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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Commenting on how the Harry Potter world is problematic and proposing fan fiction/head-canons to fix it is a whole genre of Tumblr post that dates back years. If anything, paying attention to the problematic aspects of Harry Potter has become less popular, only because paying any attention at all to Harry Potter has become less popular with the whole "Rowling is a TERF" thing.


It's not a book with that supports the "trust the experts" style of government that's been a staple of leftism for a long time but has ramped up even more since 2016.

This is a strange complaint. YA/children's literature as a genre practically requires authority figures be useless or oblivious (or the problems be so small in scale they're appropriate for adults to ignore) because otherwise the adults would be the protagonists and it wouldn't be a YA/children's story. Harry Potter isn't exactly dystopian fiction, but it sorta fits into the genre of children/teenagers having to do the right thing against an oppressive/corrupt government.

Note that the epilogue of Harry Potter involves the government becoming good and competent once the main characters have fixed the government and Harry (at least, I forget who else) has become part of it.

Harry Potter doesn't lean into the "all authority figures are useless" trope though. Some of them are like the Dursleys and the government, but there are tons of good authority figures too (Dumbledore, the Weasley parents, most of the teachers). It's a conscious choice to make all of the journalists liars, it's not like you can't write a children's book without including that.