📝[BOOK REVIEW] Demystifying and discussing "The Turner Diaries"
Or, drawing insight on humanity and its lack thereof from the worst pieces of extremist literature. A cautionary tale on today's supremacism and its inspirations.
Introduction
P R E M I S E : Forgive me if I encurred into typing mistakes and the likes: I have been frantically writing this.
Lately I have been into bouts and fits of despair over the current period in which the whole world seems to have gone insane, losing common sense if not its positiveness at all. After ditching two or three futile attempts at coping with this uneasiness, I have done what most intellectuals do in these cases: read books to grasp some insight on the authors, the context, and so on.
However, unlike proper intellectuals, I have decided not to grab the insights of great thinkers and benefactors to the cause of human development and insight, but rather to draw from the worst of the worst in order to derive my own insight to (and "for") the cause of human development.
Therefore, in this discussion I will share some observation and collected thoughts after having read half (yet not all, due to boredom: more on that later) one of the most infamous pieces of "literature of extremism": a white supremacist novel titled "The Turner Diaries" by Andrew Macdonald, which I have found not only "interesting" for drawing parallels with the sickness and negativity of current reactionary mentality but also for determining how it was a regress also in terms of psychological development and literary merit.
Some Backgrounds on the Book, far from complete
The Turner Diaries was notorious in that it was the main inspirator for the "groups of hatred" throughout the United States of America in the 1980s and the 1990s, and has notoriously inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, which was one of the nadirs of the 1990s from which actually the current world disorder and hatred started and originated from.
Other observers and critics eventually also wondered whether or not the book has also inspired the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, for the final chapter of the book describes an aerial terrorist attack on the Pentagon actually not dissimilar from the one that happened in 2001 at the hand of Al Qaeda fanatics, who were actually masterminded by highly educated people who were well versed with "anti-establishment" eversive books — see for instance the published list of "Osama Bin Laden's bookshelf", it also includes videogames. (Wait, What? A self-declared declared anti-Westerner was a major fan of Western literature! And even played Western videogames! It must be that haters actually have a schizophrenic love-hate relationship when it comes to their victims. And it must be also that their hate actually represents very obsoleted and boring explanations and alternatives to reality. More on that later, when I will discuss the book).
In any case, this book was a recipe and inspirator for anti-governmental unrest and extremism and well explains the deeply rooted sentiment of US people toward their own public sector, and partly helps explain why it is being dismantled now. It might also explain why in the USA there has been little documented opposition by common people to the dismantling of the public sector (i.e. the “deep state”, actually made mostly of ordinary people rather than exhaggerated “masterminds”, plus cultural and public funding associations) compared to other causes and protests: it puzzles at least me in Europe that US people are more concerned for other causes rather than their own freedom. Oh, well, who I am to judge? I’m just a crazy artist and writer, after all.
Why on Earth have I Dared To Read Such Despicable Artifacts?
Admittingly, I mostly have read the novel out of curiosity for a certain infamous chapter that was supposed to describe "the Day of the Rope", supposedly a scene depicting a mass orgy of hangings and lynchings... I admit that I had ran my imagination wild and had my worst hopes lifted up in that I was expecting to find an over-the-top, delirious narration actually depicting a hanging orgy minute of details of unheard heineous cruelty if not depravation, and I absolutely wanted to find out to what kind of excesses an unhinged, delusional imagination can slip to... Only to find out, to my own dismay, that this novel was really a boring self-delusional neonazi pamphlet dressed up as the fanfiction of a former teenager that was angry at anything around him.
Even that "Day of the Rope" chapter eventually turned out to be little more than a self-delusional mart shopping list not dissimilar from the worst chapters of the Antique Testament or the Quran or the bouts of bigotry from the Christian epistles and\or letters... And with neither the literary competence nor the detail of the formers.
Thoughts and Observations on the Book
Next, I will expose some thoughts, insights, and observation after having read half of this botched, inept literary monstruosity...
1.The 1970s Re-Alignment / 2010s-2020s Continuum: The Irrelevance of Time in Conspirational Thinking
The book was written in the late '70 but because of its imagery and political ideas it seems like it could have been written as well in the 2000s or even the 2010s, which means that the groups of hatred operating now are, simply put, mostly people already active in the 1970s still going on with their own imagery.
