The Turner Diaries
July 7, 1993. Looks like I'll be here till morning,
so I can take an hour or so now to record the events of the last few
days.
This is really a swanky place. It's a penthouse
apartment from which we can see most of Los Angeles-which is why we're
using it as a command post. But the luxury is unbelievable: satin sheets;
genuine fur bedspreads; gold-plated bathroom fixtures; 0 wall taps which
dispense bourbon, scotch, and vodka in every
room; huge, framed,
pornographic photographs on the walls.
The apartment
belonged to one Jerry Siegelbaum, a business agent for the local Municipal
Employees Union-and the star subject of the dirty photos on the walls.
Looks like he preferred blonde, Gentile girls, although his partner in one
picture is a Negress, and he's with a young boy in another. Some
representative of the workers he was! I hope someone moves him from the
hallway outside soon; there's been no air-conditioning since Monday, and
he's beginning to stink pretty bad.
This huge city presents
quite a different aspect now from the last time I had an overall view of
it at night. The blaze of lights outlining all the main streets is gone.
Instead, the general blackness is broken only by hundreds of fires
randomly scattered through the city. I know there are thousands of
vehicles moving down there, but they are driving without lights, so they
won't be shot at.
For the last four days one has heard the
practically continuous scream of sirens from police and emergency vehicles
mixed with the sound of gunfire and explosions and the whirring clatter of
helicopters. Tonight there is only the gunfire, and not much of that. It
looks like the battle here has reached a decisive stage.
At
two o'clock Monday morning more than 60 of our combat units struck
simultaneously throughout the Los Angeles area, while hundreds of other
units hit targets all across the country, from Canada to Mexico and from
coast to coast. I haven't heard yet what we accomplished elsewhere,
because the System has clamped a total censorship on all the news
media-the ones we haven't seized ourselves, that is-and I haven't had a
chance to talk to any of our own people who've been in contact with
Revolutionary Command. But here in Los Angeles we've done surprisingly
well.
Our initial assault cut off all water and electrical
power into the metropolitan area, knocked out the main airports, and made
all the major freeways impassable. We took out the telephone exchanges and
blew up every gasoline storage depot. The harbor area has been almost a
solid mass of flames for four days now.
We seized at least
15 police stations. Mostly we just took their weapons, destroyed their
communications equipment and whatever vehicles were not on patrol at the
time, and then pulled out. But apparently our people are still holed up in
several police buildings and are using them as local command
posts.
At first the cops and the firemen were running
around like chickens with their heads cut off-sirens and flashing lights
everywhere. By Monday afternoon, however, communications had broken down
so badly and there were so many fires and other emergencies that the
police and fire departments were being much more selective in their
responses. In many areas our teams were able to go about their work
practically without interference. Now, of course, most emergency and
police vehicles are out of fuel and can't move at all. And the ones which
still have gas seem to be lying low.
The whole key to
neutralizing the police-and to everything else, for that matter-was our
work inside the military. It was apparent to everyone as early as Monday
afternoon that something big was happening inside the military
establishment. For one thing, other than the troops and tanks guarding
power stations, TV transmitters, and so on-as always-no military units
were deployed against us. For another thing, there were obvious signs of
armed conflict inside all the military bases in the
area.
We could see and hear jet fighter-bombers swooping
low over the city, but they were not attacking us-at least, not directly.
They were strafing and bombing the dozen or so California National Guard
armories in the metropolitan area. Those jets were apparently from El Toro
Marine Air Station south of here. Later we saw several dogfights in the
sky over Los Angeles and heard that Camp Pendleton, the big Marine Corps
base about 70 miles southeast of here, was being hit by heavy bombers from
Edwards Air Force Base. All in all, a very confusing scenario for everyone
concerned.
But Monday evening, quite by chance, I ran into
Henry, of all people, and he explained quite a bit of the military
situation to me. Good old Henry-how glad I was to see him
again!
