Speaker 1: Col Zone Media. On April twentieth, nineteen ninety five, the
Speaker 1: front page of almost every newspaper in the country ran
Speaker 1: the same photograph, a firefighter standing in the rubble with
Speaker 1: an infant in his arms. Terrorist bomb hits Heartland clues
Speaker 1: Lacking the headlines, screamed papers ran quotes from anonymous federal
Speaker 1: law enforcement sources saying the bomber was likely an Islamic extremist.
Speaker 1: Government officials speaking off the record confirmed that they suspected
Speaker 1: it was a Jahadist group with ties to Iran. Reporters
Speaker 1: rushed to get comments from counter terrorism experts, and plenty
Speaker 1: of them were happy to speculate that only a Muslim
Speaker 1: could have set off that truck bomb in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: But experts in right wing extremism saw something different in
Speaker 1: the rubble of the Alfred P. Mura building. They were
Speaker 1: looking at an almost exact recreation of the bombing depicted
Speaker 1: in the Turner Diaries, a novel sold at gun shows
Speaker 1: and by mail through nazy newsletters, and they were right.
Speaker 1: That first day. Those experts didn't know yet that the
Speaker 1: bomber had already been arrested, and that he'd been carrying
Speaker 1: photocopies of his favorite passages from the novel, but they'd
Speaker 1: known immediately that it looked early like the events of
Speaker 1: the novel had come to life. Two days after the bombing,
Speaker 1: the novel's author shrugged off any connection, telling a reporter
Speaker 1: who reached him at his compound that it was really
Speaker 1: really grasping to try to make any connection to his book,
Speaker 1: but he knew, he knew that his book could kill
Speaker 1: because this wasn't the first time it had. I'm Molly Conger,
Speaker 1: and this is where little guys, this is a story
Speaker 1: about a book, sort of. There are some recurring elements
Speaker 1: on this show that I've hinted at a thousand times
Speaker 1: without really getting into in any detail. It feels like
Speaker 1: some sort of Homeric epithet the way I describe these
Speaker 1: things the same way every time they're mentioned in passing.
Speaker 1: But swift footed Achilles and the wine dark Sea have
Speaker 1: been replaced with miniature portraits of monsters we haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to yet, and The Turner Diaries is one of those.
Speaker 1: It's a book, a novel, work of fiction. It's been
Speaker 1: called by both its fans and critics the bible of
Speaker 1: the racist right, the most important work of white National's
Speaker 1: Propaganda in the English language, and the Blueprint for White Revolution,
Speaker 1: and in all the stories I tell, it's almost always there.
Speaker 1: In the very first episode of this show, Kevin Strom's
Speaker 1: first wife blurted out at dinner with the book's author
Speaker 1: that she hadn't enjoyed it. Dennis Mahon, the klansman who
Speaker 1: spent decades building bombs, said this was the book that
Speaker 1: really opened his eyes. Mass shooters listed in the recommended
Speaker 1: reading appendix of their Rambling manifestos. A South African Nazi
Speaker 1: terrorist group borrowed its name from the plot, unrelated to
Speaker 1: the American Nazi terrorist group who also named itself after
Speaker 1: the group in the book. Aspiring race warriors yearn for
Speaker 1: the Day of the Rope, a phrase coined by the
Speaker 1: narrator of the book to describe the mass public executions
Speaker 1: of those deemed to be race traders. Even the weird
Speaker 1: little guys who don't have the attention span to read
Speaker 1: the novel for themselves have been influenced by it because
Speaker 1: they're steeped in a culture that has revered this book
Speaker 1: for fifty years. But when it comes up, it's only
Speaker 1: ever in passing. Every time we come across this book
Speaker 1: in one of our stories. I'm just asking you to
Speaker 1: trust me when I tell you that it's important, and
Speaker 1: that the pages of this novel are soaked in blood,
Speaker 1: as you're no doubt sick of hearing me say. At
Speaker 1: this point, this show is one long story told out
Speaker 1: of order. There may not even be any reasonable way
Speaker 1: of putting it in order, with all of its interlocking
Speaker 1: pieces across space and time. But I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out as I go, and I keep having to double
Speaker 1: back to give you a piece I know you'll need
Speaker 1: before we continue along whatever path I've wandered down in
Speaker 1: a given week. You see, what I had in mind
Speaker 1: for the beginning of the new year was a pretty
Speaker 1: exciting story about a couple of klansmen bungling an attempted
Speaker 1: coup in the Caribbean. It's an adventure that never quite
Speaker 1: made it to the high Seas, and I am looking
Speaker 1: forward to it. But as I started fitting the pieces together,
Speaker 1: I remembered what happened last time I sat down to
Speaker 1: start this story. I need to double back if I
Speaker 1: don't set the stage by telling you some stories about
Speaker 1: Don Black and David Duke and a couple of Canadian
Speaker 1: neo Nazi groups. I'll spend too much time darting off
Speaker 1: down these tangents. You know that children's book if you
Speaker 1: give a musa muffin, maybe you had the one about
Speaker 1: the mouse and the cookie, But we were a moose
Speaker 1: muffin household. That's the one I read, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of what's happening here. You know, the moose needed a
Speaker 1: glass of milk for his muffin. And to tell you
Speaker 1: about this attempted coup, I have to tell you about
Speaker 1: some of the guys first. And if I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you anything about David Duke or Don Black, I
Speaker 1: have to start with the day they met. But I
Speaker 1: can't even start writing about the rest of their friendship
Speaker 1: because it seems worth mentioning that there was a third
Speaker 1: man in the car with them the day they met,
Speaker 1: and that man was a serial killer. But what you
Speaker 1: are probably asking, does any of that have to do
Speaker 1: with the Turner Diaries? Not much, admittedly, but it has
Speaker 1: everything to do with the sequel. So the coup will
Speaker 1: have to wait because I worked so far backwards on
Speaker 1: this train of thought that before we even get to
Speaker 1: the actual story of the Nazi serial killer who paralyzed
Speaker 1: Larry Flint. We're going to have to talk about this book.
