WEBVTT - Earl Turner's Diary 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.800 Col Zone Media. On April twentieth, nineteen ninety five, the 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.200 front page of almost every newspaper in the country ran 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:20.119 the same photograph, a firefighter standing in the rubble with 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:25.799 an infant in his arms. Terrorist bomb hits Heartland clues 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:31.480 Lacking the headlines, screamed papers ran quotes from anonymous federal 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:36.040 law enforcement sources saying the bomber was likely an Islamic extremist. 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:41.400 Government officials speaking off the record confirmed that they suspected 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:46.080 it was a Jahadist group with ties to Iran. Reporters 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:50.200 rushed to get comments from counter terrorism experts, and plenty 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.559 of them were happy to speculate that only a Muslim 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:55.880 could have set off that truck bomb in Oklahoma City. 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.440 But experts in right wing extremism saw something different in 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:05.039 the rubble of the Alfred P. Mura building. They were 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:09.039 looking at an almost exact recreation of the bombing depicted 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.640 in the Turner Diaries, a novel sold at gun shows 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:16.840 and by mail through nazy newsletters, and they were right. 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:21.080 That first day. Those experts didn't know yet that the 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:24.160 bomber had already been arrested, and that he'd been carrying 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.559 photocopies of his favorite passages from the novel, but they'd 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.360 known immediately that it looked early like the events of 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.959 the novel had come to life. Two days after the bombing, 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:40.000 the novel's author shrugged off any connection, telling a reporter 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.959 who reached him at his compound that it was really 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.800 really grasping to try to make any connection to his book, 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.560 but he knew, he knew that his book could kill 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:59.640 because this wasn't the first time it had. I'm Molly Conger, 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:21.120 and this is where little guys, this is a story 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:27.040 about a book, sort of. There are some recurring elements 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.840 on this show that I've hinted at a thousand times 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:34.760 without really getting into in any detail. It feels like 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.919 some sort of Homeric epithet the way I describe these 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.680 things the same way every time they're mentioned in passing. 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.760 But swift footed Achilles and the wine dark Sea have 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:49.840 been replaced with miniature portraits of monsters we haven't gotten 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.520 to yet, and The Turner Diaries is one of those. 0:02:55.880 --> 0:03:02.079 It's a book, a novel, work of fiction. It's been 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:05.760 called by both its fans and critics the bible of 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:09.639 the racist right, the most important work of white National's 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:14.399 Propaganda in the English language, and the Blueprint for White Revolution, 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:20.840 and in all the stories I tell, it's almost always there. 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.919 In the very first episode of this show, Kevin Strom's 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:28.480 first wife blurted out at dinner with the book's author 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:33.880 that she hadn't enjoyed it. Dennis Mahon, the klansman who 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.640 spent decades building bombs, said this was the book that 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:42.440 really opened his eyes. Mass shooters listed in the recommended 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:47.320 reading appendix of their Rambling manifestos. A South African Nazi 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:51.520 terrorist group borrowed its name from the plot, unrelated to 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.920 the American Nazi terrorist group who also named itself after 0:03:54.960 --> 0:04:00.160 the group in the book. Aspiring race warriors yearn for 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.240 the Day of the Rope, a phrase coined by the 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:07.160 narrator of the book to describe the mass public executions 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:12.000 of those deemed to be race traders. Even the weird 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.440 little guys who don't have the attention span to read 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.719 the novel for themselves have been influenced by it because 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:21.600 they're steeped in a culture that has revered this book 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:27.000 for fifty years. But when it comes up, it's only 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.720 ever in passing. Every time we come across this book 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.880 in one of our stories. I'm just asking you to 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:37.560 trust me when I tell you that it's important, and 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:41.080 that the pages of this novel are soaked in blood, 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:46.080 as you're no doubt sick of hearing me say. At 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.800 this point, this show is one long story told out 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.680 of order. There may not even be any reasonable way 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:56.720 of putting it in order, with all of its interlocking 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:59.919 pieces across