We met in the KNX transmitter building, where I was
helping our broadcast team get the station back on the air after we seized
it. That, by the way, is what I've been doing for four days: repairing
shot-up transmitters, shifting transmitter frequencies, and improvising
equipment. We now have one FM station and two AM stations on the air, all
operating from emergency generators. In all three cases we cut the cables
from the studios and installed our broadcast teams directly at the
transmitter sites.
Henry came roaring up to KNX in a jeep,
wearing a U.S. Army uniform with colonel's insignia and accompanied by
three soldiers carrying machine guns and anti-tank rockets. He was
bringing the text to be broadcast-a text directed primarily at military
personnel.
As soon as I had finished splicing our
microphone and audio equipment into the transmitter input, Henry and I
stepped to the side to talk while his message was being read over the air
by our announcer. It consisted of an appeal to all White military
personnel who had not already done so to join our revolution, together
with a warning to those who failed to heed the appeal. The message was
very well designed, and I am sure its effect on both military and civilian
listeners was powerful.
Henry, it turned out, has been
in charge of the Organization's entire recruiting effort in the armed
forces for over a year, and he has been concentrating his efforts on the
West Coast since he was transferred here last March. The story he told me
was a long one, but, together with what I have learned since then its
essence is this: '
We have been recruiting inside the
military on two levels since the Organization was formed. At the lower
level we operated semi-openly before September 1991 and clandestinely
afterwards That involved the dissemination of our propaganda among
enlisted personnel and non-coms, mostly on a person-to-person basis. But,
Henry told me, we have also been recruiting at higher levels, in the
utmost secrecy.
Revolutionary Command's strategy hinged on
our success in winning over a number of high-ranking military commanders,
: and on Monday we began playing that hidden trump. That's why the armed
forces haven't been used against us and also why various military units
have been shooting and bombing each 0 other the last four
days.
The intra-military conflict started with units
commanded by our sympathizers on one side and those loyal to the System
(by far the majority) on the other side. Another aspect to the conflict
soon developed and overshadowed the first, however: Black against
White.
Military units commanded by pro-Organization
officers began disarming all Black military personnel as soon as we
launched our Monday-morning attack. The excuse they used was that Black
militants had launched a mutiny in other units and that their orders from
higher up were to disarm all Blacks to prevent the j spread of the mutiny.
Generally, White servicemen were ready and willing to believe that story
and did not need to be told twice to turn their guns against the Blacks in
their units. Those few whose liberal predispositions made them hesitate
were shot on the spot.
In other units our enlisted
personnel simply began shooting any Blacks they saw in uniform and then
deserted to units commanded by our sympathizers. The Blacks, naturally
enough, reacted in such a way as to make the story about a Black mutiny
come true. Even in those units commanded by pro-System officers heavy
fighting between Blacks and Whites broke out.
And, since
some of these units are nearly half Black, the fighting has been bloody
and prolonged. The result has been that, although the units commanded by
our sympathizers initially had only about five per cent of the strength of
the pro-System units, most of the latter have been paralyzed by internal
fighting between Blacks and Whites. And now Whites are coming over in
increasing numbers to our units because of this.
Our
broadcasts have helped this process along greatly. We have exaggerated our
own strength, of course, and have told White servicemen who want to join
our units where to go. And to help convince them-as well as to keep the
niggers spooked and doing their thing-we have turned one of our
transmitters into a phony "soul" station and been broadcasting a call for
a Black revolution, telling the Blacks to shoot their White officers and
non-coms before the Whites can disarm them.
About the only
military units in the Los Angeles area able to offer any effective
opposition to us have been some Air Force fighter and bomber units-and the
Marine air unit at El Toro. They have been attacking military units
believed to have come over to us. But, according to Henry, they have been
doing about as much damage to the pro-System forces as to
ours.
Henry chuckled as he explained to me that the
Organization had been unable to make sufficient headway in its recruiting
in the California National Guard to be able to count on any Guard units
coming over to us. So the Organization kidnapped the local Guard
commander, General Howell, just before the Monday morning attack, as a
preventive measure.
