The Turner Diaries - America's manual of hatred
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following the assault on the US Capitol earlier this month, Amazon banned The Turner Diaries, a racist novel blamed for inciting American neo-Nazis to violence. The book calls for a race war and a coup against the institutions of US democracy. It was the favourite reading of Timothy McVeigh, the white terrorist who blew up a federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
The Turner Diaries was published in 1978 by a former physics professor and neo-Nazi called William Luther Pierce. Simon Watts has been hearing the memories of his son, Kelvin Pierce. They were recorded as part of the BBC series on the American far-right, Two Minutes Past Nine.
PHOTO: Shawn Walker, a former leader of William Pierce's neo-Nazi organisation, the National Alliance, posing with a copy of the Turner Diaries (Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:30.9 | Hello Hello and thank you for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service with me Simon Watts. |
| 0:41.0 | Following the riot at the US Capitol earlier this month, |
| 0:44.7 | Amazon has banned the Turner diaries, a deeply racist and anti-Semitic novel |
| 0:50.4 | blamed for inciting violence. I've been finding out more about a book that envisages a race war and the |
| 0:57.6 | overthrow of American democracy. In 1978 a neo-Nazi called William Pierce published the Turner Diaries. |
| 1:07.0 | It's become essential reading for white supremacist, according to extremism experts like J.M. Berger. |
| 1:15.0 | I've chronicled 19 incidents with 200 victims killed |
| 1:19.7 | as a result of the actions of people who seem to be inspired by the Turner Diaries and that's |
| 1:24.0 | probably a low estimate. |
| 1:25.8 | It's absolutely demolished. |
| 1:27.8 | You can see one of the walls was just completely blown away. |
| 1:31.0 | A whole side of the building building completely blown away and gone. |
| 1:34.0 | What's it like in there now, doctor? |
| 1:36.0 | It's a war zone. |
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