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

I heard a report on the BBC of the mass murder carried out at Babi Yar and heading the list of the groups targeted and murdered were gay people. It felt like a rewriting of history to support a greater truth: that gay people were also targeted by the Nazis. Although the motives for the rewriting might be positive, it made me very uncomfortable.

NitroNine
Lots of people on Twitter do the online equivalent of Talking Rubbish Very Authoritatively. And it’s rubbish that sounds - if you don’t know anything about the topic - as if itmightbe true; they often claim to have studied whatever it is (almost always they have a doctorate); & they will shout down not only disagreement but any questions or requests for more information that fall outside the story they have prepared to tell.

Too true, I remember a Tweeter insisting their UK Local Authority swimming pool only had a mixed sex changing room and that everybody, man, woman, child had no option but to use it, it had always been designed that way etc. Then an other user posted up the actual plans of the pool which had women's, men's and a family changing area, single sex toilets etc.

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.

None of this process actually engages with the subject of whether or not these portrayal actually are intentionally or accidentally anti-Semitic.

The way that twitter cancel culture is evolving is beginning to remind me of political scandals like the Dreyfuss Affair.

Lots of people on Twitter do the online equivalent of Talking Rubbish Very Authoritatively. And it’s rubbish that sounds - if you don’t know anything about the topic - as if it might be true; they often claim to have studied whatever it is (almost always they have a doctorate); & they will shout down not only disagreement but any questions or requests for more information that fall outside the story they have prepared to tell.

Antisemitic goblins has a weird time-bending quality to it: lots of posting pictures of Nazi propaganda to “prove” that depictions of goblins are antisemitic. No engagement with Goblins Came First. Also a complete ignorance of actual Medieval antisemitism, such as the expulsion of the Jews from England; the trend for accusing Jews of poisoning water supplies; & forcing Jewish people to wear pointed hats to distinguish them from the Christian population.

I came across a pseudo-academic comment on twitter about how goblins were a medieval anti-Semitic trope.

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: female pagan herbalists and midwives become witches, Roman civilisation becomes the world of fairy, trolls and giants are the memories of neolithic European indigenous peoples with some sort of ancestral head worship practice etc.

So I look at comments about medievalism, and really wonder where this stuff is coming from. Someone even claimed they did a PhD in medieval anti-Semitic folkloric creatures and I really scratched my head at that one because I couldn't actually think of one instance outside maybe the concept of the Wandering Jew - - largely because there's just not really that much literary material in English to reference prior to the 15th century.

To find folkloric tropes about Jewish people, you'd probably be better looking at the Eastern Mediterranean region because you've got the appropriate length of settlement and displacement in that area.

And even then, the only references I could think of relating to a people living in cave systems in Anatolia were the Christian Armenians.

None of this tracks from a historical point of view. To some extent, it's like trying to argue that kelpies are an anti-Hindu trope because someone made a film where kelpie characters refused to eat beef.

Spot on, repent

I want a like button

RepentMotherfucker

Minus the bit about being rich and a VIP and writing great books obv.

She is her own worst enemy.

Would that be worse than these enemies?

medium.com/@rebeccarc/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-activists-a-story-in-screenshots-78e01dca68d

Her own worst enemy for having opinions and experiences? Are rich people, particularly women, not allowed opinions then? Not allowed to care about women less fortunate than themselves?

Her opinion is worth no more than anyone else's

I don't think I've ever seen her state otherwise?

She is her own worst enemy. Always got to stick her oar because shes rich and such a vip. Her opinion is worth no more than anyone else's. I find her a totally irritating pain in the neck know-all. Books are great though.

Okay I got it wrong re: child actors. There are obviously some who change their accents. 😊

But it is much more unusual to ask child actors to do it and I've never seen it with an under 10 with any amount to say.

There is almost nothing Saoirse Ronan can't do, judging by limited knowledge of her work. I think she's amazing.

She is amazing, so talented and seems like a lovely, down to earth person in real life as well

I can't think of any child actor who has changed their accent for a film.

Evanna Lynch was 14/15 when she started in HP according to google though. Saoirse Ronan was 13 in Atonement and she did an English accent for that

I've not read the full thread yet, but this has been clarified...

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/unpublishing-the-jon-stewart-thing

Oh it was proper Irish accents (apart from the canteen staff who were all Portuguese - and used to make me special lunches because I was pregnant and I ‘needed special food apparently).