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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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It's true that they're anti-racism to a degree, which was part of the appeal, but there are other aspects that would be very troubling to the left today. For example, government officials are mostly incompetent, petty tyrants. The wizard newspaper prints only fluff pieces and official propaganda. It's not a book with that supports the "trust the experts" style of government that's been a staple of leftism for a long time but has ramped up even more since 2016.

Nah, they went a decade+ without noticing it's a story about armed children in school fighting the government, or that the Slytherins are a better "Jewish conspiracy" stand-in than the goblins. Shallow thinking is endemic, and motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug.

The armed children fighting the government is a tasty interpretation I didn't notice. But slytherine as Jewish cabal seems quite a stretch for what is a very basic elitist/racist portrayal.

The Slytherins are an unmanly ethnogroup that uses their wealth and ownership of the media to secretly control the government. The "good ones" are a favor-trading backdealer whose redeeming value is that he's so fame and favor hungry that he is willing to dip into genuine meritocracy instead of raw nepotism, and a creepy villain who is "redeemed" by his pathetic unrequited lust for a pure Aryan Gryffindor redhead.

I mean, yeah, it's a silly stretch, but it's funny how far you can stretch it to fit.

The Slytherins are an unmanly ethnogroup that uses their wealth and ownership of the media to secretly control the government.

Do you mean Slytherins or pure bloods? Slytherins obviously aren't an ethnogroup, and to the extent that purebloods are an ethnogroup the analogy doesn't hold up.

The sacred 28 is a list of the 28 truely pure blooded British families. Those 28 families include

  • The Weasleys.

  • The Prwetts of which all the boys died fighting Voldemort, and Molly Weasley is the only daughter.

  • The Longbottom's

  • The Shacklebolts

The list includes other non-heroic but not Voldemort adjacent families, like Olivander, other plotting backroom dealers like Slughorn and maybe Greengrass.

So even this take doesn't break things down into a unified ethno group. A large amout of the fighting is among the sacred 28.

A Crouch, a Lestrange, and a Lestrange/Black torture the Longbottoms into insanity.

A Longbottom destroys a Horcrux.

Voldemort's side (1/2 Gaunt) killes the Prewetts boys.

Molly Weasley/Prwettt kills Belatrixx Lestrange/Black.

Voldemort Kidnaps an Olivander.

Belatrixx Lestrange/Black kills another Black.

A black betrays Voldemort and steals his Horcrux.

A Shackbolt is one of the cheif enemies of Voldemort.

A Crouch is Voldemort's main government opposition during the war, but his son worked for Voldemort, and his son later kills him.

All of these surnames are in the sacred 28.

So it's no so much an unmanly ethnogroup that uses their wealth and ownership of the media to secretly control the government. So much as it is a part of of ethnogroup hat uses their wealth and ownership of the media to secretly control the government, often against other members of that exact ethnogroup.... actually, on reflection the the intrasect fighting might make it a more accurate representation of modern Jewry, but not in a way that lines with classic sterotypes (that and how secular liberal Jews and Orthedox Jews are diametrically opposed on every political issue is not well known in common discourse).

I guess all of this just sound like maximally generic effete elite stereotype applied to a specific group. It's essentially a Marxist critique. It's practically a yungian archetype, that you can apply it to a group whose reputation is patterned matched to this archetype is jut not that interesting.

It’s not really even Marxist, it’s a small-r republican critique of degenerate aristocrats.

This reminds me of classical vampires - similarly a (literal) degenerate aristocracy - being interpreted as an antisemitic trope.

"Effete elite" is part of what Slytherin has going on, but there's stuff like the Slytherin dormitory being in a dungeon, I've seen that called out as based in an antisemitic trope around ghettoes.

Ghettoes are just the part of a city where a secluded minority lives. Jews living in ghettos is a historical fact, making it an antisemitic trope is already a stretch.

But all the houses have their own secluded dormitories - this isn't Slytherin-specific, it's Hogwarts-generic, so the ghetto comparison has no leg to stand on. "Dungeon" is just generic evil.

Adult Slytherins, at least the wealthy leaders*, live in manors. Unless "rich and evil" immediately makes you think "Jews" - in which case I suspect you are the antisemite - they should code to snooty aristocrats.

*Also an important distinction. The Malfoys are rich, but that's about it - the rank-and-file Slytherins/Death Dealers tend to be thugs.

Corrupted pattern-matching finding antisemitism where there isn't any is a rather big problem, but this is one of the more egregious examples.

The antisemitic angle is that, like, one asks "why are the rich evil guys living in squalor?", and while the surface answer is "that's a generic evil trope", the underlying origin of the trope that would have a scheming, wealthy villain who lives in squalor is negative stereotypes about Jews.

Is it?

Slytherins aren't living in squalor - the dungeon ambience is merely an aesthetic.

I have never heard of a "wealthy villains living in squalor" trope, and I struggle to come up with examples.

Also, even if a trope was originally based in antisemitism, if it since has entered the cultural background, and no longer has a connection to jews, because most people are no longer aware of the origin and it doesn't match their own image of jews, then I'd say it's not antisemitic anymore.

I don't know, this all requires someone who seems otherwise quite progressive having a whole lot of knowledge of Jewish stereotypes that I've never heard of before.

In the context I saw it discussed, it was more "this generic evil trope is based on anti-semitism so the series is unconsciously anti-semitic"; this being before Rowling's cancellation the assumption wasn't going to be evil intent.

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