Comic Strips

Ha. I actually enrolled in the wrong major when I went to college. Meant to do computer graphics, ended up in computer science (don't ask, I was just an idiot). My academic advisor told me that I would have to wait a semester to change majors, that it didnt really hurt much because most of the first semester classes were humanities that count for both anyway, but to go ahead and give my intro programming classes a try in the meantime, and see what I thought. And I fell in love with it and decided to keep the major. So yea... I guess that was even more dumb than Harry's situation.

Moody wasn't trying to kill him. He'd been kidnapped and replaced by a Death Eater in order to infiltrate the school. At the end of book 4, the deception is revealed and the death eater is arrested by the Aurors.

The real Moody returns in book 5 and serves as a loyal companion and mentor through the end of the series.

Yes, I know all that. The guy he knew as Moody originally, the only one he'd met at that point, the one he was admiring that inspired him to be an Auror, was the imposter. That's what I was talking about.

Voldemort is just the latest in a long line of evil wizards. They're stubbornly common place.

Not really. I mean there are evil people who are wizards, sure. But not to the level that had Dumbledore felt the need to be involved anyway.

Grindelwald fell in 1945, and it wasn't until 1970 that Voldemort debuted himself to the world as the Dark Lord. He attempted to kill Harry 11 years later and lost his body in the process, comes fully back 13 years after that, and then is killed 3 years after coming back. We hear about no other person even attempting to rival the role that Grindelwald and Voldemort filled in that time. So from 1945 to 1997, 52 years, the only evil wizard that required a coordinated effort beyond the typical efforts of the Ministry that we ever hear of is Voldemort.

That's cause Rowling was a status quo loving Tony Blair labourite. As per a 4chan post:

“It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle.

Lots of people complain about the anticlimactic ending, but really I don’t think it could be any other way. I’d like to imagine that there’s some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where he’s opposed to all the many injustices of the Wizarding World and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the Death Eaters and when he finally has his showdown with Voldy, Harry surpasses by adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While Voldemort clings to an idyllic imaging of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of an eternally stagnant Neverland, Harry has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limits Voldemort could never cross, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated by this.

But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn’t really believe in anything, Harry can’t believe in anything. Harry lives in a world drought with conflict and injustice, a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magical creatures, the absurd charade the Wizarding World puts up to enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupt and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth. But Harry is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, she’s treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel slavery. In the end, the biggest force for change is Voldemort while Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harry’s dreams is to join the Aurors, a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate defenders of the wizarding status quo. Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the big instigators of change and Harry never quite gets to Voldy’s level. Harry doesn’t even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him.

And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren’t particularly bothered by any of it except those that threaten multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So, for instance, instead of organizing insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least destroy his political clout. It won’t work, it will never work, but that’s the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of Harry Potter.”

Source: https://www.tumblr.com/ryttu3k/672686578850840576/description-a-text-post-originating-from-4chan

I think we're putting the cart before the horse here.

Assuming Harry is virtuous and good and brave and excellent at fighting dark wizards and helping people, wouldn't that be the perfect person to become a cop?

You can't really have a resistance without support like Fred and George and fighters like Harry.

A resistance with only supporters isn't a resistance; it's blogging.

No, see, the slaves like being slaves, we can't force them to be free.

I didn't really interpret it that way. I took it as "look how annoying people who complain about social justice are".

I don't think she literally supports slavery but it was clearly an allegory for what she views as annoying activist types.

Hot take: HP’s popularity is responsible for more societal ills than pretty much any other book in print.

I'd say the bible ranks higher. But as an admitted "hot take," I can respect that.

I'm not sure that the outcome of Harry Potter is fascist in nature. After Voldemort is defeated there's no mythic national rebirth, no driving nationalism, no cult of personality at the top, and the society doesn't treat violence as virtue. What it looks like to me is more of a reactionary neoliberal, paternalist world. Hierarchy is enforced and treated as natural, change is looked at with suspicion, institutions are trusted, and the only problems come about when bad individuals are in charge of those institutions. This is essentially the worldview of 19th century imperialist Britain.

To be clear, though, fascism does exploit these weaknesses in liberal/neoliberal thought to bring itself about and does share some of the superficial look, but I think it flattens the term to label Harry Potter and/or JK Rowling as explicitly fascist. I think at best her work is neoliberal slop and that she has some abhorrent views about gender that people who are fascists would agree with.

tbf there WAS a purge of aurors who supported Dumbledore and those who stayed with the Ministry did bail once Voldy took over.

Even Arthur Weasley, whose job was mostly irrelevant and minor, hightailed it out of there.