I promise I'm still chipping away at Indestructible.
But after I responded to
mary's comment on my latest essay, discussing Severus' motivation for joining the DEs, I had another small revelation that snapped some massive realizations about the WW and the HP books into focus for me.* Enough strands for another essay series if I try to follow them
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I started typing a reply, but it turned into a long post, and then another long tangent post, and I just skjhfjdhf.
In answer to your question: basically, yes. I'll reply more fully more in my follow-up posts.
Interesting point about the Jews being used as middle-men and then blamed! It does kinda fit with the Muggleborn issue yeah. Also they were very often blamed as having caused defeat in wars, etc. - the Nazis promulgated a myth that the Jews had somehow 'stabbed the Germans in the back' (it was a deliberately chosen propaganda image) and so caused them to lose WWI and the resulting economic catastrophe.
Agree RE Hermione. I hadn't heard that interpretation of HARRY before. But yeah, with the superiority angle. And I mean, if he was meant to be read as being like a Jew reconnecting with his people, why the CHRIST imagery?
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Yeah, exactly. It just all so easily turns into a lot of ugh and unfortunate implications. And yes, RE Hermione - the whole blood purity thing within the WW is a debate over who counts AS A WIZARD, not who counts as human. Unless of course we define human being as = wizard. Which, um. Ugh.
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I went back and looked at that scene outside the portrait. And it's written differently than I recalled, but in a way that's very interesting. She doesn't say 'you can't wait to be Death Eaters.' Look:
There was no pity in Lily’s voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”
He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.Look at what she says: "your precious little DEATH EATER friends." And then about LATER JOINING YKW ( ... )
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And only very very quietly making further individual approaches to likely candidates they've used this to IDENTIFY.
And Severus just more or less unknowingly tossed a giant roadblock up between him and the preservationists. Leaving him more open to the draw of the abolitionist camps. Which necessarily cloak themselves, some more than others. Within each other.
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Yeah, JKR's use of the self-hating Jew conspiracy theory motif is just...ick. I have the feeling she really, really didn't think through the implications of using that at all.
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Because we see all sorts of deep-seated prejudice, and all sorts of violence, and most of that just gets frowns and sighs. A lot of it over how much work it's going to be to cover up rather than concern for the Muggles as fellow people. Wizards cursing each other horribly? Must be Tuesday. More paperwork at the Ministry if it's unusually bad. The DEs must have been doing something more than just torturing and killing people. Revealing magic to Muggles at large while doing so would fit the bill. Or threatening to do so ( ... )
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So, too, if just advocating the abolition of Secrecy is worth a trip to Azkaban, and if the mainstream always portrays those who do as depraved traitors capable of any crime or sin, why believe those nasty rumors about Our Leader?
And once one WAS in, Tom could lead recruits into more and more desperate acts, on the "might as well be hanged for a sheep" principle.
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Exactly. He goes after the naive and the occasional zealot. His older members are, I suspect, other than an occasional personal crony from his schooldays, likely the remaining former members of the KOW - already militant and committed to the idea of overturning the law, as well as isolated from moderate realistic thinking about things.
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And where does the term Death Eaters come from?
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But then what outcome did he hope for? Was wizards as a group openly ruling Muggles an actual goal, or did he not care which side won so long as he lived to do as he pleased afterward? Was the fun in the manipulation, and he would have just as much fun starting over with a new group? Did he genuinely want to be an overlord, whether over wizards or Muggles or both? Or was he trying to get as many magical humans and beings killed as possible, to reduce the competition ( ... )
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Wizards and Muggles as his toy chess pieces to have fight each other? A hierarchy with himself at the top? Getting them to wipe enough of each other out that he could rule the survivors? Getting Muggles to wipe out wizards so he could be the only wizard in the world and rule them?
Whatever it was, though, he'd first want the whole EWW at least under his grasp, I think. Then use that to roll out his further plans.
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