Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A bit more upsetting than your average idealist book..., March 15, 2002
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.
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A piece of modern american history., October 26, 2000
Did you know that Timothy McVeigh owned a copy of this book and modeled his attack on the Oaklahoma building after the story? This alone makes it a piece of history and a book worth reading.The Turner Diaries is a fictional account of a white supremecist revolution. I personally do not agree with the views of the author, however I feel that exposure to extremist literature allows the reader to evaluate their own beliefs with a better understanding of the issues at hand. I recomend reading this book for anyone with an open mind and an ability to think for themselves. I do not feel that it is appropriate for highly influential individuals or the extremely sensitive.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Forget The Racism-- Consider the Paradigm, September 24, 2008
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.
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