William Pierce: Behind The Turner Diaries
Kevin Alfred Strom Kevin Alfred Strom · 28 January, 2017

THIS WEEK I’ll be bringing you news of a new audio book edition of William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries — read by the author himself. I’m a pretty radical thinker, and I was pretty radical already in my late 20s when I first encountered the book — but even I was shocked by the radicalism, the war scenes, the violent action of this book. It’s not a book that convinces you by philosophical exposition — though there is a bit of that in it. It’s a book that shows you through brutal action and worldwide cataclysm the goals and tactics of those who want to commit genocide against our race, and the radical thinking and absolute commitment that alone can save us. For those who are ready for it — and that’s not everyone — it’s very powerful.

Before I tell you about the new audio CD version, let’s listen to a long-lost 1996 radio interview from the National Alliance archives, in which Dr. Pierce talks about his first novel with radio host Jeffrey Stewart. It is offered here in text form for the first time at https://nationalvanguard.org/

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Jeffrey Stewart: Dr. Pierce, is The Turner Diaries the most dangerous book in America?

William L. Pierce: For some people, it might be. I wrote the book not just as entertainment, not just as an attempt to predict what would happen in America in the next 20 years, but I also had a message. I think that message is a dangerous one for the people who are controlling the American government, and for the people who are setting the propaganda line of the mass media in this country. I think it’s very dangerous for them. I think they should be very concerned because, if that message reaches a large enough number of people in this country and is taken to heart, they will be in a very dangerous situation indeed.

JS: Occasionally in the history of Western civilization, a book has accomplished that — raised the consciousness of individuals and changed the social structure. Why don’t you sum up the central message of the book for us?

WLP: The central message of the book is that every self-respecting adult has to accept his responsibility for what’s going on in the world around him. He has to accept his responsibility as a guardian, as a caretaker, of his people’s heritage. He has to accept his responsibility for what the future will be like, for the type of world that his children and grandchildren will live in. He has to start being a participant instead of an observer. And I think that if a large enough number of people take that message to heart, this whole house of cards that has been misgoverning and misinforming our people for so long can be brought tumbling down.

JS: So that was your intention, I suppose, when you wrote the book 20 years ago.

WLP: It was indeed my intention to inform people as to my vision of what the future would hold for us, and also to motivate them to do something about changing that future.

JS: Dr. Pierce, you said you wrote The Turner Diaries because you had a message — you wanted to wake people up. You wanted to change the System here in America and motivate people to take action. Now one of the issues the press has raised about The Turner Diaries is that they believe that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, took his action based on one of the scenes in the book, and that the book motivated him to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City. What’s your reaction to that?

WLP: Well, of course, I have no way of knowing what’s going on, or what went on, in Mr. McVeigh’s mind. I’ve never spoken with him. I think the only person who can answer that question is Timothy McVeigh. Perhaps some of that information will come out in the trial. The book has been represented as some sort of a plan or “blueprint” for overthrowing the government. And because specific actions are described in the plot of the book, people have suggested that the book is intended to incite people to blow up buildings, and assassinate people, and so on. That’s simply not the case. I think it’s really stretching things to imagine that a fictional incident that I concocted in my mind 20 years ago would be used as a detailed plan for an actual terrorist act today.

JS: I watched the 60 Minutes segment that they did on you, and they had Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center make a comment about The Turner Diaries and, of course, he managed to get on tape that as soon as he heard about the Oklahoma City Bombing, he thought about The Turner Diaries. That seemed to me, when I heard it, like a pure setup. They were looking for some way to tie you in with this type of terrorist activity — looking for an excuse to do it, is what I thought.

WLP: Well, that may be so. I’m sure that there are a lot of people on the left, including Morris Dees, who would like to lump together into one monolithic conspiracy all of the people to the right of Jimmy Carter.

But I tried to be realistic when I was writing the book. I tried to put myself into the skin of the protagonist, and have him do things the way that I thought he would do them in the fictional situation described in the book. So, for example, when I would describe a bombing that took place in the course of the guerilla warfare that’s described in the book, I would try to figure out what kind of bombing would make the most sense: How would you go about it? How would you assemble the materials? And so on. So, I thought, if I wanted to blow up the FBI headquarters in Washington, I would use a truck bomb to do it. Partly that is based on my analysis of the situation, and partly it’s based on the fact that a truck bomb is the traditional tool of the terrorist who wants to destroy a large target. So I thought, “How I would make a truck bomb?” I did it in my mind. But I did it in a way that any sensible person who wanted to do that — would probably do something along similar lines. Because there are not too many different ways you can make a truck bomb.

JS: That’s true. In other words, what you’re saying is that you did the job that any good author would do — you researched your subject and wrote it up as realistically as possible.

