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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:
(2) Gnomes via our boy Paracelsus (this is where the alchemical references come in):
(3) A recurring joke in "Private Eye" magazine:
(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 Tyrol and Tyrolean are terms associated over here with Switzerland as well as Germany, mostly from the 19th century:
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.
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.
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.
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