Most notably, a lot of phrases are so copy-paste in nature from both a phraseological and ideological perspective that by then you start to wonder if the hate speech that comes out nowadays is either the product of the long-time grey heads loving this book or simply an AI-enabled remix of extracts from this book (I personally think they are both nowadays).
2.”The Turner Diaries” and Anti-Rock Music Sentiments: A Meta-Diegetic Analysis Of Musical Bias And Racialized Resentment
The very Turner is anti-Rock Music (to my shock and awe).
In the book there is explicit hatred and contempt even of Rock music, thought of as "degenerate". After all, culture and entertrainment plays a larger role than generally thought of: in particular, artificiality and officially-mandated entertrainment plays out to be a negative factor that creates negative self-perceptions and resentment. After all, these white "race" supremacists are not also white-noise supremacists.
There should be an entire book on why Rock music could have been change but was not any longer around the time this book came out in the 1970s, and around the time it also gave up any hope of (mutual) racial integration.
Notice how Black people eventually between the late 1970s and the 1980s were no longer afraid of daring to be "Rock"-stars after the original Rock & Roll was defeated by the segregationist establishment in the late 1950s: it was not just mainstream icons (like Prince and Michael Jackson, for instance), but also very niche avant-garde Jazz players who were now also adopting the instrumentation, the looks, the attitudes, and the sonorities of Rock music (also of noisy and totally un-mainstream very "whitened" Rock music), a process that was re-ignited by the likes of Miles Davis in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Is it a coincidence that, just as Black artists were reaching out to white music, white music not only distanced themselves from Black music but also dismissed previous generations of Rock artists who actually attempted to bridge the culture and racial gap?
I don't think it is a coincidence: it was a latent segregationist attempt among many. I will also take into account my own experience for the next observation.
I now realize in full how I am a pariah in the world of Rap-Rock and Jazz Rap, for I am one of the few whites (at least in my continent) who is daring to blend together Black, White, and Asian attitudes toward music together pretty much without concerns, to a degree even resurrecting if not endorsing attitudes that are widely despised by each segregationist part: for my part, I never had any concern, at least until people started pointing me out. I now see how white people chastize me for having incorporated Black "decadence" and vandalization on a musical if not lyrical perspective while, at the same time, the most "militant" of Blacks after the 2020s social justice riots most likely do not approve of me merging styles and playing Black music (after all I do play Black music, that is a fact, not an opinion) with "white" concerns and instruments.
I now do see why Rock-music fans despise me: I bring elements "foreign" to them not only at a musical level but also on a racialized, discriminated way. I almost see myself like a real-life counterpart to the "decadent" rockstar hanged in the novel for "having betrayed whiteness"... No wonder I do not have success in terms of public opinion and almost no one likes my music, even before having listened to it: as soon as I "talk" (actually the furthest there could be in terms of conceiving talking: it is really atonal singing and screaming, period), the "talk" itself gets dismissed no matter if it is not a talk at all (especially in later recordings), and I suspect the bias comes from the fact that it indirectly reminds of the "rap" element of my Rap-Rock and Jazz-Rap music, thereby reminding of the "Black" elements of more recent music.
Therefore, I suspect that most "Rock" fans simply do not like the "Black" aspect of the vocals precisely because it reminds them more of "Blackness" rather than "Whiteness": in my music biased listener hear me as a "white betrayer" even before a Rap-Rocker (by the way, ironicly, the vocals themselves are criticized on other accounts by Rap-music fans precisely because they diverge so much from Rap common practise).
Nonetheless, I still see that definitively Rock music is still controversial and prone to factionalism, possibly also because of the indirect effect of supremacists concerns, thereby I do not wonder that it has already at the near-start split into so many subgenres. That would also explain why Jazz too split into more subgenres once Black artists "dared" to blend elements conceived of as being staples of "whiteness": the 1970s is when factionalism and sectarianism really became pervasive (and divisive). Otherwise, we would have been like the post-Classical musicians where every one has his distinct style and language within some musical or historical currents and no one cares too much.
3.White Power and White Misoginy, Beyond Facts and Fiction
The book and the ideology behind it is way more misoginist than it deems itself to be.