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce looms large in so many stories about
Speaker 1: white nationalism in the United States. He comes up a lot,
Speaker 1: particularly in the last few months, because I've been writing
Speaker 1: about the American Nazi Party and Pierce was an early member.
Speaker 1: He quit his job as a physicist working on jet
Speaker 1: engines for a defense contractor and moved to Virginia to
Speaker 1: work with George Lincoln Rockwell in the sixties. By the
Speaker 1: mid seventies, he'd established his own organization, National Alliance, and
Speaker 1: until his death in two thousand and two, Pierce exerted
Speaker 1: enormous influence on the extreme right. This will not be
Speaker 1: the last time you hear about William Luther Pierce, but
Speaker 1: today we're just looking at his novels, The Turner Diaries,
Speaker 1: published in nineteen seventy eight, and Hunter in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: The Turner Diaries was originally written in a serialized format,
Speaker 1: published one chapter at a time in issues of Attack,
Speaker 1: the newsletter for his newly formed white supremacist organization, National Alliance,
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy five through nineteen seventy eight. Each issue
Speaker 1: of Attack contained a chunk of the story written under
Speaker 1: the pen name Andrew MacDonald in what is almost certainly
Speaker 1: a crude ripoff of Jack London's Iron Heel. The novel
Speaker 1: is presented as a series of diary entries written by
Speaker 1: the protagonist, a man named Earl Turner. It is, as
Speaker 1: it says, Turner's Diary, and the diary is sandwich between
Speaker 1: a forward and an epilogue written by a historian who
Speaker 1: has unearthed this document one hundred years after the Great
Speaker 1: Revolution that it describes. The found document bit recurs throughout
Speaker 1: the text, with these little parenthetical notes to the reader
Speaker 1: from the historian, helpfully providing context for readers of this
Speaker 1: ancient text, explaining things like the dollar was the basic
Speaker 1: monetary unit in the United States in the Old Era,
Speaker 1: or women's lib was a form of mass psychosis which
Speaker 1: broke out in the last three decades of the Old Era.
Speaker 1: The historian tells us that before he became a martyr
Speaker 1: in the Revolution, Earl Turner was just a rank and
Speaker 1: file member of the Organization, a white nationalist group that
Speaker 1: was at war with the system, which is the incredibly
Speaker 1: creative name that the novel uses to refer broadly to
Speaker 1: the government, but also the media and whatever other nebulous
Speaker 1: societal forces are being controlled and weaponized by the novel's
Speaker 1: true villain, the Jews. Turner's first diary entry provides a
Speaker 1: lot of exposition. The author probably should have found a
Speaker 1: way to work that into the history briads forward, but
Speaker 1: I'm not here to backseat drive the terrorism Bible. In
Speaker 1: that first entry, Turner is writing in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: and he tells his diary that it's been two years
Speaker 1: since the co Enact outlawed ownership of guns. The system
Speaker 1: deputized armed squads of black men to carry out gun
Speaker 1: confiscation raids, rounding up and arresting thousands of white gun owners.
Speaker 1: From there, the book follows Turner and the organization as
Speaker 1: they ramp up their terroristic activity. Turner is inducted into
Speaker 1: the secret inner circle of the organization called the Order.
Speaker 1: He's captured by the government but manages to escape, and
Speaker 1: as punishment for allowing himself to be captured alive, he's
Speaker 1: assigned a suicide mission, which he completes, thus securing his
Speaker 1: place as a martyr for the cause. Now I have
Speaker 1: to confess for all the commentary I've read a this book,
Speaker 1: both by academics and the books fans. I'd never actually
Speaker 1: sat down and just read it like a book. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know the broad strokes, I know what's in it.
Speaker 1: I've read passages of it. I've read things referring to
Speaker 1: passages of it. I just don't read a lot of novels,
Speaker 1: and this was definitely not on my list for when
Speaker 1: I was going to sit down and read a novel.
Speaker 1: But picking through it more carefully now, it's actually very
Speaker 1: funny how much of himself Pierce reveals, probably by accident.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of inexperienced writers, people who are
Speaker 1: trying their hand at fiction for the first time, end
Speaker 1: up spilling a lot of their own psyche into the
Speaker 1: protagonist's inner monologue. Like I said, I don't read a
Speaker 1: lot of fiction, so I don't quite have the language
Speaker 1: for this, but I think you can sort of feel
Speaker 1: it when the author hasn't actually invested in world building.
Speaker 1: They haven't built a fictional world for the story so
Speaker 1: much as they have just published their own fantasy. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Earl Turner is afraid of
Speaker 1: all the same things Pierce is afraid of. He identifies
Speaker 1: the same solutions Pierce believes should be implemented in the
Speaker 1: real world. He hates the same people, lives in the
Speaker 1: same area, holds a similar profession, and even hides his
Speaker 1: guns the same way. Earl Turner's description of these underground
Speaker 1: weapons caches are really similar to something I read in
Speaker 1: a memoir by the ex wife of a man who
Speaker 1: lived on Pierce's Nazi compound in the nineties. She wrote
Speaker 1: that one of the tasks the women were expected to
Speaker 1: work on when they weren't busy with their children was
Speaker 1: building these watertight containers that were used to protect the
Speaker 1: guns they buried underground. What most people know about the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries, though, are the passages that have been fired
Speaker 1: real life re enactments in the book. The organization's first
Speaker 1: real attack on the system was a bombing, and the
Speaker 1: book describes in great detail how the organization went about
Speaker 1: sourcing the materials for a forty four hundred pound ammonium
Speaker 1: nitrate bomb. The book describes how they assembled the bomb
Speaker 1: and how they placed the bomb in the back of
Speaker 1: the truck and then parked that truck outside of a
Speaker 1: government building, knowing it would kill hundreds of mostly innocent people.
