Harry Potter Politics

My dear shitposter, you should know Holla Forums regularly has threads laughing at people trying to use Harry Potter for real life politics.
As to why a left-wing person might not like it -
the whole untermenschen muggle thing is a bit dodgy.

Mate… the main villain of the series is a hitler expy who wants to make muggles slaves/dead. The protagonist was raised by muggles and thinks they're alright except his shitty family. The best friend is from a poor family with a dad who thinks muggles are the shit and whose magitech is useful more than once. The other best friend has muggle parents and her muggle knowledge and analytic mind (contrasted with the "ain't gotta explain shit" mentality endemic to wizards) is her primary source of strength. That theme is some of the most overwrought "racism is bad" moralizing ever put to paper.

The real concerning part is the house elves. It's made a point of being ambiguous whether it's indoctrination or house elf nature to be servants. Dobby and later more of them BREAK THE CONDITIONING but still retain strong drives to serve wizards in spite of finding their identities.

top jej

He wasn't talking about quality though, just plot structure.

but he's right. muggles are literally inferior and their vast numbers and reckless use of technology (as opposed to environmentally friendly magic) is ruining the planet

muggles deserve only extermination

He's not though. Rowling uses Arthur Weasley to hit people over the head with how much the wizards are stuck in medieval times. He's only saved from the snake attack because he volunteers for experimental surgery based on muggle medicine. At first it's just a fantasy aesthetic but the books at least very quickly start to deconstruct why medieval stasis is very bad, and it even draws parallels with the politics of the real world being bogged down by antiquated values. Harry Potter isn't a masterpiece by any stretch but all of this is there in the books, not even as subtext (because that would be too subtle for a hack like Rowling) but is often outright stated, usually by Hermione.

Nigga, this is Harry Potter. Its politics are transparently dumb and lack the slightest hint of nuance. Might as well talk about the "politics" of The Hunger Games or the latest DC Comics film. There are many instances of popular culture being worthy of political analysis — and Harry Potter isn't one.

J.K. Rowling is an annoying liberal who hates anyone left of her.
She's consistently freaking out over Corbyn being some secret red tyrant on twitter.

Because it's a series of mediocre children's novels that is hailed as great literature by an entire generation of Americans who don't read.

Additionally, Rowling is neoliberal scum. I know you should separate the art from the artist, but liberal Harry Potter fans pretty much worship the ground she walks on, so I think it's a valid criticism.

WATCH ME WAVE THIS WAND
ITS SHAPED LIKE A BENIS

The left is going to become so diluted by the liberals that it will never rise to power again.
By 2030 Harry Potter will replace Das Kapital.

I tried to summon a succubus using runes, but it didn't work. Do I need to be standing in a black sun circle?

you cant just skip straight to the big boy shit, magick takes a lot of work on yourself first

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The house elves are fucked up. I mean she's trying to write a book that more or less is a series of parallels to 1930's race relations, in order to show kids that judging people by their race is bad. And then she adds an inferior race of magical creatures that need slavery to be fulfilled and are extremely susceptible to alcoholism.
It's amazingly unaware. I wouldn't mind if it was just a regular fantasy novel, but if your main theme is "racism is wrong", then you don't add an inferior race.

Now I understand what is Pure Ideology.

what I never got was why there is a hard distinction between magic and muggle words at all. Thats a problem with "magic" in stories in general. It really isn't magic, often follows some kind of predicable pattern, this potion will do this, this spell will do this. Its pretty much normal science, just with science that is different from our own but wouldn't have a distinction in universe.

are you saying I'm wrong?

Wikipedia can be modified by every idiot, so if there are many idiots who have something to say about harry potter, then harry potter will have a longer page than Marx, who, unfortunately, nobody gives a shit about. So if you want to change this situation, you can:
1) Kill everyone who has read harry potter
2) Improving the wikipedia page about Marx.

Friendly reminder that in the potterverse, this race of pathologically greedy hook-nosed nonhuman bankers control the entire economy. I'm not sure exactly what she was thinking with this one, but it wasn't good.

why not both

I was under the impression that the English-language version of Wikipedia had some sort of quality control that is often lacking in other versions.

I hate it too but please be aware of how many rightwingers cum endless buckets if anything from a children's cartoon to a hollywood movie in anyway reflects their ideology.

Personally I feel like there's way more manchildren in centre and right politics but it's a problem all around these days. Porky wants us to be stupid and simple.

I always thought it was funny how the patronising fascination of wizards towards muggles is basically exactly what liberals do with blacks and inferentially black culture.
Harry Potter is more racist than it is anti-racist

I am aware. Pop culture is cancer destroying us all.

Wtf, I love J. K. Rowling now!

It calls itself a quality control but it's really an autistic, ideologically liberal bureaucracy.

It's also funny how the book implies that wizards are better than muggles because they can use magic despite muggle society being like a thousand years more advanced than the wizarding world.

