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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Yer a Nazi, Harry! or, the alleged anti-Semitism in the work (particularly in the latest video game) of J.K. Rowling.

I think by now we are all aware of the ruffled feathers over J.K. Rowling, most heinous TERF of our time (if I believe all the gnashing of teeth and wailing). I'm going to immediately swerve off on a tangent to register my amusement about, ironically in view of where it's all happening, Nicola Sturgeon's attempt at No True Scotsman in the latest case of "sex offender decides he's really a woman so he should not be put in man-jail but in woman-jail where it'll be perfectly safe to put him, even though he still has a working dick and raped two women".

Okay, I've had my sardonic laugh, on to the main point of this rambling.

So the Gringotts goblins are supposed to the be an anti-Semitic caricature of Jews, because "hooked noses, love money, put it together yourself". While I wonder how it is that the brave defenders of minorities leaped to the conclusion "these beings love money and have certain features - THAT MEANS THEY'RE JEWS!!!!", I realise that the proponents of this don't care if it's true or not, because any stick will do to beat the dog. People who may not be convinced that Rowling is Female Hitler by the trans stuff may be convinced by "she's anti-Semitic" and "she's pro-slavery" (the house elves, who if you look at their depictions in the movies and games look more akin to the goblins than any other species. Are the house elves Jews, as well? Why not, may as well throw that into the pot).

I'm going to address the question "are the goblins meant to be Jews?" by yelling, once again, you durn kids get off my lawn. I don't want to blame Americans if it's not their fault, but this kind of thing - the whole progressive angle of antifa and the rest of it- is largely driven as an online phenomenon (I'm not going to talk about offline real world influences) by the stereotypical dyed-hair college kid types and from an American angle. This means that they have no idea what references in a British context mean or whence they are derived. Also, being young, they will never have heard of this reference that I am going to quote, since it's before their time.

I propose that the Gringotts banking goblins are not a reference to Jewish stereotypes but to the Gnomes of Zurich and to gnomes in general. When the Harry Potter books first came out, there was a lot of speculation about alchemical references, and even a Grand Plan, in the books. While I'm not sure about that, I think that as a fellow Gen Xer from the British Isle who is bookish, she would have had at least a nodding acquaintance with such references like myself.

Enter the Gnomes.

There's a series of influences that lead me to think the Gnomes came from the inspiration detailed below.

(1) The Gnomes of Zurich. She would have heard such references the same way and the same time I did, first as children growing up and then in 2010 when there were yet more banking crises:

But the current financial turmoil in Europe, as well as news that London's best bankers are considering moving to Switzerland to avoid stricter regulation and public hostility, has resurrected an ancient and intriguing phrase - the "gnomes of Zurich".

First coined by British politicians facing a currency crisis in the 1960s, the phrase has lurked ever since whenever speculators are suspected of destabilising a country. But why gnomes? And why Zurich?

Forget kitschy garden ornaments. These gnomes emerged from medieval fascination with the secrets of wealth, especially gold, buried underground and mined by mysterious beings. Goethe writes about them in his epic Faust - ambiguous characters creating wealth which others, depending on their morals, use for good or evil.

So as the secretive world of Swiss banking took shape, centred on Zurich, and based on underground vaults with anonymous numbered accounts in a fiercely independent, mountainous country, you can see why the idea of gnomes sprang to mind.

...Disparaging references to Swiss bankers had already been heard in Britain in the 1950s. But it was the intervention of the leading Labour politician George Brown in November, 1964, that made headlines. Emerging from a crisis meeting at which the Labour government discussed the plummeting pound, Brown snapped: "The gnomes of Zurich are at work again."

Mr Brown, famous for forthright utterances, had created a new catchphrase. Soon it was on many other lips, including those of the prime minister at the time, Harold Wilson, promising to resist the gnomes' "sinister" power.

The Swiss were unrepentant. "In the world it is not the image, but the substance behind the image which counts," sniffed top banker Paul Rossy at the time.

...Some Zurich bankers took to answering the phone to British callers with "hello, gnome speaking". Others retaliated mischievously by suggesting that trade union power - "the gnomes of Transport House" - rather than currency speculation, was weakening the British economy.

One enterprising, and courageous, Zurich banker moved to London to set up in business, where he was promptly dubbed "the gnome of Notting Hill".

(2) Gnomes via our boy Paracelsus (this is where the alchemical references come in):

A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characteristics have been reinterpreted to suit the needs of various story tellers, but it is typically said to be a small humanoid that lives underground.

...The chthonic or earth-dwelling spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines or Dactyls. The gnomes of Swiss folklore follow this template, as they are said to have caused the landslide that destroyed the Swiss village of Plurs in 1618 - the villagers had become wealthy from a local gold mine created by the gnomes, who poured liquid gold down into a vein for the benefit of humans, and were corrupted by this newfound prosperity, which greatly offended the gnomes.

(3) A recurring joke in "Private Eye" magazine:

Lord Gnome is purported to be the proprietor of the magazine, and is an amalgam of various different media magnates. Originally modelled on figures including Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Thomson of Fleet, first appearing under the name "Aristides P. Gnome" in the early 1960s, Lord Gnome has since accumulated other characteristics to encompass the likes of Rupert Murdoch. He is portrayed in the magazine as a man of great wealth, greed, unscrupulousness and vulgarity. Lord Gnome rarely writes under his own name, but issues his proclamations, editorials and threats through a fictional underling...

...Lord Gnome, as well as being a media magnate, is regularly referred to as having other business interests. Special offers from "Gnomemart" frequently appear in the magazine, which also carries an occasional column called "The Curse of Gnome", chronicling the subsequent misfortunes of those who have in the past taken legal action against the publication. ...The word "Gnome" may refer to the Gnomes of Zürich.

