The Turner Diaries [Paperback]

Andrew MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

At 9:02 am on Wednesday April 19, 1995, two tons of explosives ripped apart the federal office 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 blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing. Barricade Books has published it so America can better understand the cause of racism and extremism.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: National Vanguard Books; Second edition edition (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0937944122
• ISBN-13: 978-0937944127
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (182 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #252,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A bit more upsetting than your average idealist book..., March 15, 2002

By 

Graeme Smith (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Turner Diaries: A Novel (Paperback)

I did a project recently on different groups in the white racialist movement and read this book as part of my research. Being quite liberal, I had to put it down and go outside for some fresh air, but it was rather hard to find a stopping point in order to do that.
This is a very well-written book. As much as I disagreed with its message, the pages kept turning. It involves elements of the author's idealism, a hero who will do anything that he thinks is right, action, warring factions, government opression, and so many other addictive written elements such as love and love lost, martyrdom, etc.
The particular type of idealism is disturbing; Turner, the hero of the book, is a White racist who, with his fellows, aspires to end all other races-- including Jews, who are portrayed in this book as evil-- for the "protection" of caucasians everywhere. The author sets his stage in a world where the "good guys" are kept down by a Jewish government who wants their guns. Throughout the book he goes from persecuted status to persecuted status until members of the Organization (the White Racialist group of which Turner is a member) revolt. The book portrays White racists as heroes and everyone else as either inconsequential or downright evil, including Whites not affiliated with the Organization. Despite its message, however, it is still well-written and hard to put down. Its nature, disturbing to most, will only make the storyline stick better in your head. I strongly recommend this book to someone who is not easily affected or easily sickened, and someone who is not sitting on a fence. There are graphic parts, disturbing parts, and times when you will put down the book and feel like someone has punched you in the chest, but anyone who enjoyed the movie "American History X" and/or has a fascination with the nature of hate should read this book.

89 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but not for everyone., April 15, 2000

By 

Linda Boyd (Aberdeen, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Turner Diaries: A Novel (Paperback)

Not coming from the perspective of the author, but rather from that of an open-minded libertarian, I bought and read this book out of sheer curiosity. While some of the scenes were a bit strong for my tastes, I certainly found the book fascinating. I regard it as always worth while to immerse one's self in the study of other perspectives. This book presented me with an ideal opportunity to do so. Whatever one thinks about the ideology advanced by its author, she must nevertheless conclude that this book is pretty interesting.

Also fascinating to me has been the emphasis placed by other reviewers on the idea that this book is 'poorly written.' On the advice of these reviewers, I prepared myself to endure a poor read. I can attest that it is no more poorly written than any other novel for sale on Amazon. I really find it odd that so many reviewers have suggested this, considering that there is nothing noticeably poor about the writing in this book at all. After checking the reviews of clearly poorly written books, and finding nothing resembling such an emphasis, I inferred that these suggestions result from the sensitivity of the subject matter dealt with in the book. To each her own, I guess. Considering this, I advise those whose feathers are easily ruffled to read something else.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Forget The Racism-- Consider the Paradigm, September 24, 2008

By 

Ryan M. Crosby "clamchowdah222" (Fort Bragg, NC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Turner Diaries (Paperback)

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.