Speaker 1: Earl Turner's bomb went off a little after nine am
Speaker 1: outside the FBI headquarters, killing seven hundred people. When Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh brought those pages to life, he built a remarkably
Speaker 1: similar bomb, placed it in the back of a remarkably
Speaker 1: similar truck, and parked it outside of a federal building.
Speaker 1: A little after nine am. He killed one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty eight people at a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: After his bomb went off, Earl Turner wrote in his diary,
Speaker 1: all day yesterday and most of today, we watched the
Speaker 1: TV coverage of rescue crews bringing the dead and injured
Speaker 1: out of the building. It is a heavy burden of
Speaker 1: responsibility for us to bear, since most of the victims
Speaker 1: of our bomb were only pawns who were no more
Speaker 1: committed to the sick philosophy or the racially destructive goals
Speaker 1: of the system than we are. But there is no
Speaker 1: way we can destroy the system without hurting many thousands
Speaker 1: of innocent people. No way, And maybe Timothy McVeigh was
Speaker 1: thinking about that passage when he selected his target. Maybe
Speaker 1: Earl Turner's words soothed his conscience as he walked calmly
Speaker 1: away from the truck, knowing it was parked directly underneath
Speaker 1: the building's daycare center. He would later deny targeting the
Speaker 1: day care center, claiming he hadn't even known it was
Speaker 1: then everything I've read leads me to believe that's a lie.
Speaker 1: He described his victims the same way Earl Turner did.
Speaker 1: He'd been obsessed with the novel for years before he
Speaker 1: built that bomb, and when he was arrested on the
Speaker 1: day of the bombing, police found a sealed envelope in
Speaker 1: his car. He was full of right wing political pamphlets,
Speaker 1: news clippings about the siege at Waco, and copy of
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence, and a photocopy of pages sixty
Speaker 1: one and sixty two of the Turner Diaries. McVeigh had
Speaker 1: underlined a passage on that page that read, in part,
Speaker 1: but the real value of all our attacks today lies
Speaker 1: in the psychological impact, not the immediate casualties. But Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh wasn't the only man to take Pierce's novel as
Speaker 1: marching orders. He wasn't even the first. Pierre shrugged off
Speaker 1: questions about McVeagh, telling reporters he had no idea why
Speaker 1: a man he'd never heard of called the National Alliance
Speaker 1: hotline repeatedly in the days before the bombing, and maybe
Speaker 1: he's telling the truth. I'm sure they never met and
Speaker 1: they probably never spoke. Mcvay's relationship with Pierce was one directional.
Speaker 1: He read the book, but there's no doubt at all
Speaker 1: that William Luther Pierce personally mentored the first man who
Speaker 1: tried to become Earl Turner, the first man who built
Speaker 1: bombs and spilled blood in the name of the Turner Diaries.
Speaker 2: The speech you are about to hear was given on Sunday,
Speaker 2: September fourth, nineteen eighty three by Robert Matthews at the
Speaker 2: General Convention of the National Alliance in Arlington, Virginia. A
Speaker 2: few weeks later, Matthews declared war on the enemies of
Speaker 2: our race, went underground with a handful of companions called
Speaker 2: the Silent Brotherhood, and began fighting. His fight lasted until
Speaker 2: he was burned to death by a secret police task
Speaker 2: force a little over a year later, on December eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: That's Pierce himself speaking years later, adding commentary to a
Speaker 1: recording he published of the speech that launched a year
Speaker 1: long terror campaign. Robert J. Matthews joined Pierce's organization, National
Speaker 1: Alliance in nineteen eighty and the pair had active personal
Speaker 1: correspondence for years and met in person several times. When
Speaker 1: Matthew stood to make a speech at the National Alliance
Speaker 1: convention in nineteen eighty three, it was at Pierce's request.
Speaker 1: This was something they had discussed extensively ahead of time.
Speaker 1: In his later recollection of that day, you heard Pierce
Speaker 1: call the group Matthews formed a few weeks later, the
Speaker 1: Silent Brotherhood, and that was one name for it, but
Speaker 1: it's best known as the Order. In truth, Matthews didn't
Speaker 1: want to give the group a name at all, at
Speaker 1: least according to former members who spoke about its founding
Speaker 1: after Matthews died. Giving it a name would make it
Speaker 1: easier to talk about, and he didn't want to encourage
Speaker 1: anyone to talk about what they were about to do.
Speaker 1: But if they had to call it something, he told
Speaker 1: them they should call it the Order, like the secret
Speaker 1: group within the organization in the Turner Diaries, the book
Speaker 1: they'd all read, and just a quick aside. He probably
Speaker 1: should have just left it at the Order, and that
Speaker 1: is what they called it for the first full year,
Speaker 1: but a few months before he died, he decided it
Speaker 1: needed some kind of formal name, and I think he
Speaker 1: fell victim to a problem I see pretty often with
Speaker 1: guys like this. They love Nazi Germany, but they refused
Speaker 1: to learn German. So when he was scrounging around trying
Speaker 1: to find a dignified and clever and properly hit Larian
Speaker 1: name for his organization, he thought of a book he'd
Speaker 1: seen on a shelf at one of the member's houses.
