By Brigitte L. Nacos
“Despite all the noise and smoke and wreckage caused by our attack on the Capitol, only 61 persons were killed… But the real value of all our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties…More important, though, is what we taught politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach…All the armed guards and bulletproof limousines in America cannot guarantee their safety…”
The above sentences in “The Turner Diaries” describe the beginning of a catastrophic global race war that American White Supremacists and their counterparts in Europe fought and won within eleven months by the destruction of democratic systems, non-Whites, and "hostile" Whites in order to establish a pure White empire.
Written in the late 1970s by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, the “novel” became a bestseller among militia circles in the 1990s. For Timothy McVeigh the book was a blue print for planning and carrying out the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 that killed 168 persons and injured many more.
It has been suggested that ISIS may have influenced the playbook of the organized elements that stormed and invaded the Capitol last week. While that might be the case with respect to certain aspects, for example, ISIS’s savvy exploitation of social media platforms, Pierce’s gruesome prescriptions contain more clues for the present state of mind of organized White Supremacy/neo-Nazi groups and their plans for their short- and long-term objectives.
One of the main differences between ISIS and the various White Supremacy and neo-Nazi groups in the United States has been their unwillingness or inability to unite. The “Unite the Right” demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2017 were an effort of “alt-right” ideologists to pull the groups together. It failed.
But President Trump whose starring role in the racist anti-Obama birther conspiracy theory years ago and the anti-immigrant policies as president managed to become the idol behind whom White Supremacy groups finally united. The thousands of men and women whose violence shocked the nation as they forced their ways into the halls of the Congress the other day were united in responding to Mr. Trump’s calls to come to Washington and march to the Capitol in order to prevent the “enemy” from taking the non-existing election victory and the presidency away from Trump and them.
Although indicating that he would march with them, the President retreated to the White House. In that he followed the script of other violent movements’ leaders. Hitler and Mussolini never fought along their parties’ brown and black shirts in the streets; bin Laden and al-Baghdadi did not carry out acts of violence they propagated.
Even after four years of the Trumpian war against the intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security communities some institutional memory still exists in the FBI and other security agencies. Some FBI agents, for sure, remember that “The Turner Diaries” motivated McVeigh and guided his logistical planning. For them and their colleagues it might be worthwhile to read or reread the “novel” as blue print for further violence.
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