In the novel there is only a utilitarian view of women, who do not possess subleties nor psychology in the novel. Furthermore, why is that the narrative voice (little more than a fictionalized counterpart to the novel’s writer) is constantly pointing out to the women’s "cuteness", without either explaining what is that "fairness" due to? (We do not get in-depth descriptions or characterializations of these women, pseudo-politics aside). And he indulges in the loneliness of the hero who promptly has this woman instantly sleep out with him...? Was that the point? Couldn't the writer simply write out a non-delusional erotic novel instead about how this bum of a protagonist man gets successful despite all expectations, thus defying whatever plot narrative was supposed to play out against him?
Moreover, in the novel there is a passage about a hanged 19-years old girl who gets murdered (because of “racial betrayal”) and who, quite alarmingly, gets described as "cute", too: seriously, what the heck was wrong with this writer guy? I am convinced that he has versed all his hatred toward scapegoats because he deemed himself unable of attaining what he was fantasizing the most... why not indulging in a narrative where he does attain his desires, instead? Why these self-delusions?
Seriously, we need to have an actual conversation on why young men do see women, in particular young women, in negative terms: I suspect it stems either from bad mandatory schools memories of rejection or because of our current terrible lack of preparedness if not of honesty when it comes to relate to the different sex, which also explains why heteronormative unions tend to be way less successful.
In general, I think that men should be extremely frank with women and do not hide the fact that we are fundamentally pigs and maniacs at a fancyful level yet also be clear that it is not an obstacle for a mutually respectful union, and if it does not play well, fine, I am not interested, I'll move out to the next woman who does not hold grudges and biases against me, yet there is never a do-or-die situation in which I'll force my ebntitlement on whomever I want or wish for, at least, not in my case. Again, let spontaneity emerge from the unexpected rather than having a fixed model of reference and pursue your alternate prefabricated reality no matter what.
I dare argue instead that it is the writer who was the "degenerate" who he said not to be and who was instead deeming himself to be battling against other "degenerates" (of the kind, either racially or sexually or whatever else) like, well, me, who on the contrary might as well prove way more moral than this hateful writer of (literally) little value. I do see how Black, Jew, Hispanic people, and women have a point here, and I largely agree with them on being suspicious of the "standard white maleness" of the kind that this book deems to represent (which, to my behalf, it is NOT standard white malehood at all); I wish their activists, exponents and policy-makers too were less polarized and less conflictual the way "Turner" was...
Lesson learnt: polarization trascends boundaries, polars fight both polars and non-polars, polars enable other polars. As long as we have one-sided white supremacists so we get also their one-sided minority reactionaries, who in any case do not represent the whole, just like the white supremacists do not represent the whole of manhood or the whole of whites.
4.The absolutism and homogeneity implied beyond "identities": The Flattenment of Othering
Notice that, even thought the book talks of “white betrayers”, there is no mention at all of other peoples sympathizing with whites: all Blacks, Mixed-race individuals, Jews, Mexicans, etc. in the novel are seen as a single entity, without nuance, and apparently are thought as a single bloc without internal diverging views.
For instance, in the novel there is no Black or Jew or Hispanic "betraying" their cause to help White people... why is that? This could only be possible if the writer himself is polarized and oversimplifies groups of people into one single entity.
Small personal digression, just to demonstrate how affiliations, nationalities, racialized affinities and so on are pointless. I think of me who, even though I am of mixed race (Italian + Russian \ Belarusian + one quarter Kazakh Asian + other lesser amounts), I do not follow at all neither of these affiliations, cultural or political or otherwise, if not (very) marginally.
First of all, most of the times I speak (and write) in English rather than in Italian, even though I first learnt to read the Cyrillic alphabet and first spoke a “corrupted” variety of Belarusian and Russian as a child up until the age of four.
I have distant relatives somewhere in Central Asia who have even adopted some Islamic usages, especially in terms of dining, via Kazakh familiar ties (and on more than one occasion I have been mistaken for a Turkic-speaking person).
I have had an inconstant upbringing both in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, to the point that as a child I convinced myself that “anything that was up to good so far must be good” — and yet I have abandoned both, committing apostasy and blasphemy on purpose to make my apostasy to dogmatic Christendom (and latent Islamdom) irreversible.
I have no interest whatsoever in the TV or else pop culture of neither country, nor do I have such particular interest toward English-language stations or channels, even though accessibility and distances are irrilevant to this day.