(4) This one is pure speculation on my part, but since the name "Gringotts" has various theories as how it was derived, this is as good as any. When I read the name "Gringotts" for the first time, it reminded me of the German greeting Gruss Gott which is originally from Austria, Southern Germany, and the mixed land of Northern Italy/bits of south Germany/bits of Switzerland called the South Tyrol:

The expression grüß Gott (from grüß dich Gott, originally '(may) God bless (you)') is a greeting, less often a farewell, in Southern Germany and Austria (more specifically the Upper German Sprachraum, especially in Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, Austria, and South Tyrol).

The Tyrol and Tyrolean are terms associated over here with Switzerland as well as Germany, mostly from the 19th century:

The Tyrolean hat, also Bavarian hat or Alpine hat, is a type of headwear that originally came from the Tyrol in the Alps, in what is now part of Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

Which brings us handily back to our boy Paracelsus, inventor and populariser of the term "gnome" (amongst others for elemental beings) who was - wait for it - Swiss!

So this ties up all the Swiss/German influences behind the word "Gnome" which I hope I have at least presented as an alternative to the "deliberate anti-Semitism by the TERF trans genocider" theory.

I thank you.

I don't want to blame Americans if it's not their fault, but this kind of thing - the whole progressive angle of antifa and the rest of it- is largely driven as an online phenomenon

In part, unfortunately, there's a particular type of usually female, mostly-secularized, American urban liberal Reform Jew, who is unconnected with many day-to-day or theistic aspects of the religion, but for whatever reasons still wants to feel a very strong Jewish identity. This almost always manifests as extreme neuroticism, persecution complexes, and substitution of political ideology for theistic moral precepts.

I don't know if you can blame individuals in this archetype for all of the "Gringotts is Antisemitic!" panic, but I've seen multiple such individuals give ideas like this credence and credibility, at least in lefty identity-driven circles. So it seems likely to me that on balance they're contributing to the trope.

I'm tempted to pattern-match this to how deracinated people on an identity's periphery are more likely to develop toxic simulacra of that identity - Hitler was Austrian, not German; Ghandi developed his ideas about Indian nationalism while living in an ex-pat community in Zimbabwe; it took American "blacks" to invent Pan-Africanism, etc. - but that reeks of a just-so story and I'm not sure if the full historical record bears it out. It's an idea I've been playing with for a while, however.

I'm tempted to pattern-match this to how deracinated people on an identity's periphery are more likely to develop toxic simulacra of that identity - Hitler was Austrian, not German

Nitpick, this always seemed like a historically illiterate jab at the dictator. Austria not being in Germany is a pure accident of political history, the main population speaking German and being just as ethnically close as Bavarians, Hessians, Saxons, Prussians, Thuringians, and Westphalians are to one another. Austria did not join in 1871 because they were part of a large multiethnic empire under the Habsburgs and Bismark thought forcing them would destablize Eastern Europe and possibly cause Prussia to lose control over the politics of new state. Nowadays, 150 years later, there's been identity drift in Austria, in the same way there would have been if any other random prince hadn't joined the reich. In the 1930s, this was not the case.

I'm tempted to pattern-match this to how deracinated people on an identity's periphery are more likely to develop toxic simulacra of that identity

I've always assumed it was due to the whole defining characteristic thing.

Even in Australia/America/other immigrant societies there's kind of a joke about how ethnic groups here are far more invested in their kitsch and acting stereotypically 'whatever', whilst when they go back home it's far more about nuanced regional identities and nobody stresses on it too much.

In part, unfortunately, there's a particular type of usually female, mostly-secularized, American urban liberal Reform Jew, who is unconnected with many day-to-day or theistic aspects of the religion, but for whatever reasons still wants to feel a very strong Jewish identity. This almost always manifests as extreme neuroticism, persecution complexes, and substitution of political ideology for theistic moral precepts.

I knew someone like this as an undergraduate, at a university with fairly few Jewish students (not the US). She was my first encounter with a progressive - a left-wing person who wasn't "liberal" in any sense, and who in a previous generation could have been a perfect Mrs. Grundy. Intensely compassionate, intensely neurotic, and ironically also autistic enough to almost constantly upset/annoy people inadvertently, causing fights and anxious situations for her. (Who would have thought that Muslim feminists might not appreciate being invited to a Slut Walk?) Quite fun to be around, if only to see the fireworks.

Ive always preferred Dwarves as the fantasy-jews, myself.

As did Tolkien, who intentionally loosely modeled the dwarfs off of Jews and even had their language be Semitic. A people pushed out of their homelands. It was notably not a thing done with animus as he was fond of Jewish people.

I was always struck by the very sympathetic racial criticism from the narrator when Bilbo was caught by the trolls. Let me see if I can find it.

Edit: it was from chapter 12 and only referenced the troll incident

"The most that can be said for the dwarves is this: they intended to pay Bilbo really handsomely for his services; they had brought him to do a nasty job for them, and they did not mind the poor little fellow doing it if he would; but they would all have done their best to get him out of trouble, if he got into it, as they did in the case of the trolls at the beginning of their adventures before they had any particular reasons for being grateful to him. There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don’t expect too much.”

It's a little more backhanded than I remember lol

I just looked this up because I find this hard to believe. The mountain-dwelling, hairy, clannish, greedy dwarves check off more Scottish stereotypes than Jewish ones.

