But Rowling makes them short and makes them really like money - and that's an outrageous, obvious, offensive comparison to Jews.
OK then.
Question: Why is it that, when doing the it's-so-outrageous-so-ok-then response, the setup almost always skips over important elements?
I'm sorry, but long-nosed, avaricious, banking monsters akin to the Protocols, and you need to strike elements from the stereotype along the way to suggesting you don't see it?
Okay, then, except, well, never mind; the coincidence of omission and understatement really is familiar. Just another whoopsie, I guess.
Agreed. Hanlon's Razor strikes again.
Okay, so,
not really so long ago↗, about three months:
In recent years, some have described "Hanlon's Razor", a variation on a common theme variously attributed in literature and history. More formally, Hanlon's Razor purports to parse what in rhetoric and discourse is described as the Principle of Charity.
Generally speaking, malice is considered worse than error, so the principle suggests receiving dubious statements as charitably as possible.
Comparatively, the danger of Hanlon's Razor is in its populist appeal; if we ought not attribute to malice what is reasonably explained by incompetence, there remains a question of how malicious we are if the incompetence or error, as such, is our own.
However, the hazard of the Principle of Charity is found at its outer boundary, when error is so prominent as to exceed the opprobrious threshold of malice.
At some point, one must be a fool in order to keep pretending that manner of charity.
And, then,
more recently↑:
Because of the way literary tropes and even archetypes emerge, there is frequently a risk of infamy in caricature and grotesque. This is a perpetual hazard of storytelling.
What we do with these narrative elements is entirely up to us, but the thing is, nobody bats a thousand. And as I've been reminding of late, "If I call a casual drinker an alcoholic they don't go binging just to 'show me.'"
With Rowling, it was, of course, more than just goblins and Jews, but even still, the question of how significant we find the (ahem!) accident of these tropes in creative process can be informed by subsequent events. That is to say, maybe-maybe, once upon a time, but now that we've seen her perform the stations of supremacism, questions we might have passed over in realtime take on a greater significance in their context.
If the difference between murder and manslaughter is
whoopsie, how many bodies do you need before you're willing to accept it's not a whoopsie?
So, years ago, sure, there was a whoopsie, and it totally wasn't supremacism, right. Except, these years later, we have now the additional data of Rowling's supremacist behavior, including generalization in her characterizations.
In its way, sure, it can seem like an accident, but that doesn't mean racism was absent. Chauvinism and a certain degree of insensitivity, sure. But it didn't help when a 2023 video game,
Hogwarts Legacy, sharpened the stereotypes. What stands out most about
Celia Edell's↱ commentary is her patience in working to be as inoffensive as possible to people who just don't see the problem, or whatever. "The antisemitic tropes present in
Hogwarts Legacy" the postdoc epistemologist explains, "have such deep roots in our shared cultural repertoire that they remain invisible to us, or we remain indifferent to them":
Given that goblins as mythical creatures originate in 14th century European folklore, it is worthwhile to consider how the antisemitic myths of the time may have influenced their construction.
In the 14th century, European life was structured around Christianity, not only as a common religion but as the foundation for social and cultural organization.
In this context, blaming Jews for societal problems, most famously the bubonic plague, was possible because it drew upon centuries of Jewish persecution. Medieval art is rife with antisemitic woodcuts and drawings portraying Jews with particular physical characteristics: short stature, large hooked-noses and hairy features.
We see these aesthetic features in imagery from the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903), and throughout Nazi propaganda.
So, while an artist depicting goblins may not intend them to be Jewish, particular combinations of features carry heavy historical baggage.
This archetype has been absorbed and reinforced by art and media since the Middle Ages, and the portrayal of the goblins in Hogwarts Legacy is no exception. Jewish or not, they resemble antisemitic caricatures with histories far longer than the Harry Potter franchise.
And we can pass over, for the moment, the shofar, oh, and also the 1612 pogrom; after all it's a video game. Besides, who knows, maybe it will be like the transgender novels and inspire her to write a novel about how a bunch of Jew-lovers are trying to get her killed. At it is, Rowling deserves the freedom to keep hanging herself.
But let's not pretend it's not happening. If the historical discussion is how much of history we can throw out in order to keep bottom-shelf naïveté in the realm of respectability, we're doing it wrong.
We can line up a string of coincidences and blame: That one's on a director; that's another director; hey, those are software people, so whaddaya expect, amirite? However, the one thing the allegedly left-leaning Badenoch supporter never seems to do is apply even the mildest of liberalism:
「Look, maybe once upon a time there was some some rough-hewn ignorance or insensitivity about the character archetype, and, y'know, sure, that bit in the one movie looks kind of clumsy, in retrospect, and then the other bit in the other movie probably didn't help, and, let's face it, yes, the thing with the video game is kind of symptomatic of the industry, so, yeah, it's probably not unreasonable to put in a little bit of effort to guard against, y'know, accidentally piling on even more.」
And inasmuch as,
last month↑, I suggested racism and misogyny are very similar, Rowling's ongoing relationship with notorious prejudice starts to stack up and present itself more clearly.
Also, remember, this whole thread is a digression from the Trump 2.0 thread (
#1068-75↗), so it's worth making the point again: When are people going to learn, this is what it gets them? You
can't just dabble↑ in one part of this stuff and expect that's all there is to it.
People need to learn↑: This is a package deal, you can't just dabble in it here and there, and this is what it gets them. And if, for the dabblers, the
trade is worth it↗, then they probably weren't really dabblers to begin with. And,
toward that↗, sure, there's a point at which, no, we don't really wonder, anymore.
So, sure, Hanlon's Razor, but at some point the incompetence it implies is disqualifying. It's one thing to cut Rowling some slack, as
Parmalee↑ suggests, but that pertains to
then. In the period since, Rowling's ongoing relationship with notorious prejudice started to stack up and present itself more clearly.
____________________
Notes:
Edell, Celia. "How 'Hogwarts Legacy' video game reinforces antisemitic scapegoating with goblins". The Conversation. 4 April 2025. TheConversation.com. 16 May 2025. https://theconversation.com/how-hog...-antisemitic-scapegoating-with-goblins-202710
