The Turner Diaries: A Novel Page 9

Chapter IX

  November 9, 1991. What a day! At two o'clock this afternoon an extraordinary session of the Congress convened to hear an address by the President. He was to ask for special legislation which would allow the government to stamp out "racism" and combat terrorism more effectively.

  One thing he intended to ask the Congress for, according to the press, was the long-expected internal-passport law. Despite our destruction last month of the computer to be used with this passport program, the government is obviously pressing ahead with it.

  The Capitol had been surrounded by somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 secret policemen and armed, uniformed soldiers. Jeeps with mounted machine guns were everywhere. There were even two tanks and several APC's.

  Members of the press and Congressional staffers had to pass through three separate rings of barricades and barbed wire, at each of which they were thoroughly searched for weapons, in order to approach the Capitol. Helicopters whirred overhead. No band of guerrillas bent on sabotage or assassination could have gotten within two blocks of the place, even in a suicide dash.

  In fact, the government obviously overdid the security arrangements just to heighten the sense of urgency of the occasion. The spectacle of all the troops and guns around the Capitol left no doubt in the minds of the TV viewers, I am sure, that there is an emergency situation in the country which calls for the strongest possible measures from the government.

  Then, as the TV cameras were preparing to switch from the crowded scene outside the Capitol to the speaker's podium in the House chamber, where the President would be speaking, a mortar round-although no one realized that's what it was- exploded about 200 yards northwest of the building. TV watchers heard the explosion but couldn't see anything except an indistinct puff of gray smoke floating above the Capitol.

  For the next few seconds there was general confusion. Soldiers with gas masks on were scurrying in one direction, while grim-faced secret policemen with drawn pistols were running in the other direction. The TV commentator announced breathlessly that someone had set off a bomb in one of the Capitol parking lots.

  He babbled on for a little less than a minute, speculating as to who had done it, how they had managed to get the bomb past the security forces, how many persons had been hurt by the blast, and so on. Then the second round landed.

  This one went off with a bang and a flash about 50 yards in front of the TV camera. It made almost a direct hit on a squad of soldiers manning a machine gun behind a heap of sandbags in the Capitol's east parking lot.

  "It's our mortar!" I shouted. It must have also dawned simultaneously on every man with military experience watching the scene that a mortar was responsible for the two explosions.

  Mortars are marvelous little weapons, especially for guerrilla warfare. They drop their deadly rounds silently and almost vertically onto their target. They can be fired from total cover, and persons in the target area cannot tell from which direction the projectiles are coming.

  In this case I guessed immediately that our people were firing from a secluded, densely wooded area on the west bank of the Potomac, just over two miles from the Capitol. Henry and I had checked the area out some time ago for just such a purpose, because every important Federal building in Washington is within 81 mm-mortar range of it.

  About 45 seconds after the second round the third one landed on the roof of the south wing of the Capitol and exploded inside the building. They had the range now, and the projectiles began raining down at four-to-five second intervals. Practically everyone, including most of the TV crews, had scrambled for cover, but one intrepid cameraman remained at his post.

  We saw beautiful blossoms of flame and steel sprouting everywhere, dancing across the asphalt, thundering in the midst of splintered masonry and burning vehicles, erupting now inside and now outside the Capitol, wreaking their bloody toll in the ranks of tyranny and treason.

  It was all over in about three minutes, but while it lasted it was the most magnificent spectacle I have ever seen. What an impression it must have made on the general public watching it on TV!

  And there was more excitement today, both in California and New York. The Los Angeles City Council was convened for the sake of watching a telecast of the President's address to Congress before voting on several "anti-racist" ordinances of their own. Just about the time the fireworks started here, four of our men, using phony police identification, walked into the council meeting there and began throwing grenades. Eight council members were killed outright, and our men made a clean getaway.

  An hour earlier, in New York, the Organization used a bazooka to shoot down an airliner which had just taken off for Tel Aviv with a load of vacationing dignitaries, mostly Jews. There were no survivors. (Note to the reader: A "bazooka" was a portable launcher for small rockets, used primarily as an infantry weapon against armored vehicles during World War 11, 60-54 BNE, and already obsolete by 8 BNE. Tel Aviv was the largest city in Palestine during the period of Jewish occupation of that unfortunate country in the Old Era. The ruins of the city are still too radioactive for human habitation.)

  All in all, it has been a busy day for the Organization! I am greatly invigorated by these demonstrations of our capability for launching multiple, simultaneous strikes against the System, and I am sure that the same is true of all our comrades.

  Despite all the noise and smoke and wreckage caused by our attack on the Capitol, only 61 persons were killed, we learned from later news reports. Among these are two Congressmen, one sub-cabinet official, and four or five senior Congressional staffers. But the real value of all our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties.

  For one thing, our efforts against the System gained immeasurably in credibility. More important, though, is what we taught the politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks in the city, or they can hide behind the concrete walls and alarm systems of their country estates, but we can still find them and kill them. All the armed guards and bulletproof limousines in America cannot guarantee their safety. That is a lesson they will not forget.