Speaker 1: It was a book of photographs of members of the
Speaker 1: SS and the book was called ven alla Bruderschweigen, which
Speaker 1: is a portion of a line and a poem written
Speaker 1: in eighteen fourteen by German poet Maximilian Gottfried from Schenckendorf.
Speaker 1: The phrase, in the context of the poem translates to
Speaker 1: when all brothers are silent. But if you just pull
Speaker 1: out two words from the phrase, it doesn't really mean anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, each one of those individual words has a meaning.
Speaker 1: Ruder means brother, Schweigen means silence, But it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: silent brothers. Ruderschweigen just means brother silent. It's just two
Speaker 1: unrelated nouns. But that is what they had stamped onto
Speaker 1: the giant gold medallions that they all wore with pride.
Speaker 1: But in that recording, Pierce calls it the Silent Brotherhood, again,
Speaker 1: a name it had only briefly. Maybe he thought that
Speaker 1: sounded more dignified. But I think the more likely explanation
Speaker 1: is that he knew calling it the Order would draw
Speaker 1: attention to the fact that he was involved, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to distance himself from what really looked like
Speaker 1: a terror cell that had been formed at his direction.
Speaker 1: At the very least, it was clearly inspired by his work,
Speaker 1: and he never did like taking credit for the actions
Speaker 1: he encouraged younger, bolder men to take. But regardless, the
Speaker 1: names are interchangeable. The Silent Brotherhood Bruderschweigen the Order, and
Speaker 1: it was Robert Matthew's speech in nineteen eighty three that
Speaker 1: brought the Order to life.
Speaker 3: So Kinsman Duty calls the future is now. If months
Speaker 3: from now you have not yet fully committed yourself to
Speaker 3: the alliance and the responsibilities thereof, then you have an
Speaker 3: effect not only betrayed your race, you have betrayed yourself.
Speaker 3: So stand up like men and drive the enemy into
Speaker 3: the sea.
Speaker 1: In the fourteen months or so from the founding of
Speaker 1: the group to the fiery death of its leader. They
Speaker 1: acted out the instructions in the book. That speech was
Speaker 1: given to a room full of men who were already
Speaker 1: members of National Alliance, a white nationalist organization. So he's
Speaker 1: proposing a smaller secret group, one that is more focused
Speaker 1: on revolutionary action. He's proposing the formation of a group
Speaker 1: within a gree just as Earl Turner was drafted from
Speaker 1: the organization into its secret inner core the Order, and
Speaker 1: just like Earl Turner's brothers and arms did in the book,
Speaker 1: The Order funded their activities through robbery and counterfeiting. They
Speaker 1: never did get very good at counterfeiting, but they pulled
Speaker 1: in millions of dollars from a series of armored car robberies.
Speaker 1: They bombed a movie theater and a Seneca. They planned
Speaker 1: to carry out a series of assassinations, killings that would
Speaker 1: in a direct sense, take out their perceived enemies of
Speaker 1: the white race and rid the world of these undesirable elements,
Speaker 1: but also to destabilize society to push the country closer
Speaker 1: to an all out race war. They didn't make a
Speaker 1: lot of progress on assassinating Henry Kissinger, shooting a Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: or a rothschild or killing television producer Norman Lear, but
Speaker 1: they did shoot and kill Denver talk radio personality Alan berg.
Speaker 1: Berg was targeted not only because he was Jewish, which
Speaker 1: would have been enough on his own to earn him
Speaker 1: a spot on their list, but specifically berg had invited
Speaker 1: a pair of Christian identity preachers onto his radio show,
Speaker 1: and he'd embarrassed them pretty badly. The whole story of
Speaker 1: the Order is something worth revisiting in greater detail. Matthews
Speaker 1: is still widely celebrated as a martyr within the movement.
Speaker 1: Although it was short lived, the Order, the one that
Speaker 1: existed in real life, really shaped the landscape of white
Speaker 1: nationalist terror for years to come. And I still haven't
Speaker 1: watched the twenty twenty four movie starring Nicholas Holt as
Speaker 1: Robert Matthews and Jude Law as the FBI agent who
Speaker 1: tracks him down. So maybe I'll watch that and we
Speaker 1: can talk about it. I wonder now that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the parallels in more detail, Robert Matthews thought about
Speaker 1: Earl Turner at the end. He was holed up in
Speaker 1: a safe house on Whidbey Island off the coast of
Speaker 1: Seattle when the FEDS finally caught up to him, negotiations
Speaker 1: broke down. He refused to come out. He put on
Speaker 1: a gas mask and ignored the volleys of tear gas,
Speaker 1: and he ignored the pleas of his friends and accomplices
Speaker 1: that the FBI brought to the scene to try to
Speaker 1: reason with him. He wouldn't come out. They only meant
Speaker 1: to start a small fire. They wanted to smoke him out.
Speaker 1: I really don't think they could have known the flare
Speaker 1: they fired through the broken window was going to land
Speaker 1: in a box of hand grenades. When Robert Matthews climbed
Speaker 1: into the bathtub to seek refuge from the flames, did
Speaker 1: he imagine he was Earl Turner in the cockpit, preparing
Speaker 1: to die in the blast when he dropped a nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb on the Pentagon. How much did any of them
Speaker 1: really think about Earl Turner? And to what extent did
Speaker 1: Peers intend for the novel to motivate real world action.
Speaker 1: We can't really know. And the problem with trying to
Speaker 1: sort out anyone's motivation for anything is that people lie.
