2 Novels That Scare the Sh*t out of Me

These novels are scary AF.

But to understand modern politics, you should be familiar with them.

 

The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald (1978)

The Author

Andrew Macdonald was a pen name for William Luther Pierce (1933 – 2002). Born in Georgia and raised in Texas, Pierce earned a bachelor’s degree in physics followed by a master’s degree and a doctorate, eventually landing a professorship at Oregon State University. A few years later, he left that post in favor of a research position at Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut. All along, he made plenty of time for his true passion—white nationalism.

He founded the National Alliance, basing it out of Hillsboro, West Virginia, and while cycling through five wives proved himself to be quite the multitasker by penning this classic.

The Plot

Told through the diaries of one Earl Turner, this thriller revolves around a near-future (1990s) America in which a government dominated by minorities has confiscated all civilian weapons, rendering powerless its white citizenry. Turner and his cronies wage a guerilla war against the System (government), committing acts of domestic terrorism that are met with further oppression but also help gain converts to their cause.

Taking control of California, Turner’s buddies initiate a process of ethnic cleansing, later using nuclear weapons to broaden the scope of the project.

The diaries end with Turner’s plan to carry out a suicide bombing at the Pentagon, and an epilogue describes a utopia in which the mission has been completed and the dream of a white world has become a reality.

The Influence

Among the high-profile fans of the work was Timothy McVeigh, a Western New Yorker who in 1995 bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. A subsequent search revealed two pages of the novel in his vehicle.

And Pierce’s masterpiece proved to have a much larger fan base during the attack on the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, an act that resembled a mortar attack on the same building in the novel. In fact, after the insurrection, Amazon removed the book from its website.

 

The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail (1973)

The Author

Raspail (1925 – 2020) was a respected French explorer and travel writer. The recipient of multiple prestigious literary awards, he achieved fame worldwide with Le Camp des Saints, later translated into English under the title above.

Inspired by his time at the French Riviera, Raspail wondered what would happen if those on the other side of the Mediterranean made their way across the pond, equating that hypothetical to a passage in the final book of the New Testament in which Satan engages in battle against the camp of the saints.

The Plot

The page turner begins with a mass of migrants from Calcutta, India—including one known as the turd eater—making its way via cramped and unsanitary ships toward Europe. Upon arrival in southern France, the Third World immigrants demand First World standards but fail to assimilate.

Through reproduction, ongoing immigration, and the murder of French citizens, the immigrants soon outnumber the French, and the same process takes hold across the entire West.

In the epilogue, the final holdout, Switzerland, is forced to open its borders and presumably succumb to the same white genocide.

The Influence

Raspail’s work factored into the thought process of another French writer, Renaud Camus. It is Camus who is credited with the now mainstream Great Replacement theory, one that suggests a deliberate attempt to replace European populations with non-European ones.

The theory has been quite influential, inspiring an array of mass shootings targeting minorities, including those in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019), El Paso, Texas (2019), and Buffalo, New York (2022).

 

With election season around the corner, consider yourself informed.