Conversely, I have played hundreds of amateur-made ROM Hacks even in German and in Korean, even completing them to the end and the post-game — please notice that I do not know a single word neither in German nor in Korean (I barely know some basics of the hangul alphabet and that’s all). What’s worse, I am also of German descent, yet I do not know anything German.
I am skeptical of Western democracy to some little degree: one reason above all, giving the means of production for free to everyone (like, say… writing on the Internet, even devoid of competence and knowledge), even to the most ignorant of teenagers (like… say: me years ago), is roughly the equivalent of gifting the TNT and the lighter to a pathological bomber. Yet, despite these compelling premises, and in spite of my claimed ethnical backgrounds, I won’t approve of dictators related to my own Russian and Belarusian backgrounds, and matter of fact I do not endorse neither Lukashenko nor Putin, nor do I endorse who screwed up on purpose Russia for its own self-interest (because I think that the people of the USSR did not deserve the crisis and the looting after being subject to a dictatorship like the USSR was), nor do I support the Italian clowns who have constantly dared to fool if not to coerce electors with misleading populist promises. Matter of fact, I pretty much do not entirely approve of anyone I knew… no matter my ethnical or cultural commonality.
Worse: I find myself more likely to people who do not have any kind of relationship to me at all. And I have myself way more accepted by people most likely I am not supposed to be able to accept or condone, to begin with. That is also why I pretty much have thrown out of the windows all my pre-conceived notions as the years went by.
I am a beast of no nation. And of no standard class, or sex, or ethnicity, or whatever prescripted and fully curated label it might be. This is not the future: this is the present.
Identity and affiliation is not all that there is, and in any case it is incredibly overrated and overvalued. Therefore I am looking forward for a more humane alternative to all of these, alternatives which are not necessarily endorsed by "big-players" and major policy-planners: it is the solutions that have to emerge themselves first and are later to be eventually aided and helped out, not the contrary. I tend to be wary of static narratives: the unexpected jumps out suddenly when you did not expect it, things are not as static nor as drastic as the novelist portrays them.
I think that the very reasons behind segregation and labelling have more to do with preventing people from coming into contact with different experiences that defy unifying narratives… the latter of which perhaps defies a way more unifying narrative: that we are all humans, after all.
And, in any case, I have a more nuanced opinion of things, even though I disagree or agree with many takes I generally do not exclude all aspects. For instance, I do like how these supremacists value things like solidariety and communalism and reciprocal social commitment one another, yet I also do like the "decadent" values and peaceful harmony that these supposed "enemies" are hanged for in the novel: I don't see why the one excludes the other completely as this narrative voice \ writer argues.
I can't understand why these characters are going about their business without engaging in change about their opinions, as if there is no "third way" out of these absolutes.
Ultimately, the tragedy here stems from polarization in the USA mindset, not in their culture or race relations or whatever, for it is ultimately about thinking of everything as being clearcut and one-sided: this seems to affect both the supremacists but also the "liberals" depicted here. Sadly, this explains the current state of the USA now.
Lesson learnt: the USA is over-obsessed with the concept of identities and tribalism, because of polarization itself.
Side Note: The Flattenment and Othering of the “System”
Moreover, please notice how this novel refers to the antagonistical "System" as one monolithical identity, while the reality is way more complex than that, and a "system", whether is the Communist Party or the Chamber of Commons, is actually way more complex, nuanced, and varietaged, with each member having his or her distinct personalities, priorities, and agendas — yes, even in supposed absolutist states, where the single leader is not as ominpotent as he seems or deems to be.
The "system", whatever that is, is always a heterogeneous whole, just like the very different cells that comprise our bodies, which are not even standardized and identical in terms of DNA and proteins. Again, oversimplification is a recipe for authoritarianism and disaster.
5.US Contempt for the Vietnam war loss and how 1950s-60s upheavals were ascribed to "decadence"
Not by coincidence, the "decadent" nudie movies of the time of the 1970s when this novel was published, B-grade quickies of the likes of Forced Entry, depict similar concerns to the ones evoked by Turner. Ultimately, polarization in the USA stems from the feeling of having been betrayed by policy-makers during the 1960s and the Vietnam war, not to mention during the racial struggles of the period.
