to be disappointed. The book assumes that the reader, like the protagonist, is a committed racist who needs no convincing. The “Diaries” are notable for their lack of ideology. In one early chapter, Kathleen, a member of the same cell as Turner, reads “some books on race.” There is a vague sense that her books are Neo-Nazi, but this is never made explicit. The entire passage is four short paragraphs. The next passage describes plans to blow up the FBI headquarters in DC. The novel ignores “why” and goes straight to “how”.

Indeed, the book's how-to quality inspires the violent far right. As just one example, the racists organize into small cells. These cells have almost no contact with other such cells. It's a clever form of organization that has been used to good effect in real life. Witness January the 6th, when so many small independent organizations coalesced with astonishing alacrity. The book is credited with giving some of the shape to the current iteration of white nationalism. It inspires hate crimes and murders. Timothy McVeigh was inspired by “The Turner Diaries”, as was David James Copeland, who planned and executed the 1999 London nail bombings. The Order, a white supremacist group, was closely modeled on the novel. Radio talk show host Alan Berg, a Jew, was murdered by members of The Order. Of the author, William Luther Pierce, John Sutherland wrote in the “London Review Of Books” that the novel "is not the work of a Holocaust-denier (although Pierce gives us plenty of that) so much as a would-be Holocaust-repeater." I have also been reading Kathleen Belew's “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America”. Of “The Turner Diaries”, she says that the novel is valuable for understanding this simple fact about white nationalists. “It’s a book that has been used to kill a lot of people, over and over and over,” she said. “People should understand that’s what it is.”

“People should understand that’s what it is.” “The Turner Diaries” function as a tactical manual. I've rarely read a book that is this dangerous. Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them.” This book was first published in 1978. It's been a staple of the far right since then. On January 6th, 2021, there was a symbolic gallows erected near the Capital Building. In “The Turner Diaries”, white supremacists take control of California. They lynch “race traitors”, journalists, politicians, and women in relationships with non-white men. This is known as “The Day Of The Rope”.

There are racists who would kill me for writing this column. Those same racists would kill you for reading it.