I found this link: https://www.timesofisrael.com/are-tolkiens-dwarves-an-allegory-for-the-jews/ saying that Tolkien didn't intend the Jewish-Dwarf analogue

In that article it does say

According to Tolkien scholar John Rateliff, author of a two-volume “Hobbit” history published in 2007, Tolkien drew inspiration from Hebrew texts and Jewish history when developing the dwarves. As craftsmen exiled from a bountiful homeland, the dwarves spoke both the language of their adopted nations and – among themselves – a Hebrew-influenced tongue developed by Tolkien.

I think it's just a bit of a disagreement over words, he didn't mean them as allegorically representing the Jews, he just was inspired by the Jews while writing them. In fact I think this is the article that I was remembering.

Tolkien in general spoke numerous times agains explicit ham-fisted allegories. He preferred to work in much more subtle manner and let the reader derive conclusions from the whole story in it's full richness rather than do primitive pattern-matching. E.g.:

"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

Is it even feasible for a premodern moneylender stereotype to not have connotations of greed? Being stingy about money of other people is an inextricable part of the occupation. And Jews are linked to that overwhelmingly due to their undeniable historical overrepresentation in moneylending in Europe (for reasons beyond the scope of this comment, but I'd say at least it wasn't about petty greed). If you are going to depict a stereotypical premodern banker, as befits the archaic Wizarding world (Eliezer in HPMOR justly mocked their financial system for its easy exploitability, by the way), people of European extraction will associate that image with a Jew; but that cannot be taken as an intentional depiction of a specifically Jewish stereotype. I suspect non-Westernized South East Asians would see a Han Chinese in the same portrayal, unless they try to see it through Western eyes. The point about physical appearance makes a little bit of sense but, really, Jews don't have monopoly on noses, and I think the association of long noses and untrustworthiness exists independently of ethnic stereotypes; it's a staple of physiognomy, even if woke Jewesses neurotically try to read Anti-Semitism into it (that vile now-deleted gnome thread is another case in point).

Truly, the day when we have to portray moneylenders as a whole as generous folk just to not offend groups which have historically been overrepresented in this line of work (and still are, just less so) will be a dark one. Reminds me of the war on the word «thug» which is ostensibly black-coded. (And it's counterproductive, too: all you'll achieve is switching gears on the euphemism threadmill, sending it to overdrive, so that an innocuous term like «urban youth» becomes a tongue-in-cheek reference to thugs.)

But on the other hand. The bigger issue here, the one that leads to such false alarms, is that Rowling's world, like all classical fantasy/sci-fi worlds and especially ones informed by British mythology, is biodeterminist. It's not just exaggeration of class differences; Rowling herself may be staunchly liberal but her intuitions are... quaint, and her commitment to not recognizing trans women as women is of the same intuitive root. Humans are treated as interchangeable M&Ms in settings like Harry Potter's one because the traditional, intuitively neat and narratively fertile descent-based stereotypization is safely displaced into sapient non-humans. These «races» don't just look different, they have obviously different philosophies, psychological and moral tendencies, talents; there is variation and overlap, but it's not obvious if culture can do much to bring them closer. Hermione's project of house elf liberation flops, and it is clear that Rowling considers it misguided and puts some effort into ridiculing it. Some house elves are just abused; the rest are quite content with their unequal symbiotic relationship to wizards, and while this can be framed as Marxist false consciousness, Hermione's belief in it comes across as unfounded condescension. The moral lesson here brings Moldbug's more inflammatory takes about «peoples better fit to serve» to mind. Centaurs, except very few, are inscrutable aliens and disdain human lifestyle. Mermaids are even more alien and unsettling. Giants and goblins are plain nasty, and have sound reasons to believe they're better off aligning with what human wizards consider evil. An American or a Japanese author would have brushed it off with a blithe foodie assumption of national superiority – once Aliens/Devils/Orcs/Elves taste our Burger/«Hambagu», they'll see the light and set their worthless peculiarities aside. A British author is less sanguine. (Maybe with better cuisine or less self-awareness...)

Race relations in the Wizarding world are at once simple and hard. They are simple because they naturally reward tolerating the status quo and live-and-let-live secessionist attitude that in reality is reserved to indigenous peoples. But once you aspire to build any kind of a productive modern multicultural society, they create a hairy diplomatic problem that cannot be solved with a bit of Civil Rights, redistribution from haves to have-nots, taking the knee and pro-equity sloganeering. Magic «races» are not at all mere social constructs or identities, and their discordant preferences are inextricable from their descent! Does Rowling herself realize implications of such a society? I am not sure. But as @erwgv3g34 and @covfefeAnon remind us, The Woke Are More Correct Than The Mainstream. They can notice where it's coming from; they do not accept «it's in Minecraft bro» as an excuse; they are rationally attacking a philosophical underpinning that discredits their politics. Once they got Rowling tagged as an outgroup due to her TERF (frankly just TEF) beliefs, the scales of infantile infatuation have fallen off their eyes, and they're scrutinizing her work for other signs and mental patterns of heresy, And by God do they smell it.

/images/16756309445363336.webp

An excellent argument in favor of seeing biodeterminism in Harry Potter. However, I would argue that you're reading too much into why she's getting attacked now by progressives.

The answer, as far as I can tell, really does have to do with the trans question. People called out the supposed Jewishness of the goblins years before, but it fizzled because people didn't care. Now, they hate Rowling for not being trans-positive by their standards, so they just throw all possible arguments out there. Standard arguments-as-soldiers by people doing some culture-warring.

Nobody started worrying "ZOMG, the goblins are Jewish!" until Rowling got into trouble for her views on trans matters. And it really is a peculiarly American obsession over racial and ethnic categories, which has been imported over here by the local trend followers who parrot word-for-word American scripts.

