I mean yes, as is all fiction? You don't find some of the greatest fictional works in history, including the works of Shakespeare, illuminating about human behavior in any useful way? I find that notion appalling. Science fiction becomes science reality given enough resources, wherewithal and time.
If someone told you that you should read The Turner Diaries in order to illuminate some aspect of human behavior in a useful way, what would your response be?
Obviously the recommended reading would have to have some sort of applicable relevance...or the answer to your question is no. So who's doing the recommending matters, and why. But we ARE talking about fascism, etc so "Animal Farm" DOES have relevance, if dispiriting due to its outcome.
But I wouldn't use that as my only source or lens to view that issue with either, not alone.
You don't think the Turner Diaries has relevance to fascism? Or that it's not illuminating of some aspect of humanity? Isn't the Turner Diaries equal in merit to Animal Farm, when we're discussing the nature of fascism?
I mean it is, but again-the relevance isn't just in the topic, so you'd have to keep that in mind when considering it as some kind of "source", because it isn't factual. I guess I'm missing the point. The Bible is also fiction, allegorical, and many consider THAT as a guide and look at those wars.
It just seems like fiction is more of a mechanism to attempt to ascribe fictional outcomes to real-world issues. They don't actually tell us what will happen, they just tell us what some author proposed as a potential outcome, entirely informed by the author's own presumptions and beliefs.
True, but I do think that the insight in both these works is in the BEHAVIOR of the characters IN them, not so much the outcome or even the plot, because the only thing the author CAN draw on is real life experiences with other people, which is kinda all any of us have, really.