When the System couldn't locate Howell,
they were apparently afraid he had joined us. Their fears were undoubtedly
confirmed when they heard that he had hurriedly left his home with three
strangers after midnight Monday, less than an hour before everything hit
the fan. Anyway, their suspicions got the better of them, and so they
ordered all the National Guard armories and depots bombed by loyal air
units Monday afternoon.
And at Camp Pendleton we were
nowhere near having the upper hand before the System panicked and ordered
in the bombers. I am sure that move is what tilted things in our favor.
There is still heavy fighting in the Pendleton area, but we are apparently
on top there now.
I don't know from which base the column
of tanks came that neutralized the main Los Angeles police headquarters
for us today, but they were certainly a godsend. We never could have done
it without them.
From the beginning the L.A. cops have been
our only really organized opposition. The smaller police forces in
surrounding jurisdictions have not been a particular problem. Some we
knocked out of action completely; others decided to lie low and mind their
own business after a few early skirmishes. But the 10,000 or so men in the
L.A.P.D. were very much in action against us until a few hours ago, and
the going was very rough. We've had at least 100 KIA's here in the last
four days-between 15 and 20 per cent of our local combat
strength.
I don't know why we failed to do the same thing
with the police here we seem to have done with the military. Perhaps it
was just a shortage of cadres on our part, and military recruiting was
given a higher priority than police recruiting. In any event, the main
police headquarters here almost immediately became the center of
counter-revolutionary resistance.
The L.A. city cops were
joined by some sheriff's units from the county and even by some state
highway patrol units, and they turned their main headquarters building
into a fortress that was impregnable to anything we could bring to bear
against it. In fact, it was almost certain death for any of our people to
venture within a couple of blocks of the place. They had a large store of
fuel, more than a thousand vehicles, and emergency power for their
communications equipment, and they outmanned us by a large
factor.
Using helicopters for reconnaissance, they
pinpointed our various strong-points and the buildings we had seized, and
they sent out raiding parties involving as many as So vehicles and 200-300
men. Our demolition of virtually every highway overpass had limited their
mobility to a large extent, but their airborne observers were able to
route them around many obstacles.
We managed to protect
certain really vital points-including the radio stations we had
seized-only by having well-dug-in machine-gun crews covering the avenues
of approach. Fortunately, the cops had only a few armored vehicles,
because most of our people had no weapons for dealing with armor. It was
only today that anti-tank weapons became generally available to our combat
teams.
If the L.A. cops had been able to link up with
any military units remaining loyal to the System, that would have been the
end of us. Fortunately, a dozen old M60's from a unit which had come over
to us got to them first. They rolled right over the roadblocks the police
had set up around their headquarters, riddled the building with HE and
incendiary shells, and liberally sprayed the hundreds of police vehicles
in the area with machine-gun fire.
The cops' communications
and power were knocked out, and their building was set afire in d dozen
places. They had to evacuate the building, and we rained 81-mm mortar fire
down on the surrounding parking lots and streets until the area became
untenable for them. The place is deserted now and still burning. Most of
the cops seem to have made their way to their homes and changed into
civilian clothes.
Now that most of the organized resistance
against us here has been neutralized, everything hinges on whether we can
get this area effectively under our control before military units from
other parts of the country are sent in. I don't understand why that hasn't
already happened.
I was told just a couple of hours ago to
report in the morning to a group of our technical people who will have the
task of planning the details of restoring some electrical power and some
water to the area, reestablishing routes for vehicular traffic, and
locating and securing all remaining supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Sounds like more of a job for a civil engineer than for
me.
It also sounds a little premature, but it is
encouraging to know that Revolutionary Command seems to be confident of
the future. Perhaps I'll find out more about the overall situation
tomorrow.
July 10. Well, well, well! Things have
really been happening- some good things and some bad things, but mostly
good, so far.
