JKR accused of 'quoting hitler'

[Dominoodles]

Within the context of condemning political violence following the murder of Charlie Kirk, she quoted on X a line from Mein Kampf where Hitler talked about how he utilised political violence for his own gain. This was a clear statement in how allowing for political violence against one's rivals can lead to that in power manipulating things in order to harm others.

Unfortunately, articles are springing up across the internet shaming JKR for quoting or referring to this text at all, with many condemning her for 'nazi' views and accusing her of being far right.

(Personally I love JK, and it is such a shame that every single thing she says is twisted to mean the opposite of what she's actually saying!)

I've been collecting examples of 'repurposed GC arguments', it's definitely A Thing. I call it 'mirroring', or if I'm feeling less polite, 'parroting'.

So far I have:
CGs are the real flat earthers
'you lot have been lied to'
'Suffragettes fought for women not to be defined by their sex'
'cognitive dissonance' in GCs
and now
'institutional capture'

This one is a humdinger, implying that Helen Joyce is the GC Dentons:
in mainstream media interviews, Sex Matters’ spokespeople typically sound much more reasonable, sticking to whichever talking points are most likely to get the public on board.
It’s an effective strategy.
And it is a deliberate strategy, as candidly laid out by Joyce at a 2024 conference hosted by Genspect – one of the co-authors of the NHS England letter mentioned above.
from Behind the ruling: how ‘Sex Matters’ is shaping UK policy on trans rights

'Memes instead of minds' is brilliant. Sadly accurate.

PS - The Denton's Document, for anyone who hasn't encountered it yet:
DENTON’S DOCUMENT – THE GENDER COLLECTION

BadAmbassador · Today 08:41

How can this possibly be misinterpreted? She could not be more clear

Ah, I see your error here. You have made the mistake of thinking that they are reasonable, rational and above all, honest. They are none of those.

Sorry, can someone link to the post she replied to? I'm rubbish at finding things in Twitter.

Thanks in advance!

This, basically.

Taken from Nitter

https://nitter.poast.org/jk_rowling/status/1966268674580631675#m

God they are thick. Or dishonest. Or both more likely.

Thanks DialSquare

The text

J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling. Sep 11
If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.

If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.

If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.

If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.

ציפי לביא @tzippylavi. Sep 11
Do you include Hitler in that?

J.K. Rowling. @jk_rowling Sep 11
Replying to @tzippylavi
Many who scream 'fascist' at opponents fully endorse his methods.

''The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence."
Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf.

Wow that's quite the thread. Ask a stupid question and get an answer that makes you uncomfortable. Turning it back on her is their only line of defence, but only serves to proves her point. She's a clever woman.

I don't even understand the question, "do you include Hitler in that?" Is the poster asking whether JKR considers that Hitler was illiberal, fundamentalist, totalitarian and a terrorist? Of course he was all of those things, surely nobody could expect JKR to think otherwise.

Oh never mind, I get it now.

I don’t think they are illiterate.

There is no logic.

They have decided she is Satan incarnate and won't listen to anything that is actually said.

It‘s the same mindset that leads to authors and filmmakers being cancelled if they write a character who has less than perfectly moral views. It can never be because it’s a literary device, oh no - it must be because it’s the creator’s own belief and it must be BANNED.

God I'm bursting for a pee.

Oh no I've just quoted Adolf Hitler! Well he's bound to have said it sometime?

This is exactly what has happened with Charlie Kirk. People pick a few words out of a larger discussion and others accept it as "evidence" of something they want to believe anyway.. Too prepared to hate and no desire to do their due diligence.

DialSquare · Today 11:08

Thanks for that, I found her post, but couldn't see any replies....

”The Witch Trials of JK Rowling” podcast goes into this in some detail. She was already seeing some interesting aspects of human behaviour in fan communities long before she took a stand against the misogynist sex denialism.

And given her interest in how the dark side of human nature can be harnessed to bring about totalitarianism, you can bet she was noticing the growing problem quite some time before she spoke up.

I think it's very familiar to anyone who has brought up (less than perfectly well behaved) teenagers.

My own daughter because she's 16 considers everything I say, think and do to be bad because she is 16, she needs to push back even when I'm trying to help her and, possibly most importantly, she has poor mental health starting with an eating disorder.

Oh for god's sake . Saying it's a nice day is Holocaust denial. And transphobia. I'll think of why later.

The memory of Hitler is pretty universal and the warning against getting under the spell of someone like him or his sort of ideas is a lesson for everyone for all time.

This memory and warning simply cannot be owned exclusively by those who were victims of the holocaust imo.

JKR is not being anti-Semitic. To suggest she is does not help Jewish victims of the holocaust.

Hmmm… so when I got assigned readings from Mein Kampf in a university history course, was the lecturer engaged in Holocaust minimisation? Was I?

Given that I quoted it to fulfil an essay requirement and the history course included details of Hitler’s murders of … what was it again? ‘Minor political activist’.

Hitler’s evil did not start with the Holocaust. It started with the Brownshirts. JKR is right; murdering minor political activists because you don’t like their views is exactly how this starts.

Christ on a bike! It's as clear as the nose on your face what she's saying.

As you say OP there's no accounting for people's stupidity.

Those who don't like JKR will use anything against her.

The woman is articulate, very knowledgeable and extremely clever and that's what the haters don't like. She can put her point across without stooping to their level.

Besides which it's highly doubtful whether Hitler had any clear vision of genocide at the time he wrote Mein Kampf. Certainly there was no thought yet of the horrific form it eventually took.

Hitler was not some uniquely evil devil man with an evil master plan to murder Europe's Jews that he eventually achieved, although this is a nice easy way to think about the Third Reich. His racism and antisemitism were commonplace and it's all much more complicated than that.

You're welcome

I'm finding the selective quoting disconcerting and troubling. When you see the longer quotes he's saying something completely different. It's total misrepresentation and nothing more than propaganda. This makes me listen harder to longer sections of what Charlie Kirk was saying to really try and understand what he was saying. This doesn't mean I agree with him but it does alienate from those saying Charlie Kirk is evil.

It's harming those misrepresenting more than those who said what is being presented as 'verboten'.