Thursday 26 March 2009

Harry Potter as a 'Ziono-Hollywoodist' plot

Seems like the Islamists are as perturbed by the boy wizard as their fellow-fundamentalists on the Christian right. But these Iranian conspiracy theorists can't even get their facts straight. Rowling's books don't advocate the pure blood of a master race - that's precisely what Potter and his friends are fighting against, and the books offer a biting satire on racism and fascism, including the politico-religious kind represented by the current Iranian regime. 

2 comments:

Brigada Flores Magon said...

Actually it's just highly derivative and, frankly, not very good writing. Doesn't mean clerical fascists should get away with banning it, but.

Martin Meenagh said...

I think it might be wrong to focus on the objections of Islamists as purely racial or ethnic. They are fundamentally ideologists who want to encompass all races and creeds.

The pathology of antisemitism, which is a fairly consistent sickness in its presentation, seems consistent. Hitler in mein Kampf, for instance, which I once waded through for a history course I was teaching, can't make up his mind. Either jews are purer than Aryans and encouraging mixing--in which case aryans have to be restored and jews suppressed as a potentially pure herrenvolk, or jews are constantly intermingling with aryans and adding degrees of untermensch blood. Tsk Tsk, Adolf--all over the place.

It's all mad, which of course you don't need to be told; but what is it about antisemitism in particular that drive people who after all want a uniform global Islamic settlement so particularly mad?

I think it is that they want to globalise, not isolate their madness and Jewish people, because their identity is so distinct and because the Torah and tanakh are such great defences against assimilation, compiled against hellenistic ideas, that Jews will always be in the way of this sort of thing. Very very few other groups will pose the same problem to the fascistic mind, because most things can be massaged or syncretised.

As for what that said about the confusion of Soviet antisemites, well.....