Harry Potter and the Military Industrial Complex
This is explored at length in the books. The wizard supremacists are an allegory for race supremacists, and it’s pointed out repeatedly that they’re delusional, broadly impotent, and small-minded. The death eaters believe so completely in their godhead and his divine right to rule that they neglect to consider even the most basic countermeasures or alternatives. There’s some “death of Stalin” paranoia but it’s overwhelmingly unforced incompetence.
Voldemort, likewise, blocks out even the potential for his lessers to outdo him. He is utterly infallible and his insecurities as an incest orphan to a fallen house will not allow him to feel any differently. Meanwhile, he’s been repeatedly circumvented and beaten by a group of teenagers, and his brewing plans will lead to the complete genocide of wizardkind upon reaching the world stage. It perfectly encapsulates the way race supremacists view the world and why they fail so frequently. The enemy is both strong and weak.
Darn shame rowling’s turned into what she hates. She wasn’t terrible at writing populism 101.
I had trouble believing Harry Potter as a kid. The whole house elf thing seemed unrealistic. Then when I grew up, I realised English people really are that racist.
My father grew up poor in the East End of London and got a scholarship to go to the sort of upper-class school that Hogwarts emulates. Apart from being proud of the achievement of doing so well academically there, he had very little good to say about it, especially the upper-class snobbery and, yes, the bigotry (he was Jewish) from both the students and the teachers. He told me that every morning just before school prayers, the headmaster made a big deal about excusing all the “Jews, Catholics and other heathens” (or something to that effect) to humiliate all of those kids. One of his only friends at the time was another kid there on scholarship.
Ironically, he said his favorite teacher at the school was the school’s chaplain, who was a really kind and funny man that didn’t care that my father wasn’t an Anglican, just that he was a smart kid.
My wife loves Harry Potter but I could never get into it after hearing all of my dad’s stories about his school when he was growing up.
Can you please stop stalking and harassing me?
I remember seeing a meme of Harry Potter, but I can’t find it anymore. Basically a conversation between Harry and dumbledore.
Harry says to dumbledore:
We are wizards, we could cure cancer. Fix world hunger and end all wars. Why we don’t do it?
Dumbledore says:
Harry you forgot the most important reason: we are British
I think Pheonix Tears already cure cancer, and the wizarding world is run by the same profiteering gluttons as the muggle world so anyone that did would end up floating in a river
Wizards would be rounded up and experimented on to try and find out how to make it an injection to make super soldiers. There’s absolutely no way wizards and magical beings wouldn’t end up in test tubes.
ConcentrationCamp Ascendio!