space and time. But I'm trying to figure 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.960 out as I go, and I keep having to double 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:05.400 back to give you a piece I know you'll need 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.360 before we continue along whatever path I've wandered down in 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:13.200 a given week. You see, what I had in mind 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.560 for the beginning of the new year was a pretty 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:20.360 exciting story about a couple of klansmen bungling an attempted 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:25.000 coup in the Caribbean. It's an adventure that never quite 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.599 made it to the high Seas, and I am looking 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:31.640 forward to it. But as I started fitting the pieces together, 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.080 I remembered what happened last time I sat down to 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:40.599 start this story. I need to double back if I 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.279 don't set the stage by telling you some stories about 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.520 Don Black and David Duke and a couple of Canadian 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.120 neo Nazi groups. I'll spend too much time darting off 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.960 down these tangents. You know that children's book if you 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:57.880 give a musa muffin, maybe you had the one about 0:05:57.920 --> 0:05:59.920 the mouse and the cookie, But we were a moose 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.600 muffin household. That's the one I read, and that's kind 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.440 of what's happening here. You know, the moose needed a 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.000 glass of milk for his muffin. And to tell you 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.440 about this attempted coup, I have to tell you about 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.919 some of the guys first. And if I'm going to 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.599 tell you anything about David Duke or Don Black, I 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.080 have to start with the day they met. But I 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.280 can't even start writing about the rest of their friendship 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.479 because it seems worth mentioning that there was a third 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.360 man in the car with them the day they met, 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:35.120 and that man was a serial killer. But what you 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.000 are probably asking, does any of that have to do 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:44.520 with the Turner Diaries? Not much, admittedly, but it has 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:49.880 everything to do with the sequel. So the coup will 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.560 have to wait because I worked so far backwards on 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.039 this train of thought that before we even get to 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.880 the actual story of the Nazi serial killer who paralyzed 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:01.520 Larry Flint. We're going to have to talk about this book. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.159 William Luther Pierce looms large in so many stories about 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:12.280 white nationalism in the United States. He comes up a lot, 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.240 particularly in the last few months, because I've been writing 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.960 about the American Nazi Party and Pierce was an early member. 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:21.960 He quit his job as a physicist working on jet 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.240 engines for a defense contractor and moved to Virginia to 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:29.000 work with George Lincoln Rockwell in the sixties. By the 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:33.760 mid seventies, he'd established his own organization, National Alliance, and 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.200 until his death in two thousand and two, Pierce exerted 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:42.320 enormous influence on the extreme right. This will not be 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.560 the last time you hear about William Luther Pierce, but 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:51.320 today we're just looking at his novels, The Turner Diaries, 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:55.760 published in nineteen seventy eight, and Hunter in nineteen eighty nine. 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.520 The Turner Diaries was originally written in a serialized format, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:05.200 published one chapter at a time in issues of Attack, 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.920 the newsletter for his newly formed white supremacist organization, National Alliance, 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:15.040 from nineteen seventy five through nineteen seventy eight. Each issue 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:18.600 of Attack contained a chunk of the story written under 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:24.320 the pen name Andrew MacDonald in what is almost certainly 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:28.120 a crude ripoff of Jack London's Iron Heel. The novel 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:30.920 is presented as a series of diary entries written by 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:36.000 the protagonist, a man named Earl Turner. It is, as 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:41.040 it says, Turner's Diary, and the diary is sandwich between 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.360 a forward and an epilogue written by a historian who 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.560 has unearthed this document one hundred years after the Great 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:53.280 Revolution that it describes. The found document bit recurs throughout 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.080 the text, with these little parenthetical notes to the reader 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:00.200 from the historian, helpfully providing context for readers of this 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:05.040 ancient text, explaining things like the dollar was the basic 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.080 monetary unit in the United States in the Old Era, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:12.960 or women's lib was a form of mass psychosis which 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:15.960 broke out in the last three decades of the Old Era. 