  Now they are all raging at us and solemnly promising the public that they will stamp us out, but after they have had a chance to think about it some of them will be ready to consider "buying insurance." The great weakness of the System is its utter moral corruption. They have us vastly outmanned and outgunned, but not one of their leaders is motivated by anything other than self-interest. They are ready to betray the System the instant they can see an advantage in doing so.

  For now, we mustn't let them know that they are all inevitably headed for the gallows. Let them think they can make a deal with us and save their necks when the System falls. Only the Jews are under no illusions in this regard.

  As for the public, it's a little early yet to know what the spectrum of their reactions to today's exploits will be. Most of them, of course, will believe just what they're told to believe. Basically, they want to be left alone with their beer and their television sets. Their mentality is a reflection of the movie-fan magazines and the TV sitcoms with which the System keeps them saturated. (Note to the reader: The word "sitcom" apparently refers to a type of television program popular during the last years of the Old Era.)

  Nevertheless, we must carefully monitor the public's feelings toward the System and toward us. Although the great majority of them will continue to support the System as long as their refrigerators are kept full, it is from the public that we must draw our recruits in order to make up for our losses.

  Our present inability to recruit is a source of great worry to everyone. Rumor has it that there has not been a single new recruit in the Washington area in the last two months. During that time we've lost approximately 15 per cent of our strength. I hope conditions aren't as bad elsewhere.

  Of all the segments of the population from which we had hoped to draw new members, the "conservatives" and "right
wingers" have been the biggest disappointment. They are the world's worst conspiracy-mongers - and also the world's greatest cowards. In fact, their cowardice is exceeded only by their stupidity.

  The current conspiracy theory being circulated among conservatives is that the Organization is actually in the pay of the System. We are hired provocateurs whose job is to raise enough hell to justify the repressive counterrevolutionary and anti-racist measures the System is taking. If we would just stop rocking the boat, things would be easier on everyone. Whether they believe that theory or not, it gives them an excuse for not joining us.

  At the other extreme, the knee-jerk liberals have forgotten all about their "radical chic" enthusiasm of a few years ago, now that we are the radicals. They take their ideological cues from the "smart" magazines and columnists, and the "in' thing at the moment is to be solidly pro-System. In their own way, the liberals, despite their pretensions to sophistication, are as mindless and as easily manipulated as the conservatives.

  The Christians are a mixed bag. Some of them are among our most devoted and courageous members. Their hatred of the System is based on-in addition to the reasons the rest of us have-their recognition of the System's role in undermining and perverting Christendom.

  But all the ones who are still affiliated with major churches are against us. The Jewish takeover of the Christian churches and corruption of the ministry are now virtually complete. The pulpit prostitutes preach the System's party line to their flocks every Sunday, and they collect their 30 pieces of silver in the form of government "study" grants, "brotherhood" awards, fees for speaking engagements, and a good press.

  The libertarians are another group which is divided. About half of them support the System and half are against it. They are all against us, however. The ones who are against the System just happen to see the System as a bigger threat than the Organization. As our credibility grows, more and more libertarians will support the System. There is probably no way we can use this group.

  No, there is not much hope for making inroads into any of these various ideological segments of the population. If we are able to find new recruits, it will be among those who are presently uncommitted.

  The System's brainwashing has not bent everyone's mind out of shape. There are still millions and millions of good people out there who neither believe the System's propaganda nor have allowed themselves to be seduced to the animal-like level of existence of so many who live solely for the sake of gratifying their senses. How can we motivate these people to join us?

  Life is uglier and uglier these days, more and more Jewish. But it is still moderately comfortable, and comfort is the great corrupter, the great maker of cowards. It seems that, for the time being, we have already caught all the real revolutionaries in America in our net. Now we must learn how to make some more, and quickly.

  November 14. We had a visit from Henry today, and I learned some of the details of Monday's mortar attack on the Capitol. It had involved only three of our people: Henry and the man who helped him carry the mortar parts and the projectiles to their pre-selected firing spot in the woods and get everything set up, and a girl with a small transmitter in a park a few blocks from the Capitol who served as a spotter. She radioed range corrections to Henry's helper, while Henry dropped the projectiles into the tube. The range settings I had calculated had been almost perfect.

  They used up all the 81 mm ammunition which was stolen from Aberdeen last month, and Henry wanted to know whether I could improvise some more. I explained to him the difficulty of the task.

  Bombs we can make-fairly sophisticated ones, too. But mortar projectiles are something else. They are far too complex for our present capabilities. Anything I might be able to improvise would be a very crude approximation to the real thing, with nowhere near the accuracy. We will just have to raid another armory, with all the risks that entails, before we can use our mortar again.

  Another thing I talked to Henry about is the rash of relatively minor bombings which have occurred in the last two or three days. There have been a hundred or more of them all around the country, including four in Washington, and they have puzzled me in several respects, mainly the choice of targets - banks, department stores, corporation offices-but also their apparent amateurishness. For every bomb which exploded, it seems that the police discovered at least one which fizzled.