WLP: That’s right. That’s what I tried to do. And, of course, if you look at our recent history, starting with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, then the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, then the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, and most recently the bombing of the residential quarters for our military people in Saudi Arabia — truck bombs were used in every case, because that’s the logical choice for a knowledgeable terrorist.

JS: Did the press ever question whether or not the folks who blew up the World Trade Center were motivated by The Turner Diaries?

WLP: No, they never did that. [laughter] I think they probably didn’t want to get into the motivation of the people who blew up the World Trade Center. Those people were obviously acting to send the government a message that they didn’t appreciate our government supporting the government of Israel in the killing of their women and children over there in the Middle East. And I don’t think the press likes to get into those things.

But in the case of the Oklahoma City Bombing, where the principal suspect had some very strong grievances against the government here based on the massacre at Waco, and perhaps other things that we don’t know about yet — I think they are more willing to discuss those things.

JS: Most of the press attention has been focused on the Oklahoma City bombing and their suspicion that Timothy McVeigh may have been motivated by reading The Turner Diaries. But there is a lot more to that book than just one episode of a truck bombing, isn’t there?

WLP: Yes. Since the book was being published in installments, just one chapter a month, I really had to have some big action event in every chapter to maintain interest. And the blowing up of the FBI headquarters in Washington with a truck bomb was just one chapter.

JS: What are some of the other scenes that are in the book that may come to pass in our lives today?

WLP: Well, I don’t know about specific scenes. I was not trying in the details of the plot to predict anything. I wasn’t trying to predict, for example, that the FBI headquarters would be blown up with a truck bomb. What I was predicting was that we would see the commencement of political terrorism in the United States on a significant scale. And that is what is coming to pass. But the details of that terrorism are something that, of course, no one can predict. One can put oneself inside the mind of a potential terrorist and imagine: What targets would he seek out? How would he go after those targets? That is what I did in the book. But that was 20 years ago, and I could not foresee in fine detail the way in which everything would develop over that long a period of time.

What I did see was a growing realization on the part of the average American that the System just wasn’t working — that the future was in very severe jeopardy — that his children would have no place in the sort of world that the New World Order folks were trying to build. I saw that more and more people would become aware of just what “multiculturalism” and “diversity” and all these other buzzwords that they have been hearing would really mean in terms of the destruction of everything that has value to them — the destruction of all their traditions — the destruction of their sense of identity as a people — the perversion of all the institutions of American life. I predicted that more and more people would see this, realize the significance of this, and react in one way or another to this.

And I think we’re seeing that. Part of it is just a generalized alienation; people becoming more individualistic, more egoistic, withdrawing from any sense of responsibility to any larger entity than themselves or their immediate families. We’re seeing that sort of thing, and we’re also seeing more and more people deciding that they have to do something about what’s happening. We’re seeing, for example, the growth of the militia movement.

JS: What would you tell the listeners out there who agree with you? Everybody in this country can see that America is going straight down the tubes and the future for the next generation is very bleak. And you have proven, as the author of The Turner Diaries, to be a very prophetic man, if I can say that, in seeing where all of these trends are going. But what would you tell our listeners? What can our listeners do to help turn this situation around? If they already know that we’re in desperate trouble, what can we do about it?

WLP: I think we need to keep in mind that historical changes are usually made by minorities — sometimes very small minorities. And we may fall into the trap of feeling overwhelmed when we see the government and when we see the media in monolithic opposition to the things that we feel are valuable, the things that we feel are important. But remember that the government and the media — I mean the people who control those institutions — are a very tiny minority of the population themselves. And if we can organize the people who have a sense of responsibility, who have a sense of traditional values, into an effective force for fighting these people who are destroying the country — who are destroying our future — then we can whip them.

So what we’re trying to do in the National Alliance is not only wake people up, not only educate people, but motivate them to begin participating in an organized way in an effort to reclaim our future and rebuild our world.

JS: Dr. Pierce, what you’re describing is a world where there are small groups of people who understand what’s going on, and those small groups are organized in opposition to each other, whereas the great mass of humanity may be drifting along or asleep. There are some people in that small group that you’re describing that want to keep our culture, want to keep our traditions, and not have the American culture destroyed. But they shouldn’t feel that they’re the only ones who think that way. They may be in the minority, but don’t you think that throughout history that that’s been the way it’s worked?

WLP: Yes, it’s always been that way. As I said a minute ago, history is made by minorities. It’s only a minority of people who really understand what’s happening in the world, who really understand the dynamics of what’s going on. And unless one understands what’s happening, one really cannot play a role in the historical process, cannot take a hand in shaping the future. So that is our most important task at this time: to try and help people understand what’s going on — and then organize those people who have come to understand what’s happening into an effective force for making some changes.

JS: And our listeners can start that education by reading The Turner Diaries and other materials available from the National Alliance. Dr. Pierce, thank you for being with me tonight.

WLP: It’s my pleasure.