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.280 The historian tells us that before he became a martyr 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:25.000 in the Revolution, Earl Turner was just a rank and 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:29.880 file member of the Organization, a white nationalist group that 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:35.000 was at war with the system, which is the incredibly 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.880 creative name that the novel uses to refer broadly to 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:43.040 the government, but also the media and whatever other nebulous 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:47.199 societal forces are being controlled and weaponized by the novel's 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:54.160 true villain, the Jews. Turner's first diary entry provides a 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:58.760 lot of exposition. The author probably should have found a 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:00.960 way to work that into the history briads forward, but 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:06.000 I'm not here to backseat drive the terrorism Bible. In 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.240 that first entry, Turner is writing in nineteen ninety one, 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.880 and he tells his diary that it's been two years 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:17.800 since the co Enact outlawed ownership of guns. The system 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:21.120 deputized armed squads of black men to carry out gun 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:25.400 confiscation raids, rounding up and arresting thousands of white gun owners. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.559 From there, the book follows Turner and the organization as 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:35.160 they ramp up their terroristic activity. Turner is inducted into 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.559 the secret inner circle of the organization called the Order. 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.200 He's captured by the government but manages to escape, and 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.800 as punishment for allowing himself to be captured alive, he's 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:51.280 assigned a suicide mission, which he completes, thus securing his 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:55.560 place as a martyr for the cause. Now I have 0:10:55.640 --> 0:11:00.920 to confess for all the commentary I've read a this book, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:06.440 both by academics and the books fans. I'd never actually 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:11.880 sat down and just read it like a book. I mean, 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.480 I know the broad strokes, I know what's in it. 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.360 I've read passages of it. I've read things referring to 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:21.559 passages of it. I just don't read a lot of novels, 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:24.959 and this was definitely not on my list for when 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:26.440 I was going to sit down and read a novel. 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:31.920 But picking through it more carefully now, it's actually very 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:37.080 funny how much of himself Pierce reveals, probably by accident. 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.400 I think a lot of inexperienced writers, people who are 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.520 trying their hand at fiction for the first time, end 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.360 up spilling a lot of their own psyche into the 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:52.000 protagonist's inner monologue. Like I said, I don't read a 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:54.000 lot of fiction, so I don't quite have the language 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:57.040 for this, but I think you can sort of feel 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:01.560 it when the author hasn't actually invested in world building. 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:05.200 They haven't built a fictional world for the story so 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.760 much as they have just published their own fantasy. Do 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.440 you know what I mean? Earl Turner is afraid of 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.880 all the same things Pierce is afraid of. He identifies 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.520 the same solutions Pierce believes should be implemented in the 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.760 real world. He hates the same people, lives in the 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.400 same area, holds a similar profession, and even hides his 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:31.520 guns the same way. Earl Turner's description of these underground 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.440 weapons caches are really similar to something I read in 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:37.560 a memoir by the ex wife of a man who 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:41.720 lived on Pierce's Nazi compound in the nineties. She wrote 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:43.840 that one of the tasks the women were expected to 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.480 work on when they weren't busy with their children was 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:51.480 building these watertight containers that were used to protect the 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:56.760 guns they buried underground. What most people know about the 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.400 Turner Diaries, though, are the passages that have been fired 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:07.839 real life re enactments in the book. The organization's first 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:12.199 real attack on the system was a bombing, and the 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:17.200 book describes in great detail how the organization went about 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.560 sourcing the materials for a forty four hundred pound ammonium 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:25.400 nitrate bomb. The book describes how they assembled the bomb 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:27.560 and how they placed the bomb in the back of 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.400 the truck and then parked that truck outside of a 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:35.320 government building, knowing it would kill hundreds of mostly innocent people. 