Speaker 1: They lie to themselves, They lie to escape responsibility, They
Speaker 1: lie to create propaganda. They write fictions that glorify their
Speaker 1: martyrs and exonerate themselves and cast their enemies as villains
Speaker 1: and fools. Pierce calls it the Silent Brotherhood, because to
Speaker 1: call it the Order would be an admission that they'd
Speaker 1: done it for him. He never admitted any involvement. He
Speaker 1: denied receiving a Duffel bag full of cash from Matthews
Speaker 1: after one of the armored car robberies, despite the obvious
Speaker 1: fact that he used that money to purchase the land
Speaker 1: that would become his Nazi compound in West Virginia. And
Speaker 1: the degree to which the Turner Diaries was truly viewed
Speaker 1: as a Bible as a manual within the group is fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Was this treated as scripture or were they being tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek when they referred to themselves using the name
Speaker 1: of a fictional group from a novel. It depends on
Speaker 1: who you believe. Pierce himself tells different stories depending on
Speaker 1: his mood. He almost seems to delight in being impossible
Speaker 1: to pin down reading some of these old quotes. I
Speaker 1: swear you can hear him winking. In his book Gods
Speaker 1: of the Blood, Swedish historian Massius Gardel writes that quote
Speaker 1: the extent to which Matthews and the Brooders identified with
Speaker 1: the Order of the Turner Diaries in an ultimate goal
Speaker 1: to overthrow the US government is uncertain retrospectively. In prison,
Speaker 1: Order members differed widely in their assessments of what they
Speaker 1: had intended, ranging from modest hopes of contributing financially to
Speaker 1: racist organizations to optimistic expectations of igniting an armed Aryan revolution.
Speaker 1: And for that book, Gardell was able to interview several
Speaker 1: members of the Order who were still alive to talk
Speaker 1: about it in the late nineties. He got a different
Speaker 1: answer from every gray haired old Nazi who was willing
Speaker 1: to take his call. Gary Yarborough told him the novel
Speaker 1: was just pulp fiction. David Tates and the group mainly
Speaker 1: just wanted money, and all the other stuff was secondary.
Speaker 1: But Randy Dewey was adamant that the Turner Diaries had
Speaker 1: really been a bible, particularly for Robert Matthews. It had
Speaker 1: functioned as a blueprint for their Holy War, he said.
Speaker 1: In a separate interview, former Order member Richard Kemp told
Speaker 1: Gardell quote, although I'm embarrassed to say that that's what
Speaker 1: we've patterned ourselves after, I think as far as the
Speaker 1: Turner Diary is being a guide, I think he was
Speaker 1: more than a guide. All our criminal activities were patterned
Speaker 1: after that, and Gardell leaves it at that their self
Speaker 1: reported motivations and beliefs varied. That seems to be true,
Speaker 1: and that's to be expected. I think within any group
Speaker 1: there are going to be varying levels of commitment to
Speaker 1: the core tenets, right. But what sticks out to me
Speaker 1: in Gardell's book is that of the four members he
Speaker 1: was able to get an answer from, two of them
Speaker 1: were in the room the night the Order was founded.
Speaker 1: Randall Dewey and Richard Kemp were founding members, so maybe
Speaker 1: they had a clearer idea of the original vision. Another member,
Speaker 1: Bruce Pearce, who isn't quoted in Gardell's book, was carrying
Speaker 1: a copy of the Turner Diaries on his person when
Speaker 1: he was arrested. Order member Randall Rader kept a stack
Speaker 1: of dozens of copies on hand so he could give
Speaker 1: one to anyone who visited. When new members took their
Speaker 1: oath to the group, they were presented with their own
Speaker 1: copy at a swearing in ceremony. The book obviously meant
Speaker 1: something to them. When Timothy McVeagh went on trial, his
Speaker 1: defense team sought to downplay the significance of the novel.
Speaker 1: His lawyer argued that it was no more a blueprint
Speaker 1: for a bombing than Lady Chatterley's Lover could teach the
Speaker 1: reader how to make love. I haven't read that one,
Speaker 1: so I won't weigh in, and I don't know enough
Speaker 1: about bomb making to tell you how critical a distinction
Speaker 1: it is. That mcvay's bomb used nitromethane, which wasn't mentioned
Speaker 1: in the novel. But as hard as mcvay's defense team
Speaker 1: tried to emphasize these little differences, it's hard to ignore
Speaker 1: the fact that he spent years obsessed with the Turner Diaries.
Speaker 1: He slept with a copy of it under his pillow,
Speaker 1: He talked to it about anyone who would listened. He
Speaker 1: recommended it to his army buddies. He gave people copies
Speaker 1: of it. He traveled the country selling it at gun shows.
Speaker 1: He cut out, copied, and annotated his favorite passages, carrying
Speaker 1: them with him on the morning of the bombing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just a book, It was the book. In a
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen paper for the International Center for Counter Terrorism
Speaker 1: researcher Jay M. Berger connects the text to other attacks.
Speaker 1: In addition to the hundred and sixty eight people killed
Speaker 1: in the Oklahoma City bombing, the Turner Diaries figured prominently
Speaker 1: in the motivation behind at least thirty three other murders,
Speaker 1: including the ten people killed in Germany in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands by a group called the National Socialist Underground.
Speaker 1: In one particularly grim case, we have the murderer's own
Speaker 1: words in the heat of the moment. This is a
Speaker 1: crime that I hesitate to even describe. Years ago, I
Speaker 1: went to this cursed sounding event. It was a program
Speaker 1: put on by the diversity office of my local university's
Speaker 1: police department. They hadn't advertised the event at all, but
Speaker 1: it was open to the public, and I'm very nosy.
Speaker 1: So I was there and I was the only person there.