The military-and-police situation seems to be
essentially under control here-and, in fact, for most of the West Coast,
although there is apparently a lot of fighting still going on around San
Francisco and in a few other areas.
And there are still a
few armed groups here-some cops and some military personnel-roving around
and causing a little mischief. But we've secured all the bases and
military airfields here and will round up stray personnel in another day
or two. The order is out now to shoot on sight anyone carrying arms unless
he is wearing one of our armbands.
That's a welcome switch
from a few days ago, when we were the ones liable to be shot on sight.
After years of hiding, slinking around in disguises, and getting sick with
fear every time we saw a cop, it's a wonderful feeling to be out in the
open-and to be the V ones with the guns.
The big problem
here has become a civilian one. The civilian population has gone
completely amok. Actually, one can hardly blame them, and I'm surprised
they behaved themselves-more or less-as long as they did. After all,
they've been without electric power and without a water supply for a week.
A very substantial portion of them have also been without food for several
days.
For the first couple of days-Monday and Tuesday-the
civilian population did just what we expected them to do. Hundreds of
thousands of them piled into their cars and onto the freeways. They
couldn't go very far, of course, because we had blown up a number of key
interchanges, but they did manage to create a collection of the most
monumental traffic jams imaginable, thus finishing our task for us of
making ground travel almost impossible for the police.
By
Tuesday afternoon most of the White population had returned to their homes
- or, at least, to their own neighborhoods-many of them leaving their
stalled cars on the roads and hiking back. They had discovered, first,
that there was no feasible way for them to leave the Los Angeles area by
automobile; second, that they couldn't buy gasoline, because the electric
pumps at the filling stations weren't working; third, that most stores and
businesses were closed up tight; and fourth, that something really big was
happening. They stayed home, kept their transistor radios on, and worried.
There was remarkably little crime or violence, except in the Black areas,
where rioting, looting, and burning began early Monday afternoon and grew
progressively more intense and widespread.
By early
Thursday, however, there was a good bit of looting in White areas as well,
mostly of grocery stores. Some people had not eaten for more than 48 hours
by then and were acting from desperation rather than
lawlessness.
Since it wasn't until Thursday night that we
began to feel sure we had the police licked, we did nothing to discourage
civilian disorder. The more of them in the streets, hungry and desperate,
smashing store windows and stealing food, looking for drinkable water and
fresh batteries for their radios, getting into fights with other people
looking for the same things, the less time the police had for us. That, of
course, was the principal idea behind our knocking out power, water, and
transportation at the very beginning.
If the police had had
only us to cope with, we couldn't have won. But they couldn't handle us
and a general breakdown of public order at the same
time.
Now, however, we're the ones with the job of
restoring order, and it's going to be a bitch. The people are absolutely
out of their minds with fear and panic. They are behaving in an entirely
irrational manner, and a great number of lives are bound to be sacrificed
before we get things under control. Partly, I'm afraid, starvation and
exhaustion are going to have to do it for us, because our manpower and
other material resources are entirely inadequate for the
task.
Today I went out with a fuel recovery team, and I got
a close look at our civilian problem. It really shook me. We were driving
a big gasoline tank truck, with an armed jeep escort, from filling station
to filling station in the Pasadena area, pumping the gasoline out of each
station's tanks and into our truck. There's enough fuel in the area to
meet our own needs for quite a while, but the civilians are just going to
have to get along without their cars for the
duration.
Pasadena used to be mostly White a few years ago,
but it has become substantially Black now. In the Black areas, whenever we
ran into Blacks near a filling station, we simply opened fire on them to
keep them at a distance. In the White areas, we were mobbed by hungry
Whites begging us for food-which, of course, we didn't have to give
them.
It's a damned good thing they have no firearms, or
we'd be in a hell of a jam now. Thank you, Senator
Cohen!
Oops! No more time to write now-have to go to a
meeting. We should get a briefing there on the national
situation.