I'm going to say that if someone goes "A photo of a gorilla? That's referring to BLACK PEOPLE, YOU RACIST!" then that's a you problem. Same way with "GOBLIN BANKERS? OBVIOUSLY JEWS!" That's a you problem, not the author secretly inserting racist stereotypes when there's a long-established pre-existing joke about Swiss bankers.

Kids these days don't know no history, and it shows.

I'm going to say that if someone goes "A photo of a gorilla? That's referring to BLACK PEOPLE, YOU RACIST!" then that's a you problem. Same way with "GOBLIN BANKERS? OBVIOUSLY JEWS!" That's a you problem, not the author secretly inserting racist stereotypes when there's a long-established pre-existing joke about Swiss bankers.

It's like Alan Partridge trying to be nice to the Irish:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=72BrqGNvaT0&t=124

Do not "rewrite" what someone else says into your own uncharitable projections, and don't lazily pattern-match an argument into something you want to attack just because you have a hammer and you're looking for nails.

There's nothing of substance to dispute, you've missed the point.

Dude, do you have some beef with me? Why the misrepresentation? Is this about me thinking that a typical «weed bro» lifestyle is degenerate? Last I've seen you responding, you've been intent on strawmanning what I wrote as a haughty screed of an «Internet goblin» (weird, given the current context; does the word mean something to you?). Now you're in effect calling me a blank slatist. That's... so wrong it's funny.

I can rephrase the quoted passage (plus more) in simpler words. Like so:

Rowling is a modern liberal, thus she's avoiding thoughts about intra-species biodeterminism and innate human race differences, even fictional. Also she didn't feel the need to turn her book into a bully pulpit to preach about racial justice, like some current year writers do. But heritable traits and race/species differences are enshrined in the tradition of genre fiction, feel intuitively cool to her, and make for easy subplots. So she invented non-human species as «Magical Beings» (plus some smarter beasts like trolls) and endowed them with innate characteristics, displacing the intergroup variability from humans onto this category. In this manner she can have White and Black and Jewish and Asian and Slavic wizards who are basically the same group (Houses, too, don't seem to map to real-world demographic groupings), but there are also populations of non-human sapients that robustly differ from humans, each in their special ways.

Fantasy racialism is, psychologically, either a derivative of or a surrogate for real-world racial and demographic stereotypes, and Wokes, who are hyper-sensitive to group-stereotypical thought and have been triggered by her trans comments, began sniffing around. Therefore they suspect that goblins = dogwhistle for Jews. They're probably wrong with regard to her intention (although goblins absolutely do pattern-match to medieval Jews in many ways); but they are right in that she has created a demi-human race with a homogenous «goblin character». It doesn't matter much that she doesn't mean real-world Jews: goblins are an entire biologically distinct, insular race of highly intelligent, greedy, untrusting finesmiths and financiers – a race which at least in theory can be correctly stereotyped. That's halfway to real-world HBD.

Of course the same is true for most fantasy settings. But as you perhaps know, there's a crusade to rectify stats of Orcs and such too. It's true she got in trouble for trans stuff. But my point is, by Woke standards her world absolutely reeks of heretical thought – they just never noticed before, because she was in such a good standing on the Left, with a generation having grown up loving her books.

Personally I strongly believe in HBD, but that has little to no bearing on my argument here.

P.S. There are ways to insert innate differences into fiction while (kinda) successfully dodging the race realism detector. @Meriadoc suggests phenotypic mixing, but I think a cleverer way is to make a whole different foundation. One example that jumps to mind is the webcomic Unsounded (that I have dropped several years ago, but at least the first few arcs are great). It's Le Guin-esque with its intricate feminine touch on systems very different from ours (I particularly like the exploration of mature power structures in a world with magic but that has reasonable economies of scale).

Two major powers on the continent of Kasslyne are Cresce and Alderode. Native Crescians are simply black, live under a matriarchal monarchy, ferociously support a militant polytheistic religion with human sacrifices, and use a weird economic system that's normatively egalitarian and superficially communalist, while also being planned, centralized and controlled via the issuance of trackable magical NFTs that are the only legal form of currency (the inability to buy anything in Cresce with gold and anything real interesting with Labor Tokens is a point of complaint, and an existential problem for certain low-performing communities).

Alds, however, are truly weird. Their society, generally backwards, warlike and totalitarian but also lawful and democratic (only men of decent standing are enfranchised, though) and religiously more tolerant than the Crescian one, is biologically regimented. The cool thing is, their differences are artificial (except for a small minority of a bona fide separate ethnicity). Aldish embryos are developmentally biased in utero, with the magitech equivalent of Huxley's Brave New World approach; the resultant castes are strongly encouraged to intermarry but it seems this is just to maintain social harmony and not somehow transfer the alteration to DNA (indeed, humans of Kasslyne are woefully ignorant of biology and all natural sciences). Castes have political competition and differ in maximal lifespan (400 to 30 years), magic aptitude, typical characters and appearance. Man, I should catch up.

P.P.S. Some time after this post it has occurred to me that the Aldish system is just magical CRT. Alds seem to be born with immutable psychological and physiological traits, that they apparently inherit from their parents, and distributions of those traits differ between endogamous population groups... but! Actually it's just the invisible omnipresent magically acting systemic bias imposed by the elites, and without it the groups would be impossible to distinguish!

Sigh. Way to hide it in plain sight.

We usually let it pass when someone decides to get snippy with mods, but belligerently declaring that you are going to disregard a request to post in accordance with the rules tells us that you aren't clear on how things work here. You are required to post in accordance with the rules. If you think a mod warning is wrong or you have been misunderstood, you can argue that. If you don't understand why your post was not compliant with our rules of discourse, you can ask for clarification.

