Guns Don’t Kill People, Books Do! William Pierce’s the Turner Diaries and Its Victims

Abstract While the reading of fiction has been said to have positive effects on readers’ capacity for tolerance and empathy, there is an American work of fiction that was intended to have the opposite effect of antipathy towards certain groups and entities, and that can be linked to acts of violence committed against hundreds of people. The Turner Diaries was published in 1978 by William Pierce, leader of a neo-Nazi party in the US. Its most infamous reader was Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 in imitation of a scene in the novel. This article provides details about the novel (including the diary form that makes its narrative well-suited to propaganda), its author William Pierce, McVeigh, and other readers who have tried to emulate its protagonist, Earl Turner.