Jon Stewart sticking the knife in to JKR over "Jewish" goblins

I'm currently rereading the final HP book, in which goblins play a role - one of them helps break into Gringotts. There's nothing that suggests 'Jewish' in their description- unless Jewish people are known for their tapered fingers, excellent metal working skills, philosophy of whoever made an object owns that object, and habit of living underground.

I remember very well Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, holding up the Vanity Fair magazine with the picture of a corseted Caitlin Jenner, and declaring repeatedly, "This is a woman." I've always been a fan of his (and the Daily Show when I was able to see it), but it didn't sit well with me, even back then when I identified as a "live and let live" liberal. That said, this clip is comedy gold:

Well fucksocks! I've pretty much always felt secure in my dislike of Russell Brand and I do hate his narration style but he's talking more sense than most media commentators. So I guess I need to revise my worldview.

interesting video thanks for posting. Am a huge Neil Young and Joni Mitchell fan but have had a lot of conflicting feelings about this issue. I think Russel Brand's take is very sensible and there's a lot of enlightening information he's provided there.

Was he always thoughtful and reasonable?

No but he has definitely grown up.

Good grief. Was he always thoughtful and reasonable? Yeah, probably.

Russell Brand has done a good video on Joe Rogan. I think he's spot on. (Never used to like this guy but he seems to have grown up a lot.)

Interesting to see the reaction today now Jon Stewart has defended Joe Rogan. Once again, a thoughtful and reasonable take that has people going nuts.

Charlotte Clymer among those crying "was he always like this and we just didn't see it?"

Literal violence, I'm sure.

Just to be clear, in the Radio 4 programme I heard, gay people were put first in the list of the victim groups at Babi Yar. Trans people weren't mentioned. I was simply stating my discomfort with rewriting history for ideological/political purposes, whatever those are. The precedents for that are awful.

HP is hugely popular and of course has issues. It is totally fine the criticise it and yes I read the goblin criticism (and more) prior to the TRA stuff.

There is this thing called fandom were teens (mostly girls) and some adults who have no life obsess over their fave media online. It used to be mainly tumbler. Basically they would fall into camps much like football fans. If you were a big Twilight fan (for example) HP fans may attack you for liking nonsense and point to issues with the series like unhealthy relationships. Twilight fans would hit back with problems with HP ie goblins. It predates the trans things by a decade at least.

[quote AgeOfReason99]Jon Stewart was the victim of Newsweek - here he is casting scorn on their article accusing him of accusing JK Rowling of anti-semitism. It is worth a watch, and maybe you want to delete the other thread, and all the comments about him - he looks like a good guy.
twitter.com/jonstewart/status/1478791577573199875[/quote]
That's been linked to and discussed way upthread, you know.

Jon Stewart was the victim of Newsweek - here he is casting scorn on their article accusing him of accusing JK Rowling of anti-semitism. It is worth a watch, and maybe you want to delete the other thread, and all the comments about him - he looks like a good guy.
twitter.com/jonstewart/status/1478791577573199875

I'll try to clarify my earlier posts. In a BBC programme about the mass murder at Babi Yar, and about how that echoes down into present day Ukraine, the reporter chose to create a list of targeted groups according to present day sensibilities of an oppression hierarchy rather than be informed by what actually happened over 29-30 September 1941. Rewriting history like this is bad no matter how kind you are trying to be.

I took an earlier post to this thread and by adding to it derailed this thread. If I contribute again I'll try to rerail the thread.

The Holocaust was the killing, on an industrial scale, of the Jews of Europe.

Yes, there were many other victims of the Nazis but the primary reason for structures and processes of the Holocaust, one might say the only reason, was to rid Europe of Jews.

I do think that narratives that want to centre other groups are a really vile piece of anti-Semitism beside which writing about some goblins (because our cultural folk tradition has these goblin thingies in it) doesn't even register.

Talk about fucking irony.

I haven't been able to find the BBC website mentioned by Nauticant so I don't want to come across as an apologist for something I haven't even read.

