I agree with many of the observations you make here (I particularly liked the section on the more "moderate" purebloods). But I do think that the word "fascism" is out of place, when discussing the DE or Voldemort
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Fascism is also a very flexible political term--it's become very broadly defined to the point that it doesn't have to have a specific historical reference, except to a variation on authoritarianism. Some political scientists even refer to 'fascisms'. I can see Voldemort and the DEs (as a unit) being an aspirant fascism: they have a similar enough background ideology, they have a totalitarian structure, and they have some of the typical fears (outsiders and other contamination). What they don't have yet is the control to institute everything that they would want to.
Oh, I agree that fascism is used very flexibly in modern discussions. In fact, often so flexibly that it becomes so vague as to be useless, as a term of analysis. If you use it with the historical examples in mind (as of course I do, above), then IMO it has a clearer, more focussed definition, and is thus more useful for discussion and analysis
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I see their ideas about blood purity and getting rid of the other types as a good analogue to nationalism--they certainly have ideas about the kind of *community* that they want; they're going to define who can be a wizard and who is going to be cast out, for instance, if Muggleborns are no longer schooled at Hogwarts. And JKR has told us that Voldemort wants to secure Wizarding Britain first and then begin to branch out, so there's your militarism. It seems to me that they have a strong enough idea of group identity, and a desire to take over the institutions of government (people in positions in the Ministry and direct application of influence upon important members) to match it together.
(My professional political science source sitting in the same room approves of the argument that community is a good match for 'nation' in this expanded theoretical application of 'fascism', so I'm going to stick with him...)
(mods, please delete the anon post--I forgot to log in....)
I typically use the following cite as a component of Weasley-defense, but it seems singularly appropriate to apply here: The historian Peter Gay spent much of his childhood living as a Jewish boy in the heart of Nazi-controlled Berlin, from before Hitler bacame Reichschancellor in '32 until he was sent to America in the early 40s. He recalls: The little disrespectful antigovernment jokes that my father, along with many others in his predicament, liked to tell were soothing...Jokes, told in a low voice and a safe place, were our pathetic weapons. What does the ideal Aryan look like? As tall as Goebbels, as slim as Goering, as blond as Hitler. ...Such wit would win no contracts for aspiring stand-up comedians, but it meant a great deal to us. We knew that exchanging these jokes was like pitching paper airplanes at a tank, and it is hard to believe, or to convey, how much relief such levity brought us. Whatever rationality we could rescue lay in these little improvised festivities. We could briefly shake off our tormentors and show our
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Peter Gay's memoir is indeed well worth reading, as are his other scholarly works. But the tendency to make jokes about an authoritarian government (of any stripe, whether fascist or not) was not confined to Nazi Germany.
The humor used by ordinary people in the Soviet Union during the 1930s was just as choice:
A group of rabbits came to the Soviet/Polish border, and asked the Polish border guards to admit them as asylum seekers. When the guards asked why the rabbits sought asylum, they replied, "The NKVD [the Soviet secret police] has issued orders for the arrest of every camel in the Soviet Union."
"But you're rabbits," the astonished guards replied.
"Try telling that to the NKVD!"
And of course the jokes about Stalin himself were legion. Every oppressive regime provides a fertile social milieu for the creation of such humor.
But what does that have to do with Weasley defense? I'm curious.
it's sort of a bomb to lob at people who dismiss Ron, specifically, as only good for "comic relief," when not only does he provide far more, but comic relief is sort of the ONLY relief available to Harry, and often the only thing at all that can snap him out of his most dismal funks.
My (very incomplete) Ron-essay goes straight from Gay's "...shaking off our tormentors..." into The point of this anecdote is to illustrate that, in any time of hardship, comic relief itself is never just "comic relief." If Ron’s only function in the series was simply to infuse a dash of humor, that would be an extremely admirable role, and one worthy of awe and respect
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I think this is a fascinating discussion. Do you mind if I use it as one of my sources and/or quote it in a project I'm working on for my AP Government class? For it, I was previously going to analyze the structure of the government (such as the Ministry) in Harry Potter, but your essay sparked the idea of also adding a section on Death Eaters, and their politics as well.
"Now the old families are in decline but the children of these families are still spoon-fed the stories of their ancestors and their glorious past and the inferiority of muggles and muggle blood, still spoilt and treated as little princess and princesses, and kept within their own circle so they are brought up completely brain-washed by their pureblood propaganda."
