Rita Skeeter posts a contribution to our discussion
I just re-read what Rita wrote after reproducing Albus’s charming letter to his lover. And it’s instructive, as Rita always is. Here she is, in all her audience-wooing. muckraking glory:
“Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this letter constitutes proof that Albus Dumbledore once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles. What a blow for those who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggle-borns’ greatest champion! How hollow those speeches promoting Muggle rights in the light of this damning new evidence! How despicable does Albus Dumbledore appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his mother and caring for his sister!”
Rita Skeeter, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, quoted in DH 18.
And there we have it. What strikes US (or, at least me; I shouldn’t jump in and speak for other Muggles) as unthinkably shocking and horrifying about Albus and Gellert’s youthful fancies is that they quite seriously plotted to set themselves up as total dictators, whatever violence-to body or mind-was required for them to “seize control” and maintain it afterwards.
What Rita expected to astonish and appall her magical readers, conversely, was that Albus “once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy.”
Um. So. Plot mass murder and absolute, inescapable repression? Dream of enslaving, both body and mind, all the survivors of your original coup? MILLIONS of victims? (Most of them Muggle, by definition.)
And then force your slaves to recite, in unison, that it had all been for their own greater good. Really.
(In real life, some Western slave-owners actually DID make this argument. Had they not mercifully caused African natives to be kidnapped and worked [or tortured] to death, said natives might well have gone through their whole lives without ever, perhaps, having received the benefit of learning about Christianity!)
The response of Rita’s Daily Prophet readers to such a program?
Neh. Boys will be boys, and it’s good to have ambitions.
But. Plot to overturn the Statute of Secrecy?
How despicable does Albus seem!
“Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this letter constitutes proof that Albus Dumbledore once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles. What a blow for those who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggle-borns’ greatest champion! How hollow those speeches promoting Muggle rights in the light of this damning new evidence! How despicable does Albus Dumbledore appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his mother and caring for his sister!”
Rita Skeeter, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, quoted in DH 18.
And there we have it. What strikes US (or, at least me; I shouldn’t jump in and speak for other Muggles) as unthinkably shocking and horrifying about Albus and Gellert’s youthful fancies is that they quite seriously plotted to set themselves up as total dictators, whatever violence-to body or mind-was required for them to “seize control” and maintain it afterwards.
What Rita expected to astonish and appall her magical readers, conversely, was that Albus “once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy.”
Um. So. Plot mass murder and absolute, inescapable repression? Dream of enslaving, both body and mind, all the survivors of your original coup? MILLIONS of victims? (Most of them Muggle, by definition.)
And then force your slaves to recite, in unison, that it had all been for their own greater good. Really.
(In real life, some Western slave-owners actually DID make this argument. Had they not mercifully caused African natives to be kidnapped and worked [or tortured] to death, said natives might well have gone through their whole lives without ever, perhaps, having received the benefit of learning about Christianity!)
The response of Rita’s Daily Prophet readers to such a program?
Neh. Boys will be boys, and it’s good to have ambitions.
But. Plot to overturn the Statute of Secrecy?
How despicable does Albus seem!