If Voldemort actually tried his race-war Hogwarts would get a nuclear bomb dropped on it.

Everyone is white and sub-human Jewish caricatures run the banking system.

Whenever it doesn't work it's because what you did wasn't true witchcraft.

If you draw a black sun circle and stand in the middle with the entire of Das Kapital written in runes around the floor upon sacrificing 1917 bourgies to the NazBol gods in the middle of the circle it will summon a Russian futa succubus to fuck you in the ass.

Here's a little storytelling secret: most people only care about the characters and the relations between them. The rest is window-dressing. Most soft fantasy and scifi is like that.

The most successful fantasy story of all time is The Lord of the Rings, which is carried almost entirely on the strength of it's worldbuilding and was started just as a way for Tolkien to flesh out his conlangs

what's funny is that the British banking system of all the banking systems is the most Anglo and Hu-Whyte and the least jewed up

I read those books while growing up and like pretty much everyone born between 1985 and 1995 I liked them and everything, I just really fucking retarded retarded pop culture obsessed liberal retards, especially when they LARP revolutionaries or treat their favorite childrens novels as some kind of serious literature and even fucking quote them as authoritative pieces.

If I ever get in power, anyone who has ever even visited TVTropes is going to the gulag.

I did say soft fantasy.

yup typical tankie

This guy pretty much says it. Also note that Fred and George are pretty much successful entrepreneurs who are financed by large amounts of Harry's inherited money. The Weasley poverty is simply a fact of life, with no deeper implications. Further, while Rowling keeps saying she doesn't like private boarding schools, in the books the government is permanently incompetent and dumb regarding education while Hogwarts seemingly has the freedom to operate however it wants.
Really, the most radical message of HP is anti-aristocracy, which to be fair may be more relevant for Britain than other places, and at least it's different than traditional conversatism in Tolkien-derived fantasy (not to say Tolkien wasn't a genius, but his politics are a meme).

Lol, no. Magic allows places like Hogwarts to be completely imperceptible to muggles. Even if some computer system or satellite were able to detect it, muggle minds would simply register it as a gap in their perception.

Now, as for Voldemort. If we take his tactics from the books, he'll mind control people from the government and insert his own pawns when required. He also has the Taboo, an ingenious spell he set up to react to certain words being said. In the books, he'd terrorized the local populace so badly they dared not even speak because they believed he'd find out (which, incidentally, is the case, even though it's superstitious even by magical standards). His own followers typically just called him the Dark Lord and didn't speak his name for fear of reprisal. The only ones who did say the name were the ones who fought against him, who did so in an attempt to thwart what they saw as a terror tactic.

Unless he tries to go for a frontal assault (which he never really did unless he had insurmountable advantages - terror, cunning and control were his tools, not pride), he mind-controls the heads of state and all decision-making bodies in the government, getting the governments of the strongest nations under his thumb. It goes downhill from there.

Correct, also muggle technology does not work around Hogwarts, because reasons. There's an entire horrible sub plot about it in one of the books, the part with the journalist that could transmorph in to a bug.
So even if a collaborator wizard helped them find the school, nuking Hogwarts would not be a viable option.

You know what doesn't get broken by magical plot fields? Knives.

There's nothing technological about firearms, though, meaning that arming a wizard with a rifle and sniping Voldemort seems to be a valid tactic. Which begs the question, how technologically advanced does muggle stuff have to be before it begins to fail? IIRC Arthur Weasley was able to tinker with and operate a car near the Ministry of Magic (or Hogwarts, I forget which one it was). The way that firearms function isn't too different from an ICE.

Or does this rule work on some arbitrary "technology level" a la Civilization, where an arquebus can function just fine in Hogwarts, but an AK-47 cannot?

I read TVTropes every once in a while and I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.

"It is worldbuilding"?

Could you please get run over by a truck and die in a fire?
Yes, obviously. Rowling's rules for magic, and everything else, really, are "it works however it must to propel the plot forward". It's amazing how people can write essays and books about complexities of the books considering how bare-bone the setting is.

What's wrong with TVTropes, other than the fact that the majority of modern anime writers seem to be using it as a writing guide?

Most anime are adaptations of shitty light novels and manga. Even the best anime writers can't turn shit into gold.

it is explained that Hermione began fighting for their rights, aka s.p.e.w. In goblet of fire

that's the worst part.
Hermione starts a civil rights movement that fails to include the people she's fighting for. When she finally interacts with the house-elf community she becomes disillusioned and is forced to reluctantly accept that Dobby is the exception, and the individuals of this particulate race are happiest when owned by a master.