Compare with Great Britain when similar scenarios also started once the economy started to dwindle because of Thatcherism: in the UK the divide transited from being the impoverished White and Black British workers being laid off and exploited by Thatcher to the angers and supremacist harangues echoed by the likes of Enoch Powell (if not Farage, coming to the present day). Read for instance the leaflets of Rock Against Racism in Great Britain at the time to better grasp an idea about how the British youth was initially united across racialized lines before being deceived and divided as now as they grew older.
Compare with Europe in the 2010s and the 2020s Pandemic and wars once the economy started to dwindle: notice the parallelisms with the perceived "elites" betraying people — yet another case of an over-simplified scenario: causes for the European deluge are multiple and are in good part to be found in the European population itself (e.g.: Europeans living above their means, and pursuing unreal standards of wealth and validation to assert one’s fit for life success, thus fracturing society), yet it is way too long to be described here in this paragraph alone.
One solution to polarization, at least on the political side, would be to reconnect policy-makers and higher spheres to society with the lower ones, thereby eliminating biases and barriers also on a cultural side, where the accomplishments of common people are no less important and special than the accomplishments of the "elite" — that is, one has to go beyond the herd mentality and see society as a continuation and a continuum where environments and spheres blend one another rather than being separed by ivory towers and walls. Therefore, one has to remind of how the success of all of these individuals are not necessarily the result of one individual alone but also of the common heritage of mankind, its communities, and its benefactors. No single person can fully claim to be the sole achiever of his\her fortunes, for even his knowledge has been inherited by his\her predecessors, from languange and mathematics to consciousness itself.
Western civilization still has not overcome its feudal mentality on behalf of the oppressors and oppressed, whose roles and affiliation however is not completely clear as it is normally assumed to be.
6.Weaponry Obsessions and the Illusion of Safety
Obsession of guns ultimately equates an ill-versed lack of faith.
I think another major issue is that who wrote this novel never thought that Black people, Jews, Hispanics and so on actually do value Whites and White culture as Whites do, and possibly even more: after all, "minorities" do "copycat" majorities, and vice-versa. The very paranoid thought of not allowing this possibility invokes not only bad faith in humanity, but also betrays a very low sense of esteem and safety wherein one (i.e: the writer, the supremacists) fundamentally see themselves as helpless victims and not as agents of their own destiny. Viceversa, who wrote the novel never thought that the "minorities" are not necessarily as powerful (or even as united) as he thinks.
7.The Curse Of Eugenics and Pseudo-Science
The book dabbles in eugenics, just like the worst of the worst of the deluding supremacist literature before and after it, as if genes alone are the sole determinants of success or improvement.
There are other values that are transmitted indipendently of genes which prove more successful even that the largest of dinosaurs and predators who went extinct, and hate and discrimination are not one of these.
8.Latent White Imperialism in the Book and in Supremacism: a Time Capsule of Things to Come
Notice the notion of Europe as being little more than a surrogate appendix of the United States in the final epilogue, not to mention Canada as little more than a breakaway satellite to be invaded and annexed...
Moreover, the animosity toward China was already there, and also notice how the demise of the Soviet Union is thought of as being the result of a disarm and a Chinese invasion: the premises for the arms race and invasions of Russia itself seem to precisely have been inspired by the premises laid down by this book.
Could it be that Putin's Russia is about to invade Europe both to "fight" its presumed "decadence" while also avoiding the perceived threat of a Chinese invasion of Siberia and the Russian Federation, as this book describes? One wonders if Putin or Alexandr Dugin and associates see themselves as a Turner and his "organization" in his struggle to create a nazi white planet...
Given that these fellows have become lunatics around the 1980s when this kind of trash literature was becoming in vogue, one wonders if we are simply assisting at the materialization of the supremacists' manias first sketeched around 40-50 years ago once they have attained enough power and capability for carrying on their old fantasies.
Insights Found In the Novel (Few)
The only useful insights I have derived from this book: coping with the strategies of survival against the ills of supremacists:
1) The terror of vulnerability:
This little episode has taught me something about political terror.
Its very arbitrariness and unpredictability are important aspects of
its effectiveness.