Speaker 1: I sat in a plastic chair and an auditorium that
Speaker 1: was meant to see hundreds, and I sobbed through a
Speaker 1: presentation from Leuvon Harris. She's the younger sister of James
Speaker 1: Byrd Junior. She came prepared with a slide show of
Speaker 1: family pictures. Her brother, James was a mamma's boy and
Speaker 1: he loved his sisters. He played the trumpet, and he
Speaker 1: taught his sister Melinda how to play the piano. He
Speaker 1: lost two toes in a bicycle accident as a child,
Speaker 1: but he never let his limp get to him. I
Speaker 1: was nine when James Bird was murdered. I lived in
Speaker 1: Texas at the time, and I remember seeing it on
Speaker 1: the news, reading the details of his death again. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to his sister for keeping part of
Speaker 1: him alive, because if I have to tell you how
Speaker 1: he died, at least now you know too that he
Speaker 1: played the piano at his family reunion and his mom
Speaker 1: taught Sunday school. On the day James Bird died, he
Speaker 1: accepted a ride from a truck that passed him as
Speaker 1: he was walking home. But instead of taking him home,
Speaker 1: three white men drove him out to the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere and they beat him until he appeared to lose consciousness.
Speaker 1: And as he's lying there in the dirt, one of
Speaker 1: the men, Sean Berry, asked if they were just going
Speaker 1: to leave him there, and John William King replied, we're starting.
Speaker 1: And the Turner diaries early as he pulled a heavy
Speaker 1: chain out of the bed of his truck and attached
Speaker 1: it to bird's ankles. He was making a joke. He
Speaker 1: was about to drag a man to death, and he
Speaker 1: was making a joke. He was so deeply immersed in
Speaker 1: the world of the Turner Diaries that it didn't require
Speaker 1: any explanation. That's all he said. It was a reference
Speaker 1: ready at hand. It was understood what he meant. He
Speaker 1: was going to lynch this black man, just like the
Speaker 1: heroes in the novel would have done. When David Copeland
Speaker 1: confessed to the nineteen ninety nine London nail bombings, a
Speaker 1: series of attacks that killed three and wounded one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty others, he told the police, if you've read
Speaker 1: the Turner Diaries, you know the year two thousand, they'll
Speaker 1: be uprising. And all that racial violence in the streets
Speaker 1: Miam was political. It was to cause a racial war
Speaker 1: this country, beginning with the Order in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: through this paper's publication date in twenty sixteen. Burger attributes
Speaker 1: over two hundred deaths to the Turner Diaries. And in
Speaker 1: that paper he wrote, quote, the Turner Diaries does not
Speaker 1: attempt to persuade readers that they should be racist. Rather,
Speaker 1: it assumes readers have already made an identity choice. Instead,
Speaker 1: it seeks to persuade readers that imminent violent action is
Speaker 1: a rational choice. And that's such an interesting point that
Speaker 1: I don't think would have occurred to me. It's racist propaganda,
Speaker 1: but it's not propaganda aimed at making you racist, which
Speaker 1: is what most racist propaganda is. Burger argues that the
Speaker 1: novel has no actual ideological framework in that regard. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's racist, right, grotesquely, so violently, nauseatingly graphically racist, but
Speaker 1: that's just sort of a given. It doesn't actually say why.
Speaker 1: Earl Turner doesn't tell you why he hates. He just does,
Speaker 1: and he assumes you do too. The goal of the
Speaker 1: propaganda is not to get you to be racist, it's
Speaker 1: to convince you that you should do violence about it.
Speaker 1: So much of Pierce's other work is densely packed with
Speaker 1: these explanations and rationales and flawed historical analyzes. And when
Speaker 1: you read Christian identity texts, for example, they twist themselves
Speaker 1: into these theological knots explaining why black people aren't really human,
Speaker 1: and they offer pages of biblical interpretation trying to force
Speaker 1: a single word to explain their theory of the racist universe.
Speaker 1: But Earl Turner doesn't do that. The reader brings his
Speaker 1: own ideological baggage to the book, and it fills in
Speaker 1: those gaps seamlessly. Earl Turner doesn't have to tell you
Speaker 1: why you hate black people. He just explains how to
Speaker 1: build the bomb. The question of how much blame a
Speaker 1: book can truly bear for the actions of its readers
Speaker 1: is a thorny one. But if any book can be
Speaker 1: said to have motivated any action, if that's a possibility
Speaker 1: you're willing to consider, then this book has a body
Speaker 1: count in the hundreds. The degree to which different scholars
Speaker 1: are willing to place that blame varies, but most agree
Speaker 1: there's blame to be had. There may be other holdouts.
Speaker 1: But in my research this week I came across two
Speaker 1: authors in particular, who seem to take Pierce's word for
Speaker 1: it when he says the book was never meant to
Speaker 1: cause real world violence. One of them, I think we
Speaker 1: can discount right off the bat. Robert S. Griffin, a
Speaker 1: professor of education at the University of Vermont, wrote the
Speaker 1: Authorized Biography of William Luther Pierce. A self published book
Speaker 1: called The Fame of a dead man's deeds, and Griffin
Speaker 1: holds himself out as an unbiased observer, a scholar who's
Speaker 1: interested in the subject but doesn't support Pierce's cause. He
Speaker 1: called the book a work of cultural anthropology. Whether or
Speaker 1: not he was racist before he spent a month interviewing
Speaker 1: Pierce on his Nazi compound, I couldn't tell you, but
Speaker 1: he certainly was. Afterwards. Heidi Birich, the director of the
Speaker 1: Southern Poverty Law Center at the time, outright called Griffin
Speaker 1: a neo Nazi, and I'm inclined to agree. All of
Speaker 1: his published work prior to the year two thousand was
Speaker 1: about education, that's his field of study. But after he
Speaker 1: self published this Nazis biography, he mostly wrote about white
Speaker 1: nationalist topics. A later collection of essays called Living White,
Speaker 1: featured pieces with titles like Rearing Honorable White Children and
Speaker 1: Reading Rockwell. Reviews of his biography of Pierce call it
Speaker 1: a hasiography, an obsequious, fawning, one sided justification of Pierce's beliefs,
Speaker 1: and that's not one person's review. Each one of those
Speaker 1: descriptions is from a different, damning review, and it is
Speaker 1: regrettably one of the most thorough accounts of Pierce's life.
