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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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

330 replies

WandaWomblesaurus73 · 05/01/2022 10:58

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10368289/Jon-Stewart-accuses-JK-Rowling-anti-Semitism-Harry-Potter.html

Ffs

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6
AryaStarkWolf · 05/01/2022 14:07

@TurquoiseBaubles

As for Seamus, he blew things up because he wasn't very good at magic, not because he was representing someone's idea of the fucking IRA [furious]
Exactly. I'm Irish and that thought never even entered my head while I was watching the films ffs
WildishBambino · 05/01/2022 14:13

@Changechangychange he was linking the portrayal of goblins to anti-Semitic tropes years before JKR said anything about trans women.

You stated, and I quote, "here is Christopher Hitchens in 2007, accusing her of anti-Semitism " although the 'here' conveniently happened to be a paywalled article.

The article itself which I then linked to makes no such allegation. It says she has a clunky good v evil narrative - Goblins and house elves are allegorical victims of anti-semitism and slavery respectively, Pure Bloods like the Malfoys want to impose Nuremberg-like laws against those they see as mud-bloods etc. He may accuse her writing of being "thin and derivative" but makes no accusation of anti-semitism as you explicitly claim.

RoyalCorgi · 05/01/2022 14:17

Hitchens seems to be saying the exact opposite of what @Changechangychange is claiming, don't you think?

Yes. It's almost as if Changechangychange is lying to support a deliberately bad faith argument. This is what trans activists do all the time.

Nobody actually thinks JKR is antisemitic. But however hard the trans activists scrabble around looking for dirt, they can't find anything bad that she's done. In fact, everything I read about JKR - the charities she's set up, the vast sums of money she's given away, the kindness she's shown to children who have written to her, the support she's shown to the child actors, the unfashionable causes she's supported such as single parents and abused women - makes me admire her more. She is a genuinely good person.

And the nasty little activists can't stand it so they make stuff up. They are utterly despicable.

barleybadminton · 05/01/2022 14:18

Gringotts is quite clearly a re-presentation of the Victorian British banking experience, heavily influenced by Dickens

A somewhat apt comparison given Dickens rewrote sections of Oliver Twist after being criicised for antisemitism.

hallouminatus · 05/01/2022 14:18

Haven't read the books or watched the film, but the notion of goblin bankers makes me think of the "gnomes of Zurich" rather than any antisemitic trope.
Is JKR anti Swiss banker?

donquixotedelamancha · 05/01/2022 14:19

Some of us have long noticed that the name Cho Chang doesn't really make sense either.

Are you Korean? It's fine in Chinese, if not the most common translation of those characters. It's certainly more realistic than Severus Snape or Minerva McGonagal.

The people who think goblins being good with money automatically means they are metaphors for Jews are anti-Semitic, not JKR.

WalkOnGildedSplinters · 05/01/2022 14:26

And as for the people now saying it doesn't matter anyway, Harry Potter is ours and nothing really to do with JKR anyway- possibly the most utterly delusional thing I've ever heard.

It’s quite simple. When the work is accused of being racist, sexist, misogynist or anti-Semitic it’s all written and created by JK Rowling, the transphobic witch, down to every design feature of the films. When it’s being praised as kind and inclusive and progressive it belongs to the fans and they collectively forget about the author.

Beowulfa · 05/01/2022 14:27

@Packingsoapandwater

The notion that the goblin bankers in Harry Potter are an anti-Semitic trope seems to me to be culturally blinkered.

Gringotts is quite clearly a re-presentation of the Victorian British banking experience, heavily influenced by Dickens, and, in the films, visually borrows cues and concepts from the banking scene in Mary Poppins.

Historically, the connection between Jewish people and banking has never been particularly notable in Britain, largely because, Rothschilds aside, most British banks were largely founded by The Crown, Protestants or Quakers.

And I really struggle to see any historical connection between the mythical figure of the goblin and anti-Semitism. Goblins are traditionally associated with mining, with mountains and caves; they are settled creatures of the rural periphery, not of urban civilisation, which is the precise opposite to the historically urban or nomadic experience of Jewish people in Europe (though not Russia).

The idea in HP is that goblins are bankers because of their mined vaults deep below ground.

This whole thing is American cultural imperialism writ large once again. American attitudes, American racial tropes, American prejudices, and they don't map onto Britain. It irritates me no end.

Great post.

In the HP universe, goblins provide a service (secure storage of currency/valuables), for a fee. This doesn't make them good or bad, it's just their particular skillset.

merrymouse · 05/01/2022 14:43

That in this world the banks are portrayed as being controlled by hook nosed gold obsessed greedy goblins

They aren’t hook nosed in the books.

I can easily believe that many traditional British mythical creatures can be linked to anti Semitic tropes - until recently anti semitism and casual racism was just the air people breathed. (See most classic children’s literature pre about 1980).

However, it’s a stretch to think that an unpublished woman from Gloucester was thinking of anything other than goblins when she wrote a book about a school for wizards.

You might think that makes her naive or uneducated, and that there is something intrinsically anti Semitic about goblins, but there is no reason to believe that she made that link.

Packingsoapandwater · 05/01/2022 14:43

@barleybadminton

Gringotts is quite clearly a re-presentation of the Victorian British banking experience, heavily influenced by Dickens

A somewhat apt comparison given Dickens rewrote sections of Oliver Twist after being criicised for antisemitism.

But Oliver Twist isn't about banking.