Indeed, we witnessed it during Stalin's terror, during Kim's repression and random kidnappings and nuclear threats, during Putin's terror, and now under Trump's random terror regime — and, on my side, we experienced it with the random Nintendo of America bans on random ROM hacks sorted via alphabetical order.
The imposition of the feeling of vulnerability is the first sign of authoritarian tendencies: once someone resorts to intimidation, this is the very first sign of a willful lack of committment to understanding and compassion but rather the imposition of authority. I tend to think that this stems from familiar violence where the parent strikes (sometimes without no reason at all) the child as if it were the extention of a body part, therefore authoritarians do seem their victims as part of themselves to be disciplined and punished with a major spectacle of repression aimed at bringing a message of precariety.
Fighting precariety means fighting authoritarianism, and fighting precariety means disputing both the authority, the supposed infallibility and the ominipotence of the authoritarian.
2) Polarization:
Actually, it has been true all through history that only small
portions of a population are either good or evil. The great bulk are
morally neutral-incapable of distinguishing absolute right from
absolute wrong-and they take their cue from whoever is on top at
the moment
[...]
But
when evil men rule, as has been the case in America for many
years now, most of the population will wallow happily in
degeneracy of the worst kind and will self-righteously parrot every
filthy and destructive idea that they have been taught.
Lesson learnt, polarization is inherently a US-based trait possibly inherited via Protestantism and the conflictual nature of Christianity as a struggle for militant conversion and territorial gaining (actually not dissimilar from Islam), jointly with the pre-existing Abrahamic religion closely tied to the myth of decadence and fall and the need to look out for guides and commands of supreme will.
Authoritarianism is inherently linked to ethics. Freeing oneself from authoritarianism also means feeing oneself to the absolute certainties of ethics, which are not certain at all.
Indeed, there should be a real talk about overcoming the divisions based around one's application and adherence to ethics and actually look for a set of "core" basic commonalities that have proved with time in the course of History to have proved of more advantage.
Lesson learnt, the reverse engineering of nature's workings and an improved communication between different societal parts, if not brain hemispheres, still proves a more advantageous solution, maybe not completely perfect (perfection is impossible because of the incompleteness theorem) but still more humane and palatable as a mid-way compromise. It is also a direct application of Darwin’s principle of diversification of the ecosystem as a form of survival.
I do not find none of that in that Turner novel: we are left with a world of absolutes without nuances in which one considers the established order to be perpetually perfect without flaws, which also stems from an antiquated view of nature and of human nature. This does not even reflect a pre-human state, where primitive life forms at least have the decency of not putting their habitat diversification at risk and peril. At most, it reflects a post-human condition in which an external agent (the dopamine loop?) demands for "more".
Final evaluation, notwithstanding its human and political aspects
As for the book itself: elucidations and reflections on its premises and consequences aside, yup, "The Turner Diaries" is absolute trash. Its word usage and internal inconsistencies alone mar whatever value it might have had in literary and language terms alone, and is clearly the work of an uninspired amateur that was more interested in delivering his Fascist harangue rather than have fun with narration: you can guess the virtual amount of fillers patched together rushingly as a decoration for conveing his sermon.
Not to mention the total lack of psychology and depth, that would require an entire chapter on its own, and this book does not owe one, to be (un)fair.
Its only interest stems from the fact that it is puzzling observing how little we have changed in 50 years compared to the previous 50 and, especially, the 50 years even before those. Humanity has lost something of its integrity sometimes around 1870 and the "scramble for Africa" and it has never regained fully its senses ever since.
Its impending sense of disaster and the need for agency betrays the kind of Christian escathology that was evoked in its impending demise as a cornerstone for direction seeking and the impelling desire for the need to be forcefully guided and commanded by external "voices" of absolute certainty and infallibility.
Nietzche was completely wrong: God had not died, it has simply transited toward the status symbols of self-declared godly humans that aimed at reaching its vacant throne — which has always been vacant to begin with.
Humans are still unable of coping witht he consequences of the premise of the existence of design without designer, thus the existence of scapegoats and people whom to attach the blame to as residuals of the very concept of "designer". The sooner humans renounce fully and conscientiously to the concept of agent and designer the better off its psyche will be.
Personal evaluation of the book: 0.5/10, actually a conscientious regress rather than a progress, moreover made in spite of it, also from a communicative and psychological perspective, thus the very low rating.