The Aryan New Era: Apocalyptic Realizations in The Turner Diaries

Abstract

Although a relatively obscure book in the past, The Turner Diaries (by Andrew Macdonald) attracted considerable attention since April 19, 1995. The trial of Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing, shines a bright, examining light on the novel, but reveals much more than blueprints for bombing federal buildings. In The Turner Diaries, racially extreme ideologies and revolutionary worldviews both figure prominently, and the novel's potential readership is growing steadily amongst the more radical political and racial groups. National Alliance ideology, for instance, reaches tens of thousands of readers through The Turner Diaries. Written pseudonymously by William Pierce, who is the current head of the National Alliance, the novel tells the story of the dawning of the New Era. This New Era occurs through an intriguing combination of cataclysmic apocalyptic events and Neo-Nazi racist practices. The novel is the result of a complex fusion of Christian theologies, Neo-Nazi ideologies, scriptural interpretations, and extreme militancy. By the novel's end, the reader gains interesting insight into the Aryan worldview and its outlook on the future. In this article, I explore the unique worldview presented in The Turner Diaries by locating it in a framework of apocalyptic and sectarian theories. These theories deal specifically with sect ideology, common characteristics shared by apocalyptic groups, and the relationship between the interpretation of Christian doctrines and resulting actions. Because little critical material deals specifically with Macdonald's text,' primarily I will follow Gary Schwartz's sectarian theories, Norman Cohn's theory of millennial ideology, and Barkun's insights into extremist right wing groups to provide interpretive direction. While none of these texts provide specifics on Macdonald's novel, they do offer general patterns that help clarify the peculiarities of the Aryan visions presented in the text. Millenarian Ideology The primary worldview presented in The Turner Diaries is apocalyptic, with a decidedly premillennial quality.' This premillennial concept of the apocalypse is of cataclysmic political, social, and racial proportions. Moreover, it has incorporated certain characteristic features common to general millenarian belief systems, which are useful to review. Generally, groups that have a millenarian theme running through them: ... always picture salvation as (a) collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful as a collectivity; (b) terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth and not in some other-worldly heaven; (c) imminent, in the sense that it is to come both soon and suddenly; (d) total, in the sense that it is utterly to transform life on earth, so that the new dispensation will be no mere improvement on the present but perfection of itself; (e) miraculous, in the sense that it is to accomplished by, or with the help of, supernatural agencies. (Cohn 13) All of these characteristics are present in The Turner Diaries, although in varying degrees. The other influences in the text, such as the Neo-Nazi racist elements, are incorporated with the millenarian group characteristics, distorting them and subtly forging a new, complex ideology that defies clear delineation. This new ideology, however, nevertheless maintains the general millenarian characteristics. The first of Cohn's criteria for classifying apocalyptic groups is that salvation is collective, and will be enjoyed by those who have faith in the prescribed doctrines (Cohn 13). This element features prominently in The Turner Diaries, where the driving theme of the book is the creation of a world where there is not only a separation of Whites from other ethnic groups, but also where the faithful's actions reflect the collective's doctrines: Those who were admitted [to the Organization]'-and that meant only children, women of childbearing age, and ablebodied men willing to fight in the Organization's ranks-- were subjected to much more severe racial screening than had been used to separate Whites from non-Whites in California. …