"The Turner Diaries"

I wanted to take a few moments today and share the Introduction by the Publisher of an extremely controversial publication titled "The Turner Diaries."

Why?
Why would I even attempt to bring up or read something so toxic, divisive, or seemingly irrelevant?

Because it isn't irrelevant.

A few years ago, my interest was piqued as I saw myself at the center of a racial/cultural clash involving both parts of my identity: Hebrew and African-American (75/25. I did not know that I was of Hebrew origin until 2 years ago).

Both elements are a part of the cataclysmic clash described therein that seem so hate-filled and violent that it doesn't seem so far removed from fiction. Knockout games are sweeping across the country during a time of much upheaval and distress, as we all seek to protect and preserve both ourselves, our families, and those we hold dearest.

Hopefully, we will all learn to make sure that this love and attention seeps its way down into the way we treat members of the American family who may not look or sound much like us. Maybe the only thing that we have in common is that we both hold our fork in the left hand, or use a Mac instead of a PC.

I found myself conflicted.
Both simultaneously sucked in by the storyline and conversely nauseated by the content.
I had to put the book down and stop a third of the way through because it disturbed me too much.

Although I do not aim to put any more money into the coffers of the author, or to in any way encourage this type of toxic thinking, I will tell you what the reasoning is.

1. Realize what is happening out there today.
2. Realize our need for collective change, healing, and understanding going forth.

Thank you.
I leave you with the Introduction by the Publisher, Lyle Stuart.



"There are some people who are born to do unpopular things that need doing. I seem to be one of them.


When I announced that I would publish The Turner Diaries in a trade edition for sale through bookshops, the response was awesome. I was denounced from pulpits. I was attacked in a letter to retail book chains by Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center. This is an organization that has monitored neo-Nazi antigovernment groups for more than a decade.

I happen to admire and respect Mr. Dees. But when you have lived for what seems to have been thousands of years, you come to understand that those you admire may not always be right.


I have fought censorship all of my adult life. To me, the most precious of all rights in this marvelous country called the United States of America is the freedom to think, write, and say whatever is on your mind, subject to the laws of libel. That freedom also extends to thoughts that are stupid, ignorant, or incendiary.


No one needs a First Amendment to write about how cute newborn babies are or to publish a recipe for strawberry shortcake. Nobody needs a First Amendment for innocuous ideas or popular points of view. That's point one.


Point two is that the majority- you and I- must always protect the right of the minority- to express the most outrageous and offensive ideas. Only then is total freedom of expression guaranteed.


The Turner Diaries is a dreadful book. It is ignorant. Even its author boasts, "It offends almost everyone; Afro-Americans, feminists, gays and lesbians, liberals, communists, Mexicans, Democrats, the FBI, egalitarians, and Jews. Especially Jews: for it portrays them as incarnations of everything that is evil and destructive.

That quote is from the author. Now, this is from me. Let's clear away some of the smoke.

How do I feel about blacks? One of the two closest friends I've had in my life was black. I led a rebellion against Jim Crow while in the Air Corps in World War II. After the war, my wife and I had to slip out of Lynchburg, Virginia at 2 a.m. because rocks were being thrown through our windows and mobs were gathering. I'd had the temerity to give a talk in the auditorium of the local (black) high school, the Paul Laurence Dunbar School. And I'd said things that deeply offended and aroused whits Southern manhood such as assuring the student population that "The Bible and biology agree that man is of one blood..."

The problems of crime, drugs, and poverty in black communities have spread crime to all neighborhoods. There's an ironic poetic justice to this. It's the natural outcome of the way we so-called whites have disenfranchised and exploited black people for a couple of centuries.

How do I feel about gays? I'm totally comfortable with my own sexual orientation which happens to be heterosexual. But I have no objection to others doing whatever makes them happy, provided they do it with consenting adults.

How do I feel about Jews? I'm an atheist. My father was an atheist. But my grandfather was Jewish. He ran a religious Jewish school in Vienna. Although I don't feel a particular identity with any religion, I'm perfectly comfortable saying "I'm a Jew" when confronting a bigot. (Nor do I have any qualms about punching his head off.)

