Fragment: The Philosophical Argument for the Death Eaters; or Why Severus Snape Joined
One thing that has both astonished and irritated me with respect to the Death Eaters - and why Severus Snape joined - is the scarcity of decent explanations.
They amount to what? - Teenage angst, his friends were doing it, or he wanted power to punish the Mauraders. All reasonable, I suppose, but reading the same thing over and over dreary.
Here's a philosophical argument: one that preceeds from the assumption that Severus knew exactly what he was getting into, and had a good reason for it. It is set sometime after the "first war."
Of course, it still fails to provide an explanation for the Death Eaters. Most people imagine them as pure evil, yada yada. Yeah, you don't build a successful organization based around torture, and the whole idea of Dark Revels is very whacky. I was very disappointed in JKR for her insistence on illustrating "the other side" as.... completely, irredeemably evil. Torture children kind of evil.
The best illustration I've read yet is Guernica's in the Knight Errant Chronicles.
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"Why did you join the Death Eaters, Severus?"
Severus Snape paused, and leaned back as he considered the question. His chair creaked in response. The muscles around his eyes creased in the beginning of a glare.
"The summer after Lily and I had our - disagreement, I read philosophy.
"I had the …misfortune of reading Nietzsche." He proclaimed flatly.
"It was evident that the future Nietzsche forecasted for the Muggle world would arrive far sooner in the Wizarding one. Locked away from the Muggle world, and intent on keeping secret, the average wizard faced no challenges, no strife in their life. The fools took jobs below their capabilities, frequently ones which required no magic. Complacent, happy, dumb.
"Magical achievements have crawled to a standstill. Certainly, new spells have been invented and old ones retired; but each new spell amounts to nothing more than refinements upon old ideas.
"The Ministry does nothing to stop it; it is unaware of its fate and the danger of that fate. True to the Hobbesian vision, it seeks to maintain the peace - and only peace. Furthermore, each year the Ministry spends more resources hiding away magical population. More wizards employed in mind-numbing jobs that waste talent and squander power. Each year, the Wizarding world becomes more isolated, and more insular: stagnant.
"The Last Man was not a spectre, a future risk one can ignore. It was imminent; and Muggle-loving fools such as Dumbledore merely hasten the process. The slow infusion of Muggle-borns into the Wizarding world will do nothing to ameliorate our fate; it can only accelerate it. Indeed, forcing Hogwarts to embrace Muggle-borns and their culture does nothing but enforce cultural relativism. Pureblood, Mudblood, Muggle; all are embraced and told to simply "get along." Such an imperative requires nothing less than an abdication of values. Nietzsche taught that such an end forces all men to embrace naive hedonism: to become the Last Man. Lazy, stupid, worthless.
"It is nothing less than the destruction of the Wizarding world.
"I could not countenance such a future, could not sit idly by while Dumbledore ushered in the end.
"Lord Voldemort offered a ...compelling - resolution.
"I knew very well he was Dark. Such labels, and their accompanying actions, mattered little to me then; they matter less to me now. He was a great wizard, capable of magic many had never before conceived, much less discovered. He provided a way forward. If he was not an Overman, to remake society under his ideals, he was an agent of strife and suffering. He could force wizards to work against him, or for him. He could unite them in a common cause, force them to embrace a real ideology, and drive back the spectre of the Last Man.
“Lord Voldemort was the perfect solution.”
Severus curled his lip.
“Unfortunately, he failed. His brutality and contempt for life did not offer an alternative. Nor did his power provide the opportunity to remake society. The Ministry sought, as all Leviathans do, to preserve the peace; but they did so by promoting ignorance. And Dumbledore provided no alternative; he abstained from political action, forming only a secret band of rag-tag, like-minded Gryffindors who lacked even the capacity to understand relativism.
"Pity."