THERE'S TROUBLE OOP GRINGOTTS

Anti-Semitism is merely a pretext to go after J.K. Rowling some more.

J.K. Rowling is under fire again, this time for being allegedly anti-Semitic in her depiction of Goblins, of all things. You see, in the Harry Potterverse, the Goblins run the wizarding banking system...embodied by the main bank in the stories, Gringotts. Now, according to some, Goblins are an old folk euphemism for Jews and, natch, Rowling's Goblins run banks, lend money, presumably charge interest rates and embody all the negative stereotypes about Jews including being small, having large noses and loving money.

It's interesting to note that none of these supposedly anti-Semitic tropes were noticed or commented on since the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997 nor when the first movie was released in 2001. That latter point even more surprising given that the film industry has a large number of Jews working in it and yet none of them complained about the inclusion of Goblin characters working as bankers. None of them, not even the powerful and influential producers and backers of the film, sought to alter the designs of the characters or portray them in a different light to allay fears that audiences would start to equate" Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone" with the Nazi propaganda film "Jude Suss".

Up until the last couple of years, suggestions that the Harry Potter films and books were deeply anti-Semitic would have been laughed off, but with everything Woke there isn't a problem until they say there is. This latest attack...and it is an attack on Rowling and not a critique...is just another aspect of a project called "Get J.K. Rowling By Any Means Possible". First, it was her allegedly transphobic comments...which turned out to be not transphobic at all. Now it's accusations of anti-Semitism. The Woke have their hit lists but what they need is a trigger, an excuse to go after someone. Normally they trawl through social media posts, often made up to 15 years ago, to get their target but this time they opted for their other standardised tactic: Get a useful idiot to raise an issue in order to get something trending. The useful idiot in this case is the American comedian, Jon Stewart.

It was Stewart who made a public comment about what he perceived to be link between the Potterverse Goblins and cultural depictions of Jews on his podcast. This in turn triggered the activists who are looking to take down Rowling and Stewart had just handed them more ammunition. Once this had blown up on social media and in left wing news outlets, Stewart tried to diffuse things by saying it was all a joke, part of his podcast because...you know...he's a comedian and all that. He went out of his way in the media to clarify what he had meant and the light hearted tone in which he said it but that doesn't matter, he had unleashed the Woke Genie and that won't go back into its bottle until it has tasted blood. So Stewart was left to roll his eyes as he did when he was host of the Daily Show whenever the term "G.O.P." was mentioned as the Woke juggernaut steamed right over him. This is why I call him a useful idiot: He has been in this game long enough to know the tactics of the radical progressive Left and yet he made his comments in a way that could only ever be misinterpreted by them. All his protestations since simply don't cut the mustard with them. I've long suspected that Stewart has a gullible, naïve and often clueless air about him...that he doesn't understand much outside of his self-imposed purview. For example, he can't see how the decision to drop the Atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 would have been difficult for the people in power at that time. Of the weighing up of Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of Japan by the Allies, and the casualties that would have amassed vs two single bombs to end the war. He sees the dead and maimed of the atomic bombs but can't see the dead and maimed of the Chinese who suffered under Imperial Japanese rule. That's just one example. Unlike his fellow left leaning comedian turned talk show host, Bill Maher, Stewart insulates himself from the truly dark side of human nature and refuses to confront the possibility that his side have some of the darkest, most murderous impulses in political commentary and activism. Maher gets this; for he was once so vitriolic in his hatred of Christianity that he knows only too well the bottom of the well inside of him and knows how scary and dark that place can be. That's why Maher has checked himself in recent years and can spot that darkness in his fellow political travellers.