The Turner Diaries is a bigoted book. For that reason alone, should it be suppressed? Should it be kept out of the hands of Middle America? Is the disease that it contains so infectious that anyone reading it will catch a dose of bigotry and hatred?

I don't think so and I hope not. But that is the risk that one takes in making this book widely available. We live in a dangerous world and in dangerous times. We live in a world where some leaders are tyrants and others are power-hungry hypocrites. We live in a world of unimaginable cruelty. We live in a world of corruption and selfishness.


But we live in a nation where we have a right to know. In our nation, at least, we have that precious, though often delicate treasure. And that's what what makes our nation the place where many groups of oppressed people want to live.

When I was a young man, there was a great furor when a major book house published Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Not only was this terrible document going to fall into the wrong hands, but Hitler was to be paid royalties on its sale!

Even in my teens, I had the instinct that, of course, this book should be published. Of course it should be available to all who want to read it. People should be able to judge for themselves Hitler's dangerously sick plans and ideas and how seriously we should take them.


I feel no less strongly about The Turner Diaries.
This book is full of hate. It reflects those who hate other humans simply because of their religion or the shade of their skin. The haters are invariably people who suffer a serious lack of self-esteem. Their insecurities crave the desperate need to feel superior to those they fear. And those they fear, they fear largely because they don't understand them.


According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Turner Diaries provided Timothy McVeigh with the blueprint for the Oklahoma City Bombing.


If for no other reason than that, it has become a historic document. But alas, there are other reasons.

The author, a former university professor, started to write some fiction in 1975. He finished in 1978. What he wrote, expressed his view  of what he believed the world would be like in decades to come. He'd written a book-length novel.

The Turner Diaries is that novel. Unlike hundreds of novels which are published and quickly drown in the sea of small sales each year, this one captured the imagination of gun fanatics and rednecks. It quickly became an underground bestseller.

More than 185,000 copies were sold, and, to the best of my knowledge, not more than a dozen or two of  these were sold through bookshops.

The Turner Diaries came to the attention of the Justice Department in 1985 when a band of antigovernment terrorists, calling themselves "The Order" and modeled on the group of the same name in the book, committed a series of murders and bank and armored car robberies in an attempt to start a violent revolution.

Even then, the book remained inaccessible to the general public.

The author wrote me to say: "If the Turner Diaries had been available to the general public...the Oklahoma City bombing would not have come as such a surprise."


For a long time, I've known that groups like the militia and the Freeman are not merely beer-drinking gun-toting patriots whose only joy is to shoot rabbits and deer.

They are, for the most part, people who have failed in our society. They lack something emotionally or economically or psychologically. They hate the United States government and want it overthrown now! They hate and fear authority ranging from the president to the local judges and sheriffs and drug enforcement agents and even simple government clerks. They want to kill them all.


That perennial nut case, G. Gordon Liddy, let their tiger out of the cage when he advised these groups that government enforcement officers may be wearing bullet-proof vests so it was best to aim for their heads.

These people are dangerous. Many of them could be considered certifiably insane.

We don't need censors to protect us. We're an intelligent people. Most of us have the good sense  to know what to believe and what to reject. But we do have the right to know what the enemy is thinking.

This book will tell you that. In ways it may infuriate you. In ways it may make you want to throw up.


Should we know what inspires these people and shapes their values?

"Yes!" I say, and "Yes" again.

Finally, I'd like to commend the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. Its president, Oren J. Teigher responded to Morris Dees when the latter attacked me for planning to publish this book.

Teicher said in part: "As outrageous as the content of The Turner Diaries may be, we believe that even offensive and objectionable material is protected by the First Amendment. In fact, as you certainly understand, we do not need a First Amendment to protect the popular and the non-controversial; it is the unpopular and controversial that requires our vigilance." 

Teicher added: "People from all sides of the political debate...seem to want to interfere with other having access to ideas with which they disagree. In the spirit of free expression...I'd suggest a far more appropriate course of action would  be to expose and debate those ideas in a concerted effort to make certain that truth emerges."

My sentiments exactly!


Sincerely,

Lyle Stuart