Speaker 1: It is a rich text. I have actually consulted it
Speaker 1: frequently over the last few months, but you can't trust
Speaker 1: it any more than you would trust something written by
Speaker 1: Pierce himself. The author never questions, never contradicts, never fact
Speaker 1: checks or pushes back. He may as well have just
Speaker 1: ghostwritten Pierce's autobiography. There are whole chapters where every word
Speaker 1: is in between quotation marks. In the book, Pierce tells
Speaker 1: Griffin that The Turner Diaries was just a novel. It
Speaker 1: was a work of pure fiction. It can't be interpreted
Speaker 1: as any form of advocacy. But Pierce also gave an
Speaker 1: interview to Matius Gardel that same year, and when he
Speaker 1: spoke with Gardell, Pierce readily admitted that he understood his
Speaker 1: novels to be a way to teach people, to get
Speaker 1: them to see the world through the eyes of the
Speaker 1: protagonist as he makes decisions or solves a problem, so
Speaker 1: that the reader can experience that thought process and be
Speaker 1: carried along with the character and be made to see
Speaker 1: things the way the character sees them. And that's why
Speaker 1: I have so much trouble trusting the academic papers on
Speaker 1: the subject authored by a political scientist named George Michael,
Speaker 1: citing Griffin's book, which he calls quote excellent, Michael laments
Speaker 1: that there remains so much confusion among academics about where
Speaker 1: Pierce truly stood on the topic of terrorism, writing quote
Speaker 1: Much has been made about Pierce's novel, The Turner Diaries.
Speaker 1: It is frequently referred to as a blueprint for revolution
Speaker 1: and the bible of the racialist right. Despite these characterizations,
Speaker 1: there is really little practical advice for would be revolutionaries
Speaker 1: that can be gleaned from the book.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where he got that idea or if
Speaker 1: he read the same book I did. Because while Pierce
Speaker 1: denies that McVeigh built the exact bomb described in the book,
Speaker 1: he readily admitted in an interview for Rolling Stone that
Speaker 1: you can absolutely build a functioning bomb based on the
Speaker 1: text of the novel. He contends only that it would
Speaker 1: not be that particular bomb. In a footnote in one
Speaker 1: of Michael's papers, he claims the documentary evidence does not
Speaker 1: support the idea that Pierce believed there was value in
Speaker 1: revolutionary violence, citing in support only a dismissive comment Pierce
Speaker 1: once made about James Mason, the author of siege. Michael
Speaker 1: doesn't bother to mention at this juncture that Pierce had
Speaker 1: been Mason's mentor that siege really only exists because Pierce
Speaker 1: took Mason under his wing as a teenager. He may
Speaker 1: be half right, though, I think William Luther Pierce got
Speaker 1: smarter as he got older. He got more cautious. He
Speaker 1: stopped admitting that he supported terrorism, he stopped calling for
Speaker 1: it in public in his own published writing. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure a man who was an arms dealer, who
Speaker 1: built bombs in his basement, and was for decades the
Speaker 1: leader of a neo Nazi organization linked to so many
Speaker 1: acts of terrorism, is someone we can trust to answer
Speaker 1: honestly when asked in public how much he enjoys the
Speaker 1: terrorism committed in his name. But Pierce has been dead
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, so I guess we can agree
Speaker 1: to disagree. In another article, Michael dismisses the idea that
Speaker 1: the Turner Diaries was intended as a blueprint for violence.
Speaker 1: The evidence provided in the paper is a page long
Speaker 1: direct quote from Pierce, taken from an interview with the author.
Speaker 1: It was Pierce's response to being asked if he wrote
Speaker 1: the novel as a blueprint for violence. Pierce's answer is
Speaker 1: long and rambling, and it's mostly not actually an answer
Speaker 1: to the question at all. But at the end of
Speaker 1: what is and I cannot emphasize this enough a full
Speaker 1: page long quote in an article that is only eighteen
Speaker 1: pages long, Pierce says it was not intended from the
Speaker 1: start to be anything except an experiment in getting people
Speaker 1: to absorb ideas through this recreational reading. They won't read
Speaker 1: a serious head tooral or a serious historical feature. They
Speaker 1: will read an adventure story. So you slip the ideas
Speaker 1: into the adventure story. In the dialogue, and Michael apparently
Speaker 1: interprets this answer as support for his thesis that the
Speaker 1: book is just a story and not a blueprint for violence.
Speaker 1: But what does Pierce actually say. It's long, and it's
Speaker 1: easy to get lost, But what is he saying. He
Speaker 1: says it was an experiment in getting people to absorb ideas.
Speaker 1: They won't read an editorial, they won't read philosophy or history,
Speaker 1: but they'll read an adventure story. So he slipped the
Speaker 1: ideas into the adventure story. He doesn't say what those
Speaker 1: ideas are, but we read the book, we know what
Speaker 1: those ideas are He's talking about hiding the message inside
Speaker 1: a fictional dialogue like you'd hide a dog's pill and
Speaker 1: a piece of cheese. So he's admitting that it isn't
Speaker 1: just cheese, it isn't just a story. And the ideas
Speaker 1: being smuggled into the reader's head are the ones that
Speaker 1: form this blueprint of violence. The ideas he's talking about
Speaker 1: are ideas for different kinds of violence that you should do.