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.280 Earl Turner's bomb went off a little after nine am 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:46.280 outside the FBI headquarters, killing seven hundred people. When Timothy 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.959 McVeigh brought those pages to life, he built a remarkably 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:53.119 similar bomb, placed it in the back of a remarkably 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.600 similar truck, and parked it outside of a federal building. 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.560 A little after nine am. He killed one hundred and 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:05.360 sixty eight people at a federal building in Oklahoma City. 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.000 After his bomb went off, Earl Turner wrote in his diary, 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:13.839 all day yesterday and most of today, we watched the 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.440 TV coverage of rescue crews bringing the dead and injured 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.280 out of the building. It is a heavy burden of 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.400 responsibility for us to bear, since most of the victims 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:24.600 of our bomb were only pawns who were no more 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.200 committed to the sick philosophy or the racially destructive goals 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.120 of the system than we are. But there is no 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.240 way we can destroy the system without hurting many thousands 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:39.920 of innocent people. No way, And maybe Timothy McVeigh was 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:44.000 thinking about that passage when he selected his target. Maybe 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:48.360 Earl Turner's words soothed his conscience as he walked calmly 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.880 away from the truck, knowing it was parked directly underneath 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:57.480 the building's daycare center. He would later deny targeting the 0:14:57.520 --> 0:14:59.800 day care center, claiming he hadn't even known it was 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:06.760 then everything I've read leads me to believe that's a lie. 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.200 He described his victims the same way Earl Turner did. 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.400 He'd been obsessed with the novel for years before he 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.200 built that bomb, and when he was arrested on the 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.000 day of the bombing, police found a sealed envelope in 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:23.000 his car. He was full of right wing political pamphlets, 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.320 news clippings about the siege at Waco, and copy of 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:31.320 the Declaration of Independence, and a photocopy of pages sixty 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:36.600 one and sixty two of the Turner Diaries. McVeigh had 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.120 underlined a passage on that page that read, in part, 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.240 but the real value of all our attacks today lies 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:50.240 in the psychological impact, not the immediate casualties. But Timothy 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.880 McVeigh wasn't the only man to take Pierce's novel as 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:58.920 marching orders. He wasn't even the first. Pierre shrugged off 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:03.400 questions about McVeagh, telling reporters he had no idea why 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.280 a man he'd never heard of called the National Alliance 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:11.520 hotline repeatedly in the days before the bombing, and maybe 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:15.360 he's telling the truth. I'm sure they never met and 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:20.960 they probably never spoke. Mcvay's relationship with Pierce was one directional. 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:25.720 He read the book, but there's no doubt at all 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:30.840 that William Luther Pierce personally mentored the first man who 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.480 tried to become Earl Turner, the first man who built 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.040 bombs and spilled blood in the name of the Turner Diaries. 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.240 The speech you are about to hear was given on Sunday, 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:48.320 September fourth, nineteen eighty three by Robert Matthews at the 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:52.400 General Convention of the National Alliance in Arlington, Virginia. A 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:56.320 few weeks later, Matthews declared war on the enemies of 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.520 our race, went underground with a handful of companions called 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:06.280 the Silent Brotherhood, and began fighting. His fight lasted until 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.480 he was burned to death by a secret police task 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:12.679 force a little over a year later, on December eighth, 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:14.040 nineteen eighty four. 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:22.720 That's Pierce himself speaking years later, adding commentary to a 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.320 recording he published of the speech that launched a year 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:31.920 long terror campaign. Robert J. Matthews joined Pierce's organization, National 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:35.520 Alliance in nineteen eighty and the pair had active personal 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:40.400 correspondence for years and met in person several times. When 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.280 Matthew stood to make a speech at the National Alliance 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.920 convention in nineteen eighty three, it was at Pierce's request. 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:52.000 This was something they had discussed extensively ahead of time. 