  Henry confirmed my suspicions: the bombings-at least, those in this area-are not the work of the Organization. That is interesting. We seem to have unintentionally galvanized some of the latent anarchists-or God knows what-who have been lurking in the woodwork.

  The media, of course, have been attributing everything to us- which is embarrassing, in view of the amateurishness-but perhaps the phenomenon itself is not a bad development. At least, the secret police will have a lot more to keep them busy, and that will take some of the pressure off us.

  The growth of nihilism, which the System has encouraged for so long, may now be paying off for us instead of for the System. Today I had a rather interesting experience myself in this regard.

  I had to go into Georgetown to take care of a minor communications problem for Unit 4. Georgetown, once the most stylish area of Washington, has succumbed in the last five years to the same plague which has turned the rest of the nation's capital into an asphalt jungle. Most of the high-priced shops have given way to "gay" bars, massage parlors, porn stalls, liquor stores, and similar capitalist ventures. Garbage litters the sidewalks, and Blacks, who used to be pretty scarce there, are swarming all over.

  But there are still many Whites living in Georgetown-after a fashion. The once-fashionable townhouses have their windows boarded up now, but many are occupied by colonies of squatters, mostly young dropouts and runaways.

  They lead a marginal, brutal existence, begging for handouts in the streets, rummaging through trash bins for leftovers, occasionally stealing. Some of the girls engage in casual prostitution. Virtually all of them-or so I thought until today -keep themselves in a permanently drugged condition. Since the System stopped enforcing the drug laws last year, heroin has been about as cheap and easy to get as cigarettes.

  The cops generally leave them alone, although some of the stories about what goes on among these kids are horrifying. Inside their strongholds, the boarded-up buildings in which they cook and eat and sleep and make love and give birth and pump dope into their veins and die, they seem to have reverted to a pre-civilized life style. Kooky religious cults, involving lots of incense and incantations, flourish among them. Various brands of Satan-worship, reminiscent of the ancient Semitic cults, are especially prevalent. Ritual torture and ritual murder are rumored to take place, as well as ritual cannibalism, ritual sex orgies, and other non-Western practices.

  I had finished my chore for Unit 4-which, having some of our more Bohemian members, blends more unobtrusively into the Georgetown scene than any of our other units could-and was headed back to the bus stop when I came across an all-too-familiar incident. Two young thugs-they looked like Puerto Ricans or Mexicans-were struggling on the sidewalk with a redheaded girl, trying to pull her into a doorway.

  A prudent citizen would have passed by without interfering, but I stopped, watched for a moment, and then started toward the struggling trio. The two swarthy males were distracted just enough by my approach to give the girl a chance to break free. They glared at me and shouted a few obscenities, but they did not try to catch the girl, who quickly put a hundred feet or so between herself and her would-be abductors.

  I turned and went on my way. The girl walked slowly, allowing me to catch up to her. "Thanks," she said, flashing me a warm smile. She was really quite pretty, but very shabbily dressed and no older than 17-obviously one of Georgetown's "street people. "

  I chatted with her as we walked along. One of the first pieces of information I elicited from her was that she had not eaten in two days and was very hungry. We stopped at a sidewalk diner, and I bought her a hamburger and a milkshake. After that sh
e was still hungry, so l bought another hamburger and some french fries for her.

  While she ate we talked, and I learned several interesting things. One was that life among the dropouts is more diversified than I had thought. There are colonies which are on drugs and colonies which strictly abstain from drugs, colonies which are racially mixed and all-White colonies, sexually balanced colonies and all-male "wolf packs." The groups are also divided along religious-cult lines.

  Elsa-that is her name-said she has never been on drugs. She left the group she was living with two days ago, after a domestic dispute, and was in the process of being dragged into the lair of a "wolf pack" when I happened by.

  She also gave me some good leads as to who is responsible for the recent bombings which puzzled Henry and me. It seems to be general knowledge among her friends that several of the Georgetown colonies are "into that sort of thing-you know, trashing the pigs."

  Elsa herself seems to be completely apolitical and not concerned one way or another about the bombings. I didn't want to pry too much and make her think I was a cop, so I didn't push her for more information on the subject.

  Under the circumstances I really couldn't afford to bring Elsa back to our headquarters with me-but I still had to fight the temptation. I slipped her a five-dollar bill when we parted, and she assured me she would find a place for herself in one of the groups without difficulty. Probably she would go back to the group she had left. She gave me their address, so I could look her up.

  Thinking it over this evening, it seems to me that we may be overlooking some potentially useful allies among these young dropouts. Individually they are not very impressive, to be sure, but it may very well be that we can make use of them in a collective wav. It bears further consideration.

  Chapter X

  November 16, 1991. The response of the System to last week's mortar attack is taking shape. For one thing it's more difficult to move around in public now. Police and troops have greatly stepped up their spot checks, and they're stopping everyone, pedestrians as well as vehicles. There are announcements on the radio about once an hour warning people that they are subject to summary arrest if they are unable to establish their identity when stopped.