I think that here you are equating pureblood kids with Draco too much. I mean, we don't really have much evidence to what life of other purebloods who come from Pureblood Supremacy households is. There are the Gaunts, and although Morfin was pretty much allowed to do what he wants (please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I read HBP), Merope was nowhere close to being treated like a princess.
Other than that, it's a good comparison. I mean, we all have our own personal reasons we do stuff. Homogenizing is, my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes people tend to do about thinks they don't know.
There are the Gaunts, and although Morfin was pretty much allowed to do what he wants (please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I read HBP), Merope was nowhere close to being treated like a princess.
The Gaunts were particularly unstable, though, or at least that's the impression I got from Dumbledore in HBP.
Pansy, for one, certainly behaves as if she's been treated as a little princess.
For some of these children the shock wears off and they revaluate their beliefs
I would venture to disagree here. Children like Bellatrix Black (from when she was young) were indoctrinated with the pureblood mania (as Sirius tells us in OotP), and clearly did not doubt it enough to willingly go to Azkaban for those beliefs. Like the last commenter said, maybe there's too much of a comparison to Draco here. Draco is the only child of DE, or really current DE that we are completely familiar with. And even then we cannot be totally clear where he stands.
I'm not sure I would make a direct connection to facism with the Death Eater theory, but I agree with the premise of it--particularly the influence Hitler/Voldemort had over the Germans/purebloods. They were persuasive, and as we can see time and time again, especially in HBP (regarding Voldemort, of course) very observant as to what they needed to do to get what they wanted. Voldemort is the not the epitome of perfection that his group preaches, and nor was Hitler, who was neither
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(My professional political science source sitting in the same room approves of the argument that community is a good match for 'nation' in this expanded theoretical application of 'fascism', so I'm going to stick with him...)
(mods, please delete the anon post--I forgot to log in....)
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The humor used by ordinary people in the Soviet Union during the 1930s was just as choice:
A group of rabbits came to the Soviet/Polish border, and asked the Polish border guards to admit them as asylum seekers. When the guards asked why the rabbits sought asylum, they replied, "The NKVD [the Soviet secret police] has issued orders for the arrest of every camel in the Soviet Union."
"But you're rabbits," the astonished guards replied.
"Try telling that to the NKVD!"
And of course the jokes about Stalin himself were legion. Every oppressive regime provides a fertile social milieu for the creation of such humor.
But what does that have to do with Weasley defense? I'm curious.
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My (very incomplete) Ron-essay goes straight from Gay's "...shaking off our tormentors..." into The point of this anecdote is to illustrate that, in any time of hardship, comic relief itself is never just "comic relief." If Ron’s only function in the series was simply to infuse a dash of humor, that would be an extremely admirable role, and one worthy of awe and respect ( ... )
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Thanks!
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I think that here you are equating pureblood kids with Draco too much. I mean, we don't really have much evidence to what life of other purebloods who come from Pureblood Supremacy households is. There are the Gaunts, and although Morfin was pretty much allowed to do what he wants (please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I read HBP), Merope was nowhere close to being treated like a princess.
Other than that, it's a good comparison. I mean, we all have our own personal reasons we do stuff. Homogenizing is, my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes people tend to do about thinks they don't know.
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The Gaunts were particularly unstable, though, or at least that's the impression I got from Dumbledore in HBP.
Pansy, for one, certainly behaves as if she's been treated as a little princess.
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I would venture to disagree here. Children like Bellatrix Black (from when she was young) were indoctrinated with the pureblood mania (as Sirius tells us in OotP), and clearly did not doubt it enough to willingly go to Azkaban for those beliefs. Like the last commenter said, maybe there's too much of a comparison to Draco here. Draco is the only child of DE, or really current DE that we are completely familiar with. And even then we cannot be totally clear where he stands.
I'm not sure I would make a direct connection to facism with the Death Eater theory, but I agree with the premise of it--particularly the influence Hitler/Voldemort had over the Germans/purebloods. They were persuasive, and as we can see time and time again, especially in HBP (regarding Voldemort, of course) very observant as to what they needed to do to get what they wanted. Voldemort is the not the epitome of perfection that his group preaches, and nor was Hitler, who was neither ( ... )
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