Indeed, banking in Dickens is portrayed very much as being an impassive industry of hard reason whereby the individuals within it see themselves as cogs in the service of industrial capital.

It's very much part of the grand Dickensian theme of man fighting the machine he has inadvertently created.

TheIncredibleBookEatingManchot · 05/01/2022 14:47

I wonder what people accusing JKR of anti-Semitism think of her agent, Neil Blair, who is Jewish.

He has tweeted that she is definitely not anti-Semitic.

So if a Jewish person who presumably knows her well and has worked with her for years doesn't think she's anti-Semitic then why not take his word for it?

SolasAnla · 05/01/2022 14:48

@HoyaSaxa

I think it’s time to hold the REAL author of the Harry Potter books to account.

So, Daniel Radcliffe, are you an antiSemite?

🙄 . 🤨 .. 😑 ... 😣 .... . . . 😁😀😂🤣
KittenKong · 05/01/2022 14:54

I thought Daniel was Jewish?

Sidehustle99 · 05/01/2022 14:58

Surly Chris Columbus is responsible for the images of workers in Gringot's Bank as he directed the 2nd HP movie where they first feature. And of course Warner Brothers Studios who carry all of the movies.

As an aside Warner Brothers was founded by four Polish-Jewish brothers so I don't think the studio would have considered this an issue when creating the many fantasy movie's. WB are more commonly accused of making anti nazi movies.

I think it's unfortunate that many fantasy characters and superhero's carry with them similarities to protected groups either by virtue or in a negative sense.

Also if this is true of HP movies is it not also the same for any movie that feature goblins? There are at least 67 movies featuring goblins in a quick search on IMBD.

I am absolutely not antisemitic, however I can not abide those keen to get on a witch hunt to further their own agenda.

Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros.

Woodlandwater · 05/01/2022 15:05

As a short person in offended that they made Robbie coltrane artificially taller. Why couldn't he just self identifiy as a half giant? Ridiculous bigotry.

SolasAnla · 05/01/2022 15:05

@barleybadminton

Gringotts is quite clearly a re-presentation of the Victorian British banking experience, heavily influenced by Dickens

A somewhat apt comparison given Dickens rewrote sections of Oliver Twist after being criicised for antisemitism.

So what you are pointing out is the current available works of Dickens are the reworked version and therefore have had any alleged antisemitism removed about 130 years ago.

Or should Job be looking to rant on at books by Dickens too?

knittingaddict · 05/01/2022 15:06

@TurquoiseBaubles

ffs, they are children's books. The main characters use magic .

This is why I hated studying English literature at school. I would read a book and enjoy it, but by the time the teacher had finished ripping the book, the author, the characters, the scenes and the entire story to bits, reading extra bias in and removing all the interest/comedy/imagination, I'd absolutely hate it.

All those wonderful books people talk about on the "best 100 novels ever" threads on here; I've read most of them. I hate every single one I "studied".

Let stories be stories Angry

Totally agree. I read Jane Eyre as a child and loved it. It was one of my favourite books. Studied it for A level 40 years ago and have never read it since. The whole magic of a great story was totally ruined by studying the symbolism and why characters were called by a particular name. Young people who love to read should not be encouraged to study English lit.

More on topic, I don't see HP as anti semitic and I've read all the books.

Coyoacan · 05/01/2022 15:08

I think it betrays an incredible level of anti-semitism to assume that gold-loving goblins is a reference to Jews.

SliceOfCakeCupOfTea · 05/01/2022 15:09

@Woodlandwater

As a short person in offended that they made Robbie coltrane artificially taller. Why couldn't he just self identifiy as a half giant? Ridiculous bigotry.
Yes. Deeply.
MummBRaaarrrTheEverLeaking · 05/01/2022 15:11

twitter.com/antisemitism/status/1478739540307230720?t=e_KKMhtMv5wt5CQ74g6pzg&s=19

Uh-oh, a refusal to slag off JKR! The penises people won't like that!

JellySaurus · 05/01/2022 15:15

The long, pointy, droopy, warty nose and long, gnarled, claw-nailed fingers and obsessive, grasping personality are not just an anti-Semitic trope, they're also a misogynistic 'witch' trope.

Or is every ugly character an anti-Semitic trope now? 

NekoShiro · 05/01/2022 15:16

Jewish people have been pointing this out and discussing this since atleast 2011.

www.google.com/amp/s/jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/is-harry-potter-anti-semitic/amp/

A reader found it anti-Semitic but the replying rabbi did not, but here's some proof that's its not just cus of her recent drama

kharen4alone · 05/01/2022 15:16

This reply has been deleted

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merrymouse · 05/01/2022 15:22

@MummBRaaarrrTheEverLeaking

twitter.com/antisemitism/status/1478739540307230720?t=e_KKMhtMv5wt5CQ74g6pzg&s=19

Uh-oh, a refusal to slag off JKR! The penises people won't like that!

That is a fair tweet, as opposed to what Jon Stewart implies, which is that JKR was sitting in the cafe in Edinburgh using the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ as source material.

To be fair on him, he probably didn’t think much about what he was saying - it just sounded good.

He apparently judges JKR by standards he doesn’t apply to himself.

JellySaurus · 05/01/2022 15:23

So what you are pointing out is the current available works of Dickens are the reworked version and therefore have had any alleged antisemitism removed about 130 years ago.

No, not removed. Toned down. Read Oliver Twist - it is still shocking.