Stewart now gets to sit on the sidelines while the activists leave him behind and get on with their job of removing Rowling from the public space but I wonder why the vitriol against her is at such a fever pitch? She's been called transphobic over a tweet that wasn't and now an anti-Semite for a Goblin costume she didn't design and yet this is enough to have workers in publishing companies cry and wail if the company they work for doesn't cancel its contract with her. It's enough to make the left wing media push through any anti-Rowling story and it's even led to the ludicrous situation where she's not even invited to a Warner Brothers event celebrating the Harry Potter film series even though she created the stories and the characters they've made billions out of. This can't be just about one tweet or one artistic representation, could it?

Harry Potter and all associated works are pop culture gold. Massively successful, the series and its spin offs now sits alongside Star Wars, Star Trek and all things Marvel in the public consciousness. So it's embedded in the modern, Western psyche and that's what the Woke have a problem with. The Potterverse is unashamedly quirkily British: A white, male teenage hero who straddles the real Britain with the quaint, magical version with its twee magical village, Hogsmeade, magical versions of Foyle's bookshop, Charing Cross Road and old fashioned sweetshops but with magic, of course. Worst of all for them is Hogwarts: Clearly modelled on traditional British public boarding schools, fee paying (but with magical money, courtesy of those financial wizards, the Goblins) and with gown and mortar board wearing "professors". Tradition, heritage, respect and "no flying on broomsticks in the halls!" abound in this environment. Hogwarts doesn't have special needs students, non-competitive sports days, free school meals or Critical Race Theory taught as part of a standardised, national curriculum. The poorest of students there is Ron Weasley; who is expected to provide his own privately purchased spell book, wand and cauldron and who has to wear a uniform either hand made or purchased second hand. His family never ask to be on benefits, always make do with what they've got and are never filled with resentment towards those better off than them.

Rowling, for all her left leaning liberalism, has created a literary world that straddles tradition and modernity, liberalism and conservatism. On the one hand Hogwarts is a fantasy version of an old fashioned boarding school, on the other is that one of the characters campaigns against the enslavement of House Elves. The antagonist is a racial supremacist and tyrant; he wants to genocide all non-magical people; "Muggles". The protagonists are out to stop him and preserve both their magical world but also our non-magical one. They are both individuals and a community, another example of Rowling's acknowledgement of both ends of the moderate political spectrum. And I haven't even mentioned her Cormoran Strike novels, which I doubt most of her detractors have read.

This fictional world of magic she created is world famous and popular and if people are reading that and accepting of the premise then they are not reading "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo or The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray and accepting that framing of the world. The desire of the radical progressive Left is to turn every young person into an activist and you're not going to become one by reading Harry Potter. The tactic is to poison the series in the minds of young people by attacking the author and combing through the novels to find more evidence that Rowling is literally Hitler. As I'm writing this there's another thread on Twitter by a blue checkmark political activist complaining that all Rowling's ethnically diverse characters are awful stereotypes based on the names they're given from the Irish boy Seamus Finnegan to the Asian Cho Chang. The implication is that because she's given them stereotypical names that's a deep psychological proof Rowling's a racist. The attacks will be non-stop until her work is utterly consigned to the dustbin.

Of course the way these cancellation tactics work is to look for allies or supplicants in the weak spots in polite society. Get the story into the mainstream media, put useful idiot celebrities in the spotlight for a comment denouncing her and target schools that have a building or a form house named after Rowling. This latter tactic has yielded much fruit as if a school is weak enough to look "down wit da kids" by naming a school house after a living, popular novelist in order not to look out of touch then it's weak enough to be pressured into renouncing her and erasing her name from the establishment. Of course the activists will say this isn't cancel culture as she can still write, still has a Twitter account and a publishing contract...for now, but then she is independently wealthy and famous to carry on despite the attacks.

The final irony is that the Goblins are minor characters and Gringotts merely a plot device. For across the entire Harry Potter canon (including Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them) the story is set among a great wizarding war where the forces of evil wish to wage a war of extermination against the non-magical Muggles. A genocide or holocaust as you will. The heroes are charged with saving the Muggles from such a fate. Maybe the real analogy to the Jews in Harry Potter aren't the Goblins...it's us.

Nick Hughes, 2022.