"Disregarded, you aren't the boss of me" is both childish and signals bad intent.

Take a 1-day timeout and decide what you wish to do with this attempt to broaden your understanding.

One thing the Stormlight Archive does, which I quite like, is create fantasy races. By this I mean that the existing human races in the series don't correspond to our Earth ethnicities but rather take some racial features from some races and others from others. The kingdom most directly coded as "war-hungry imperialist americans" are fairly dark-skinned and have epicanthal folds, while the kingdom most coded as Chinese is more similar to white people. Maybe some other fantasy series do this too, but I'm not aware of any. I think it is one of many steps which can be taken to partially mitigate these sorts of objections to the work.

while the kingdom most coded as Chinese is more similar to white people

Which kingdom are you thinking of? My guess is Shinovar but I'm not sure

That's what I was thinking yeah.

World building is part of it - like the world of the stormlight archives is based on a rock pool he saw at the beach iirc, so the parshendi have crustacean features (although I always got more insect vibes from them) and the humans are transplants from another universe or something, so they settled like refugees and developed different cultures. Wait does this make Sanderson a hbd guy?

I always find those attempts very annoying. Not just due to the fact that it intentionally distorts basic intuitive assumptions that a fantasy desperately relies on to create a believable world. But that it's an obvious admission of the reality of those intuitive assumptions. It's only pretending they're not there because they obviously are there.

It's the equivalent of taking a Rubik's cube, recognizing that it does look satisfying when there is obvious order to the colors, jumbling it up until it's an incoherent mess and then presenting it saying 'There. Isn't this satisfying?' No. It's not. It's a jumbled incoherent mess and the only reason you jumbled it up is because you recognize order and the inherent reality congruent intuition everyone has about these things. But for reasons that are purely derived from modern political norms authors predictably and performatively distort them without acknowledging that without the intuition and order they would have nothing to write about in the first place.

But for reasons that are purely derived from modern political norms authors predictably and performatively distort them without acknowledging that without the intuition and order they would have nothing to write about in the first place.

I think this is true of plenty of other, more important things besides race. Things like gender differences, age differences, and sheer institutional inertia are often ignored to give heroes slightly better stories, even though ignoring them often defeats the purpose entirely if you think about it for too long.

Evil institutions are threatening because they're enormous and oppressive, so if the hero and a few sidekicks can take them apart in an afternoon, they shouldn't have been threatening to begin with. Female soldiers are incredibly exceptional because the average woman is so much weaker than the average man, so if your armies are full of women, this should no longer be a big deal because clearly in your fantasy world there are no strength differences. Age is similar--we give elves a lot of respect as people who have lived 100s or 1000s of years, but if an elf who has been 25 for 10,000 years is still a poor swordsman, elves should no longer earn such respect. If anything they should be denigrated for wasting so much time.

I'm trying to gesture here towards the general rule of "make exceptional thing normal, but continue to rely on our intuition of it as exceptional."

In other words, I agree that what you're describing can be an issue, but only when the narrative actually relies on it to any extent. Many other stories already rely on this sort of thing to much greater extents.

When it's done like this, I don't think it's anything all that bad, just a defense mechanism.

Wheel of Time did that, to an extent. The psuedo-Asian Borderlanders did have vaguely Asian appearances, but the Japanese and American Indian inspired Aiel are all blonde and redheaded white people and the Sea Folk are black.

Yeah, I read that series a long time ago but somehow didn't pick up on that. That's probably where Sanderson got that idea from.

The Wheel of Time (books) also does this. A lot of readers like to try and pattern match the various nations to various real-world nationalities, but it's pretty clear that Robert Jordan intentionally designed a lot of them to not match any we know in particular.

For sure, I think in WoT it's more cultural though. They're still supposed to be Earth ethnicities, just in a vastly different context.

I think that some people saw greedy bankers im a fantasy world and immediately went "Wow! Those are jews! How dare she!" Says more about them than anything else. There is just so little connection that it doesn't deserve a counterargument.

Similarly, I've seen people claim the name Cho Chang is her riffing on "Ching Chong". It's a not uncommon Chinese name (my search for it in the Pinyin form of Zhuo Zhang gave me 1,500+ results on linkedin). If your mind immediately jumps to a slur you're so obviously just looking to be offended

In fact, I was just reading a book on WW2, it detailed General Chang Ching-Chong, a Soviet sleeper agent who wanted to lure Japan away from its border with the Soviet Union. Chang had some of his soldiers shoot some Japanese in Shanghai airfield to escalate the war down South.

What's the book? I can't find any evidence of this general's existence.

We might as well not forget about "Chong Ching" (as spoken), China though, a city of 32 million people. I guess the PRC needs to tone down its anti-Chinese racism?

Beevor, The Second World War, page 70. I tried to post a photo but the website won't let me for some reason.

Maybe it's a transliteration of this person's name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Zhizhong

Or this one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Zizhong

I've heard this from quite a few people now on this topic and I have to say I find it a little disingenuous to be surprised that people would draw the parallels between fictional characters and established real world stereotypes/historical tropes.

It would be fair to be surprised if they were trying to draw parallels between something in fiction and between real world groups when the two just don't align at all (I've seen this a lot with people of varying shades of political alignment trying to draw parallels between orcs/orks and black people, which I've always found quite unconvincing).

I find it a little disingenuous to be surprised

Yes, I suppose I should not be surprised at any idiocy spouted by the Persons Of Hair Dye, and yet I keep having some faint hope that facts and reality will penetrate their skulls.