Speaker 1: He's shaking his head no, but he's saying yes. And
Speaker 1: this is why you can't take a Nazi at his word.
Speaker 1: So it should come as no surprise that both of
Speaker 1: these authors, Pierce's biographer Robert S. Griffin and this political
Speaker 1: scientist George Michael, they both credulously repeat Pierce's denial that
Speaker 1: the protagonist in his second novel is based on a
Speaker 1: real person. Now, part of the slipperiness of Pierce's own
Speaker 1: accounting of events is that his approach genuinely did shift
Speaker 1: over time. He was a leading voice in the movement
Speaker 1: for more than forty years. He had to adapt to
Speaker 1: the political landscape around him. His core value remained relatively stable,
Speaker 1: but he matured and his rhetorical strategies changed. Robert Matthews
Speaker 1: may have been Earl Turner, but Earl turners martyrdom brought
Speaker 1: about the White Revolution, and Robert Matthews burnt to a
Speaker 1: crisp piing in a bathtub. The other members of the
Speaker 1: Order went to prison. They may be sometimes remembered as
Speaker 1: heroes and martyrs and proud Aryan warriors or whatever, But
Speaker 1: there was no revolution. There was no White utopia afterwards,
Speaker 1: and Pierce himself was never charged with a crime, but
Speaker 1: he was under investigation for years. Members of the Order
Speaker 1: went on trial. The FBI and the ATF raided a
Speaker 1: compound belonging to the Covenant the Sword and the Arm
Speaker 1: of the Lord, a group with connections to members of
Speaker 1: the Order. The investigation into the crimes of the Order
Speaker 1: and the alleged plot by members of the Covenant the
Speaker 1: Sword in the Arm of the Lord to poison the
Speaker 1: water supply with cyanide led two sedition charges against fourteen
Speaker 1: leaders from all across the movement. Those cases all fell apart,
Speaker 1: and Pierce himself was never actually charged, and a couple
Speaker 1: of people went to prison for things like murdering a cop.
Speaker 1: But it was a tense time and there was a
Speaker 1: very real possibility in the mid to late eighties that
Speaker 1: the government would connect Pierce to an act of terrorism,
Speaker 1: and I think that explains why his second novel was
Speaker 1: so different. Hunter wasn't published until nineteen eighty nine, but
Speaker 1: he told his own biographer that he started working on
Speaker 1: it in nineteen eighty four. He didn't elaborate on that,
Speaker 1: but it's not hard to imagine. Right in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: members of the Order are getting rounded up. Matthews died,
Speaker 1: Pierce took the cash that he'd gotten from the armored
Speaker 1: truck robbery and bought a massive tract of undeveloped land
Speaker 1: and the mountains of West Virginia. His protege had failed,
Speaker 1: and he retreated to the hills to reflect on the
Speaker 1: need for tactical changes in the wake of this government crackdown.
Speaker 1: In his doctoral dissertation, extremism scholar Jeffrey Kaplan suggested that
Speaker 1: the world of the Turner Diaries is one where a
Speaker 1: mass revolutionary movement can successfully bring about a revolution. The
Speaker 1: hero dies, but the movement prevails, and the narrator tells
Speaker 1: you that there was a white utopia on the other side.
Speaker 1: But after the failure of the order in real life.
Speaker 1: He's trying to find his footing in this new political landscape,
Speaker 1: so he writes a story modeled after the newly popular
Speaker 1: idea of leaderless resistance, a lone gunman who can't trust anyone.
Speaker 1: There's no martyrdom, no victory, no utopia, just violence. Hunter
Speaker 1: tells the story of Oscar Jeger, a lone wolf killer
Speaker 1: on a mission to murder inter racial couples. The novel
Speaker 1: was dedicated to a man named Joseph Paul Franklin, and
Speaker 1: he wrote on the dedication page quote to Joseph Paul Franklin,
Speaker 1: the lone hunter who saw his duty as a white
Speaker 1: man and did what a responsible son of his race
Speaker 1: must do. Between nineteen seventy seven and nineteen eighty, Joseph
Speaker 1: Paul Franklin murdered more than twenty people. He targeted, mainly
Speaker 1: in a racial couples, but he also shot civil rights
Speaker 1: activists Rob Banks, and bombed a synagogue. Despite putting Franklin's
Speaker 1: name on the dedication page, Pierce flatly denied that he'd
Speaker 1: based the character on Franklin. His credulous biographer didn't press
Speaker 1: the issue. Griffin didn't ask why the novel opens with
Speaker 1: a double murder that perfectly mirrors one that Franklin committed
Speaker 1: in real life, and he doesn't even mention that Pierce
Speaker 1: knew him. We'll pick back up next week with the
Speaker 1: true true story that inspired William Luther Pierce's second novel,
Speaker 1: starting in a bus station parking lot where a budding
Speaker 1: serial killer first met a teenage Don Black while they
Speaker 1: waited for David Duke to pick them up in his
Speaker 1: dad's car. Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by
Speaker 1: me Ally Coner. Our executive producers are Sophie Lettreman and
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented
Speaker 1: Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
Speaker 1: You can email me at Weird Blue Guys podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I
Speaker 1: probably won't answer. It is nothing personal. You can exchange
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guy subrenet. It just don't post anything that's
Speaker 1: going to make you one of my Weird Little guys,
Speaker 1: and honestly, don't read the Turner Diaries. It's not worth it.
Speaker 1: Do something fun.