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.119 In his later recollection of that day, you heard Pierce 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.359 call the group Matthews formed a few weeks later, the 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:05.720 Silent Brotherhood, and that was one name for it, but 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:12.120 it's best known as the Order. In truth, Matthews didn't 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.320 want to give the group a name at all, at 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.800 least according to former members who spoke about its founding 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.480 after Matthews died. Giving it a name would make it 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.240 easier to talk about, and he didn't want to encourage 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.520 anyone to talk about what they were about to do. 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:28.760 But if they had to call it something, he told 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.520 them they should call it the Order, like the secret 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:36.000 group within the organization in the Turner Diaries, the book 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:40.680 they'd all read, and just a quick aside. He probably 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.199 should have just left it at the Order, and that 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:45.399 is what they called it for the first full year, 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:49.000 but a few months before he died, he decided it 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:53.000 needed some kind of formal name, and I think he 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:55.800 fell victim to a problem I see pretty often with 0:18:55.880 --> 0:19:01.080 guys like this. They love Nazi Germany, but they refused 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:05.480 to learn German. So when he was scrounging around trying 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:09.520 to find a dignified and clever and properly hit Larian 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:12.960 name for his organization, he thought of a book he'd 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:15.080 seen on a shelf at one of the member's houses. 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.320 It was a book of photographs of members of the 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:24.440 SS and the book was called ven alla Bruderschweigen, which 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:26.440 is a portion of a line and a poem written 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.800 in eighteen fourteen by German poet Maximilian Gottfried from Schenckendorf. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:36.159 The phrase, in the context of the poem translates to 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:41.520 when all brothers are silent. But if you just pull 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:46.160 out two words from the phrase, it doesn't really mean anything. 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.000 I mean, each one of those individual words has a meaning. 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:55.120 Ruder means brother, Schweigen means silence, But it doesn't mean 0:19:55.280 --> 0:20:00.560 silent brothers. Ruderschweigen just means brother silent. It's just two 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:05.320 unrelated nouns. But that is what they had stamped onto 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:10.600 the giant gold medallions that they all wore with pride. 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:16.159 But in that recording, Pierce calls it the Silent Brotherhood, again, 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:20.720 a name it had only briefly. Maybe he thought that 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:25.119 sounded more dignified. But I think the more likely explanation 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.920 is that he knew calling it the Order would draw 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:32.159 attention to the fact that he was involved, and he 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.520 was trying to distance himself from what really looked like 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.080 a terror cell that had been formed at his direction. 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:43.080 At the very least, it was clearly inspired by his work, 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.040 and he never did like taking credit for the actions 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:53.240 he encouraged younger, bolder men to take. But regardless, the 0:20:53.359 --> 0:21:00.600 names are interchangeable. The Silent Brotherhood Bruderschweigen the Order, and 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:04.199 it was Robert Matthew's speech in nineteen eighty three that 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:06.280 brought the Order to life. 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:13.399 So Kinsman Duty calls the future is now. If months 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.119 from now you have not yet fully committed yourself to 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.119 the alliance and the responsibilities thereof, then you have an 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.560 effect not only betrayed your race, you have betrayed yourself. 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:27.280 So stand up like men and drive the enemy into 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:29.680 the sea. 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:33.760 In the fourteen months or so from the founding of 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.480 the group to the fiery death of its leader. They 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:42.199 acted out the instructions in the book. That speech was 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:44.880 given to a room full of men who were already 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:50.360 members of National Alliance, a white nationalist organization. So he's 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.880 proposing a smaller secret group, one that is more focused 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:59.560 on revolutionary action. He's proposing the formation of a group 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.040 within a gree just as Earl Turner was drafted from 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:09.760 the organization into its secret inner core the Order, and 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.440 just like Earl Turner's brothers and arms did in the book, 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:18.520 The Order funded their activities through robbery and counterfeiting. They 0:22:18.560 --> 0:22:21.440 never did get very good at counterfeiting, but they pulled 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:24.600 in millions of dollars from a series of armored car robberies. 