So you think the goblins = Jews is a real alignment, hence why I should not be surprised people believe it? Hmm, sounds like a you problem: have you always had these anti-Semitic tendencies to think Jewish people are underground-dwelling non-humans?

I'm not surprised race obsessed americans draw spurious connections on racial grounds, but like I said, it says more about them than Rowling.

It reminds me of this recent incident-

https://nypost.com/2022/11/25/lamar-odom-thinks-phoenix-suns-having-a-gorilla-mascot-is-racist/

Most people don't see a gorilla mascot and immediately leap to "That's a racist caricature!" Because that's just not normal. Likewise for banker goblins and jews.

It's exactly the same thing. Black people are stereotyped as large and violent, orcs are large and violent, so orcs are black people. This is nonsense when it comes to Tolkien or D&D, but Netflix's "Dark" clearly played on it (despite having actual black people in it too). For the same reason, not every depiction of a greedy banker is intended to represent Jews, though some are.

Do you mean Bright with Will Smith?

Oh, right, "Bright", not "Dark". Got it backwards. ("Dark" is a bizarro German time-travel series)

It's exactly the same thing. Black people are stereotyped as large and violent, orcs are large and violent, so orcs are black people

Tolkeins orcs aren't particularly large and their capacity for violence is either at the behest of masters who herd them into battle with the crack of the whip, or a kind of petty and mean vindictiveness that doesn't really seem to align with stereotypes. Similarly, Warhammer orcs/orks are football hooligans and don't come across as particularly "black". Warcraft orcs are just a "noble savage" mish-mash, although they are the closest, what with the history of slavery, but it's weakened by the half a dozen other inspirations.

Maybe it's a US thing, but the assosciation between black stereotypes and orcs still seems pretty weak.

For the same reason, not every depiction of a greedy banker is intended to represent Jews, though some are.

Of course, I don't think Rowling intended any coded message about jews in her work, as I say in another post, I think she was just drawing from the cultural well in general for her book and it just so happens that a lot of stereotypes in Britain about bankers/money men have crossovers with those about jews.

The only orcs that match Black stereotypes are Shadowrun orcs.

Most fantasy orcs (including D&D/Forgotten Realms orcs) are more of an "evil savage" stereotype: primitive, aggressive, stupid, fecund, living apart from the civilized races and raiding them.

The Orcs of The Elder Scrolls are closer to a direct reference than Warcraft Orcs. However, the coded references to African-American stereotypes are also spread across a few other playable races:

  • The Redguard are black humans who have a samurai-inspired martial culture and martial aesthetic

  • The cat-people, the Khajiit, have historically been slaves in the dark elves’ province, and have a reputation as casual thieves

  • The lizard-people, the Argonians, have also historically been enslaved and oppressed by the dark elves, played as somewhat shamanist, somewhat tribal noble savages

before Skyrim the Redguard were pretty directly analogous to African-Americans (look at the names in Oblivion for example), but then they were changed later to be a quasi-Moorish analogue

The orcs of TES used to be elves didn't they? I might be thinking of Gothic, but iirc they were given monstrous features as punishment for worshipping one of the daedra - similar to the curse of Ham (actually Canaan) and another parallel.

Yep, they were high elves whose patron god was eaten by another and shat out. Their effete and noble appearance was changed to ugliness and raw strength when their digested god became a demon. (This is inaccurate but shortened for those who’ve not played.)

Orcs just are mer (elves) in Elder Scrolls - their race are called "orsimer." I believe their changed appearance is because the Elven god they followed was swallowed by a daedric prince, and after being "digested" he came out as an ugly daedra himself, with those who remained loyal to him changing in appearance as well.

You might be mixing the curse of Ham analogy up with the dark elves, who got punished when the Tribunal found the heart of Lorkhan, ascended to godhood, and moved the dark elves away from worshipping the daedric princes they had before. The tribunal reframed their new appearance as a blessing that set them appart though.

For me it seems pretty apparent that Rowling was drawing off of a cultural stereotype about bankers/money-lenders that itself either draws from/is linked to stereotypes about Jews.

I'm also confident enough to say that there are enough degrees of cultural seperation that it isn't anti-semitic to include said stereotypes in a work, because they've essentially been laundered of their initial meaning through centuries of use.

For me it seems pretty apparent

Yeah, please explain to me how it's apparent to you that Jewish people are to be represented by goblins. Like I said, that's a particular sort of automatic identification that makes me wonder about the mindset. I've had instances of seeing online "this is plainly a dog whistle about bad thing" and since I look at the image and go "that's just a thing", and I don't have any references to "in 1856 in Georgia the caterpillar was used as the symbol of a slave trading company" then I don't see "Aha, the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland is a code for supporting slavery!"

Cultural stereotypes about gnomes/goblins and bankers are the Swiss not the Jews for the period she and I were growing up.

Cultural stereotypes about gnomes/goblins and bankers are the Swiss not the Jews for the period she and I were growing up.

Well then it's quite impressive that these stereotypes about the swiss managed to completely disappear and be replaced by identical stereotypes about jews in the years between your youth and mine.

Yeah, please explain to me how it's apparent to you that Jewish people are to be represented by goblins.

Damned if I know, cultural influences are funny like that. But I can say that the connection is made, whereas with the swiss I have to say it's a much more puzzling one. The stereotypes I have about the swiss involve cow bells, yodelling and germanic autism dialled up to 11, not greedy, hook-nosed goblins.

The "greedy and unscrupulous Swiss bankers" stereotype was probably more prominent when people kept speculating about all the Nazi gold still hidden in secret Swiss bank accounts. That particular meme about Nazis has gradually lost importance as the years have passed.