Given that Voldemort is wizard Hitler, the most obvious comparison is perhaps the leadership positions jewish academics held during the civil rights era in the united states, making the house elves black people, and that sort of makes sense given the history of black slavery.
But I don't actually think Rowling meant this as a direct metaphor.
Personally I believe this is Rowling letting her class contempt shine through. Hermione represents the naive academic leftist, heart in the right place she is blinded by ideology and projecting her own values on to seemingly oppressed house elves. She is then revealed to be ignorant of the life and values of the class she claims to fight for.
Typical conservative stereotype of the academic left.

I think that whole thing was just a side-gag I think tbh.
Rowling is a hack and I don't much of what she writes is meant to mean anything beyond what it does at face value.
I mean GRRM can be heavy-handed in his symbolism and the points he tries to make, but at least he tries. Harry Potter is trash. I used to like it, but looking back at it, it's not good.

so they're like dogs

Really makes ya think
Or it's just a product of its time and we're overanalyzing it

It's an entire site devoted to people projecting their own wishes, desires and often fanfic on existing works. Other than that, a-ok.

Harry Potter is basically the Atlas Shrugged of the 21st century by this point. Seriously the fucking similarities between Objectivists and Harry Potter fans are starting to become terrifyingly similar.

Also consider the fact that despite the government being entirely inept, 70% of Hogwarts alumni end up becoming government agents themselves like the trio.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
There is no place for advanced madical learning or to create new spells. It's like all spell are researched 100 years ago and now they are in a state of perpetual stasis.

Sunset found her squatting
yeah you right tho

shitty fantasy novel

tolkien was better

no idea why this is confusing. wizards are literally scientists.

don't forget the bits where he writes the trumpet sounds

Speaking as somebody who finally left the site when the mod gestapo enshrined itself by purging all "negativity" along with the IJBM subforum, I would murder-suicide to make this happen.

JK Rowling is a Blairite who explains the entire world in terms of the fiction she created.

Dumbledore was the only guy who was willing to do what was necessary to destroy reactionaries. So in a way she is right.Socdems are collaborators.

Why does JK Rowling think she has any right to air her stupid political opinions? God that cunt is insufferable.

because she can. "rights" are spooks.

I always thought it was shit tier fantasy even before it got associated with basic bitch left liberals

I'm just waiting for Fantastic Animals 2 (or the next shit she is producing) so Slithering evil faggots during the WW2 era get made into Nazis.

I wanna see Holla Forums retards get triggered by that shit.

It's essentially a retelling of WW2 where the Nazis are defeated by liberals engaging in pacifism and self-sacrifice rather than socialists fighting to the death.

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

Lots of people complain about the anti-climactic ending, but really I don't think it could 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 opposes 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 a 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 corrupted 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 and Harry and firiends 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 bit 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.

tell me more about this killing…..

The distinction is necessary. I Harry Potter magic deals with concepts, science with matter.
As an example, if you use magic to make a broomstick come to life, the spell applies the concept of life on a object that lacks the material conditions to have life.
Take the expecto patronus spell, not only do you have the material components (a magic wand wielded by a wizard doing the correct movements), the wizard also has to visualize a happy memory.

kek, now this is what the wikipedia on "Politics of Harry Potter" should look like.

That's because the labor theory of value was discarded 100 years ago along with the cost of production theory of value and because Marx was an irrelevant false intellectual.

Sometimes it seems like you marxists hate liberals more than the fucking conservatives

Fortunently no one cares about***

You mean Russians being gunned downed like the peasants they were by the millions by German machine guns until they eventually ran out of bullets from all the killing, and were mobbed?

Wew. That Nazi historical revisionism.

Underrated post.

Can anyone actually think of any fantasy stories that end with the setting radically altered (not counting general decline into mundanity, like LoTR or Conan)? Fantasy as a genre seems more appropriate than SF for stories with Gnostic-style total revolution like Gurren Lagann.

Right-wingers already know they disagree with us, and as such can be argued with, even if their impression of leftism isn't accurate. Shitlibs actually believe they're leftists, many even sincerely think themselves to be socialists/anarchists/Marxists/etc, and as such they must first be broken free from such delusions before they can be argued with in good faith.

Also, shitlibs interfere with our efforts by offering and reenforcing a false impression of leftism to others, whereas rightists merely make a mess on the other side of the fence, and most self-defined leftists reflexively ignore casual remarks from rightists unless seriously engaging with them.

did we read the same LoTR?

The series ends with the elves vanishing from the world taking magic with them, The Hobbit was laced with hints of its setting sinking into the shadowy corners of the real modern world, and The Sylmarillion as a whole is essentially the tale of a beautiful dream dragged down by the inept meddling of a derivative and unimaginative mind.

Did you read it differently?

...

Fuck you, the Silmarillion is brilliant

Does Dune count? It's sometimes rather fantasy-ey scifi.

Capped for posterity.

Pleb.

the LTV isn't a Marxist invention smh

Sheesh, the "derivative and unimaginative mind" I was referring to was Melkor, not Tolkien.