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:30.640 They bombed a movie theater and a Seneca. They planned 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:34.840 to carry out a series of assassinations, killings that would 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:38.000 in a direct sense, take out their perceived enemies of 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:41.400 the white race and rid the world of these undesirable elements, 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:46.320 but also to destabilize society to push the country closer 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.199 to an all out race war. They didn't make a 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.240 lot of progress on assassinating Henry Kissinger, shooting a Rockefeller, 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:59.679 or a rothschild or killing television producer Norman Lear, but 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:03.400 they did shoot and kill Denver talk radio personality Alan berg. 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.240 Berg was targeted not only because he was Jewish, which 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:10.040 would have been enough on his own to earn him 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:14.600 a spot on their list, but specifically berg had invited 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.320 a pair of Christian identity preachers onto his radio show, 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:23.080 and he'd embarrassed them pretty badly. The whole story of 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:27.320 the Order is something worth revisiting in greater detail. Matthews 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:29.639 is still widely celebrated as a martyr within the movement. 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:33.800 Although it was short lived, the Order, the one that 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:37.640 existed in real life, really shaped the landscape of white 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:42.160 nationalist terror for years to come. And I still haven't 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.200 watched the twenty twenty four movie starring Nicholas Holt as 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:48.480 Robert Matthews and Jude Law as the FBI agent who 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:51.679 tracks him down. So maybe I'll watch that and we 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:56.760 can talk about it. I wonder now that I'm thinking 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:01.160 about the parallels in more detail, Robert Matthews thought about 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:05.240 Earl Turner at the end. He was holed up in 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:07.240 a safe house on Whidbey Island off the coast of 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:11.280 Seattle when the FEDS finally caught up to him, negotiations 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:14.520 broke down. He refused to come out. He put on 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:16.919 a gas mask and ignored the volleys of tear gas, 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:19.800 and he ignored the pleas of his friends and accomplices 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:21.680 that the FBI brought to the scene to try to 0:24:21.720 --> 0:24:28.480 reason with him. He wouldn't come out. They only meant 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:32.720 to start a small fire. They wanted to smoke him out. 0:24:34.600 --> 0:24:36.600 I really don't think they could have known the flare 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:39.240 they fired through the broken window was going to land 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:56.760 in a box of hand grenades. When Robert Matthews climbed 0:24:56.800 --> 0:25:00.800 into the bathtub to seek refuge from the flames, did 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:03.880 he imagine he was Earl Turner in the cockpit, preparing 0:25:03.880 --> 0:25:05.720 to die in the blast when he dropped a nuclear 0:25:05.760 --> 0:25:10.080 bomb on the Pentagon. How much did any of them 0:25:10.440 --> 0:25:14.560 really think about Earl Turner? And to what extent did 0:25:14.560 --> 0:25:17.600 Peers intend for the novel to motivate real world action. 0:25:19.560 --> 0:25:23.600 We can't really know. And the problem with trying to 0:25:23.640 --> 0:25:28.359 sort out anyone's motivation for anything is that people lie. 0:25:29.680 --> 0:25:33.920 They lie to themselves, They lie to escape responsibility, They 0:25:33.960 --> 0:25:37.720 lie to create propaganda. They write fictions that glorify their 0:25:37.760 --> 0:25:41.400 martyrs and exonerate themselves and cast their enemies as villains 0:25:41.400 --> 0:25:46.240 and fools. Pierce calls it the Silent Brotherhood, because to 0:25:46.240 --> 0:25:48.040 call it the Order would be an admission that they'd 0:25:48.040 --> 0:25:53.159 done it for him. He never admitted any involvement. He 0:25:53.200 --> 0:25:55.800 denied receiving a Duffel bag full of cash from Matthews 0:25:55.800 --> 0:25:58.840 after one of the armored car robberies, despite the obvious 0:25:58.840 --> 0:26:01.560 fact that he used that money to purchase the land 0:26:01.560 --> 0:26:05.560 that would become his Nazi compound in West Virginia. And 0:26:05.640 --> 0:26:08.200 the degree to which the Turner Diaries was truly viewed 0:26:08.240 --> 0:26:13.560 as a Bible as a manual within the group is fuzzy. 0:26:15.320 --> 0:26:19.000 Was this treated as scripture or were they being tongue 0:26:19.000 --> 0:26:21.440 in cheek when they referred to themselves using the name 0:26:21.480 --> 0:26:25.439 of a fictional group from a novel. It depends on 0:26:25.480 --> 0:26:30.600 who you believe. Pierce himself tells different stories depending on 0:26:30.640 --> 0:26:35.399 his mood. He almost seems to delight in being impossible 0:26:35.440 --> 0:26:38.840 to pin down reading some of these old quotes. I 0:26:39.000 --> 0:26:44.080 swear you can hear him winking. In his book Gods 0:26:44.119 --> 0:26:49.400 of the Blood, Swedish historian Massius Gardel writes that quote 0:26:50.160 --> 0:26:52.920 the extent to which Matthews and the Brooders identified with 0:26:53.000 --> 0:26:55.360 the Order of the Turner Diaries in an ultimate goal 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:59.879 to overthrow the US government is uncertain retrospectively. In prison, 0:27:00.119 --> 0:27:02.600 Order members differed widely in their assessments of what they 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:06.560 had intended, ranging from modest hopes of contributing financially to 0:27:06.640 --> 0:27:11.840 racist organizations to optimistic expectations of igniting an armed Aryan revolution. 0:27:14.359 --> 0:27:17.600 And for that book, Gardell was able to interview several 0:27:17.640 --> 0:27:19.680 members of the Order who were still alive to talk 0:27:19.720 --> 0:27:23.439 about it in the late nineties. He got a different 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:26.560 answer from every gray haired old Nazi who was willing 0:27:26.600 --> 0:27:30.520 to take his call. Gary Yarborough told him the novel 0:27:30.560 --> 0:27:34.840