I have seen "Goblins are greedy and treacherous and like gold in fairy tales, Rowling didn't make that up" responded to with "Actually, goblins have historically been used as anti-Semitic allegories."

Likewise, I've seen the Gnomes of Zurich and other Illuminati references asserted to be anti-Semitic tropes.

(Steve Jackson Games published this with their INWO card game in the 90s. Man, SJG has published so much stuff that they're lucky has not come to the attention of the woke mob since.)

I have yet to see any evidence that people in the middle ages referred to Jews as goblins, but it just goes to show that anything can be bent around a bad faith intersectional interpretation.

The "Elders of Zion" are obviously related to Jews, but that doesn't mean the "Gnomes of Zurich" are too. There were lots of different shadowy groups in the Illuminati games.

My reading is that SJGames specifically included the Gnomes of Zürich through a "well, we're trying to include all the possible conspiracy theories we can think of in this game, we should probably have an evil banker faction, but of course it can't be Jewish" and thus specifically name-coded them as Swiss - the other banker stereotype nation - to avoid this association.

Possibly, but the phrase "The Gnomes of Zürich" is older than "Illuminati" (and "Illuminatus" for that matter)

I'm not saying they are. I'm saying I have seen people claim that basically any reference to "Illuminati," but particularly the Gnomes and Bavarians, is coded anti-Semitic.

So the Gringotts goblins are supposed to the be an anti-Semitic caricature of Jews, because "hooked noses, love money, put it together yourself". While I wonder how it is that the brave defenders of minorities leaped to the conclusion "these beings love money and have certain features - THAT MEANS THEY'RE JEWS!!!!", I realise that the proponents of this don't care if it's true or not, because any stick will do to beat the dog.

I'm mostly on your side here and have argued it here in last week's thread but knowing about stereotypes and going off when they get to a sufficient concentration is not actually irrational. One doesn't need to hold these stereotypes are true to know they exist. The mapping of greedy -> Jew can be known to people who do not endorse it.

Sure, if you have a reasonable ground to suspect that "greedy = Jewish" is intended, which there isn't. It's only the trans rights lot (which are not all trans people) wanting to depict her as a literal proponent of genocide, because she said people with dicks should maybe not be let into women-only spaces where women who have suffered violence at the hands of people with dicks are staying, who are trying to smear her with being anti-Semitic and anti-black and pro-slavery and literal Nazi.

We all know that if she had been 100% in support of "guys in dresses are too real women", that none of this would have been used against her.

As long as we're on Hogwarts Legacy, this is pretty funny:

The character creator will allow players to choose one of two options: “witch” or “wizard,” which will put players in one of two dorms. This decision, however, has no bearing on what character is created — voice and body type are not tied to gender.

Presumably the 19th century Hogwarts dormitories will be sufficiently in line with modern perspectives on gender swapping that no one in-game will even mention that it's actually kind of weird that there's a huge guy with a deep voice that's hanging around the girl's dorm and calling himself a witch.

Some Vox hyperventilation on the topic is also eyerollingly amusing:

Like many fans, I’ve spent years critiquing the many problems embedded in J.K. Rowling’s stories: their arguable racism, queerbaiting, lack of multiculturalism, fat-shaming, and upholding of the patriarchal structures she established in her intricately detailed Wizarding World. (And if you think that the Harry Potter books are just children’s stories, not worthy of this kind of real-world framework or critique, consider that Harry Potter bred several generations of Democrats.)

On the flip side, it's amazing how these sorts of things create fans for political reasons. Quite a few people that would have greeted the above paragraph with "read another book" seem enthusiastic about getting Hogwarts Legacy, presumably because that'll really stick it to the woke or something.

And if you think that the Harry Potter books are just children’s stories, not worthy of this kind of real-world framework or critique, consider that Harry Potter bred several generations of Democrats

I didn't know that the Harry Potter books were so salacious.

Of course, that's not what they meant... But what did they mean?

Presumably the 19th century Hogwarts dormitories will be sufficiently in line with modern perspectives on gender swapping that no one in-game will even mention that it's actually kind of weird that there's a huge guy with a deep voice that's hanging around the girl's dorm and calling himself a witch.

Boys were prevented from going there in Harry's time so apparently they got more regressive in the meantime.

On the flip side, it's amazing how these sorts of things create fans for political reasons. Quite a few people that would have greeted the above paragraph with "read another book" seem enthusiastic about getting Hogwarts Legacy, presumably because that'll really stick it to the woke or something.

I'm not gonna lie: I've felt the urge to preorder, seeing all the drama.

It's actually unfortunate because I can't tell where my desire for a triple-A HP game (finally - I haven't played a HP game since like Chamber of Secrets on GBA I think, I was due one) and just pure spite on a topic that I already worry I get too worked up over.

Luckily, I have a separate and distinct moral objection to preordering video games so I didn't have to learn something uncomfortable about my priorities.

lack of multiculturalism

When there are Indian, Chinese and Black British characters, as well as Irish, Russian, French and others. But if it doesn't look like New York, it's racist. Except it seems New Yorkers are sort of racist themselves? If we're going to use the progressive yardstick as a measure, that is.

"Fat-shaming". Ah yes, Dudley Dursley. Getting ChatGPT to write these articles instead of humans can't come too soon, there might be some hope of a machine not being this dumb.

The problem is that this line of talk gets picked up and passed around uncritically. "Tolkien is racist because Orcs are dark-skinned", "Rowling is anti-Semitic because goblins are meant to be Jewish". Someone reads that, repeats it, and down the line it becomes true facts that all must accept because "everybody knows" it's true. It must be true because everybody says it, after all.