Everyone agrees that the number of victims at Babi Yar is an under estimate and that they were overwhelmingly Jewish. The site was also used to kill people from psychiatric hospitals and gypsies. However, because of the attempts to cover up the massacre by the Nazis and then the Soviet Union it's harder to quantify which groups were killed and in what numbers as accurately as we can for people killed in concentration camps.

I'm just saying that transgender is an evolving identity. There must have been been people who were victims of the holocaust who would have called themselves transgender had they been alive today. Nobody should over estimate the number of gay and transgender people killed by the Nazis but equally there are reasons why they might be under counted.

@Packingsoapandwater, your post is really interesting. There also similar creatures in places that would never have seen Jewish people — like puckwudgies and muki in America pre-date European colonisation I think.

More of a beautiful=good and ugly=evil trope than anything else I think?

One reason why gay and transgender victims of the Nazis (or Soviet Communism) during WW2 were under estimated in the past is that homosexuality was illegal in other countries too.

The Nazis' obsessively meticulous record-keeping ensured that we do know when, where, how, and in what numbers gay people were singled out for persecution.

Bab Yar was not one of them. Appropriating the massacres at Babi Yar to further an untrue narrative is disgraceful.

I think it's important not to underestimate the number of gay people killed in the holocaust. When the Nazis came to power they enforced existing laws against homosexuality (which weren't really enforced in the Weimar Republic) very fiercely. The other factor was that many of the people imprisoned or murdered were in multiple categories as far as the Nazis were concerned - eg a Jewish communist or a gay 'degenerate artist'. Gender and sexual identity were also much more blurred at that time - think of the number of people who cross dressed.

There is a difference between rewriting history to make a particular point and the vital process of questioning dominant versions of history to uncover (or rediscover) particular aspects. One reason why gay and transgender victims of the Nazis (or Soviet Communism) during WW2 were under estimated in the past is that homosexuality was illegal in other countries too. A gay British historian would not have been funded to write about the subject or found a publisher in 1950s Britain.

I know this isn't the topic of this thread but I did want to write this reading some of the posts about gay and transgender persecution.

I specialise in narrative theory and allegory, and I've never come across this idea at all. In fact, it goes against what we know about how folklore and mythology forms, which tends to be a processing of collective historical memories of superceded cultures and peoples into the realm of the supernatural

Can I just reiterate HOW MUCH I FUCKING LOVE THE WOMEN ON MUMSNET

As you were

"wondering" in the sense of what relevance does it have in the context of Babi Yar to analyse this?

Of course there would have been gay people present at Babi Yar, both among the victims and among the perpetrators. Their presence would have been purely coincidental. Emphasising their presence over the actual targets of this atrocity is deeply offensive appropriation of a group's suffering in order to promote an ideology.

Wondering, also, in the cynical way one does when presented with TRA 'most stigmatised', 'most vulnerable', 'most traumatised' narratives.

There's no doubt that the Nazis targeted gay men, but one can't help wondering just how many were sent to be murdered at Babi Yar

Not sure what you mean? "Wondering" in the sense of it being worthwhile? Or "wondering" in the sense of what relevance does it have in the context of Babi Yar to analyse this?

Statistically the victims at Babi Yar must have included people with physical and mental health disabilities who were also specifically targeted by the Nazis but also not relevant there.

So many were killed in that atrocity that it's inevitable some of them were gay.

But they were not selected for murder because they were gay. Being gay in this case was as irrelevant as being left-handed.

So many were killed in that atrocity that it's inevitable some of them were gay. However, using that reasoning, it would have made sense to have included heterosexuals in the list of targeted groups. That would have rightly caused outrage.

Don't rewrite history. Even when you think you're doing it for what you think are good reasons. Imagine bad people doing the same.

I also think there's a strange political reaction going on whereby real antisemites have initially read the Gringotts goblins as antisemitic tropes because of a mix of stupidity and malevolence, so to be anti-anti-Semitic, one then needs to rail against this portrayal to signal opposition.

Non-Jews and anti-Semites deciding they have the authority to define what anti-Semitism is.

Sounds familiar?

NB I am not drawing any parallel between non-Jews and anti-Semites, nor claiming that all of one=all of the other.