(And if you think that the Harry Potter books are just children’s stories, not worthy of this kind of real-world framework or critique, consider that Harry Potter bred several generations of Democrats.)

So... doesn't that mean racism, queerbaiting, lack of multiculturalism, fat-shaming, and upholding of the patriarchal structures results in people becoming Democrats?

presumably because that'll really stick it to the woke or something.

I'm happy to defend the position that it does. They wouldn't be crying about it so much if it didn't.

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I never got into the books. It seemed to me the people most into the books were democrats but that is probably confusing causality.

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How many people in your friend group have had kids? I’ve found the trans stuff and education to be a giant redpill for my friends who are parents (and for my wife). It isn’t of course just trans but also generally lgbt stuff. Most are comfortable with gay or lesbians (or even trans people) but hate how much it is being pushed culturally.

That and covid has pushed a lot of those people into being DeSantis Republicans (at least amongst my cohort).

My god, dude, Harry Potter did not breed Democrats, it's a book about wizards. If you became a Democrat I am willing to assert it wasn't Harry Potter that actually did it.

I'd agree with this, but the "read another book" thing is real. Harry Potter was referenced way too many times in law school than actually made any sense based on the quality of the material and its relatability to real life and the law (of which their system is nonsense stacked on nonsense).

I'm happy to defend the position that it does. They wouldn't be crying about it so much if it didn't.

Would you care to elaborate? People like nonbinary Vox writers frequently complain endlessly about things that don't actually impact them in any material way.

I mean, arguably the main difference between the classical left, and the woke left, is that they put less weight on material issues, and focus on culture more. If you buy media that they've decried, you're showing their blessing is not necessary to prosper as an artist, which increases the likelihood more artists will follow, which increases the likelihood of their grasp on culture slipping. That's why both sides are rallying the banners. It makes perfect sense, and I don't see how anyone can be so dismissive of it.

Your points are convincing, alas, it doesn't matter if they are. Rowling is a TERF, and as per intersectionality worldview, she has to be every other reprehensible thing you can think of: a Nazi anti-Semitic bigot, a pro-slavery racist, yada yada. I think it was the Dr Drew episode with Ben Shapiro, Segun Oduolowu and Zoey Tur, apparently Ben would've been against the civil rights movement if he was alive at the time and the evidence of this was his supposed hatred for transgender people. BLM has to be pro-LGBT too in order to "fight intolerance". Feminism has to be pro both for the same. All rally against the evil white man and the white adjacent man to fight oppression. The success of Hogwarts Legacy might rile up many, but it is a "you lose even when you win" situation. That so many people like this horrendous, bigoted IP whose main series revolved around a Wizarding War against Wizard Nazis and this game that allows you to play as a transgender hero and whose lead designer was pressured to quit for what he'd said on his personal YouTube channel, would be cited as evidence that we have a long way to go in our noble fight against intolerance and hatred. They're all compromised, including infamously politically incorrect IPs like GTA and Saints Row, but the woke crowd shall continue to pretend that they're still bigoted and sexist and racist as the companies let them have mile after mile.

Your points are convincing, alas, it doesn't matter if they are. Rowling is a TERF, and as per intersectionality worldview, she has to be every other reprehensible thing you can think of

There's a similar sentiment in the OP:

I realise that the proponents of this don't care if it's true or not, because any stick will do to beat the dog.

But both of these I think have the diagnosis backwards. It's not any characteristic or opinion of Rowling that causes the HP fanbase to hunt for phobia-epicycles. It's rather the zeitgeist and the neurotic characteristics of the HP fanbase that sends them down this route, and they'd be doing it even if Rowling was a (even more) scrupulous adherent of woke signalling on social media.

There's social credit to be made in purity spiralling regardless of whether Rowling has heterodox opinions or not. Do you really think Internet People wouldn't be trying to nitpick problematic parts of Harry Potter absent the TERF stuff? I don't.

They're not beating the dog with any stick they can find because the dog's been bad. They're beating the dog with any stick they can find because a track record of having a good Beating arm is how you get credibility amongst your fellow animal control enthusiasts.

I think it was the Dr Drew episode with Ben Shapiro, Segun Oduolowu and Zoey Tur, apparently Ben would've been against the civil rights movement if he was alive at the time and the evidence of this was his supposed hatred for transgender people.

I don't necessarily think his feelings on trans people are relevant, but I would certainly expect that Ben Shapiro would have been against federal civil rights legislation, regardless of his personal feelings on race relations and how people should be treated. I'm sure he now vehemently denies this because the Civil Rights Act has been branded as something that you could only oppose if you're a racist, Ben isn't a racist and doesn't want to be seen as one, ergo he has to say that he supports the Civil Rights Act and would have supported it if was around back then. Nonetheless, I would expect someone who favors limited federal government power and strong freedom of association rights to be highly suspicious of the more aggressive aspects of civil rights law.

Last week, I saw someone uncritically parrot the criticism

jk rowling has been for the past years racist

When pressed, another user jumped in with

Also among other examples I think her goblins have a lot of negative stereotypes as part of their behavior typically referred to as antisemitic

So yes. The meme is out there in the wild, and I'm glad you wrote up this counterargument. I think it disarms the allegation much better than merely pointing out the complete lack of substance in calling her antisemitic.

See also early Terry Pratchett, where Twoflower tries to explain the theory behind insurance and investment banking. Translated as "reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits" for most of the book, this theory is of course "echo-gnomics."

Possibly a graduate of the London School of Eco-Gnomics? 😀

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