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Thread. 1. Over the past month, the Hamas atrocities have revealed a shifting of worldviews in the West in ways that were not as broadly recognized as before the attacks, although the signs were there. Many now ask, “How did we get here?”
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2. I believe the Harry Potter series and the @jk_rowling disavowal saga offer a window to the rise of a worldview in the West incapable of condemning the Hamas atrocities.
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@jk_rowling 3. Here is my thesis: many former Harry Potter fans have adopted the worldview of the antagonist character Voldemort, and this mirrors growing adoption in the West of a worldview incapable of condemning evil.
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@jk_rowling 4. The Harry Potter series takes place in a world of magic people hidden among the ordinary “muggle” world. It involves an existential battle between good and evil with a host of smaller battles among various characters personifying the imperfect human condition along the way.
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@jk_rowling 5. It is well-written, and for many in a whole generation, it was their first foray into relatively heavy reading for young adults.
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@jk_rowling 6. You can see how this series would captivate young adults seeking escapism from normal young adult stress, especially for LGBT-identifying youth. Such readers would obviously be likely to identify with a magic community hiding its identity from the “normal” world of the 2000s.
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@jk_rowling 7. However, and painting with broad brush, many if not most trans-identifying or adjacent former fans now disavow author JK Rowling over her defense of sex-based differences and rights.
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@jk_rowling 8. The evolution of both the attachment of trans-identifying readers to Harry Potter and their eventual disavowal of JK Rowling is reviewed in detail in the podcast The Witch Trials of JK Rowling by @meganphelps. I won’t rehash that here.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 9. What I do want to highlight here is that not only have many readers disavowed JK Rowling, they have also adopted the worldview of Voldemort, the leading antagonist in JK Rowling’s work.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 10. Voldemort seeks to subjugate the muggle world and root out any muggle blood from the magic community. He describes his worldview in the first book when he invites Harry to join him, saying, “There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 11. Voldemort is a textbook critical theorist. He doesn’t believe in objective good or evil. Instead he views the very concept of good and evil as at most a tool of those in power to maintain such power through purported social moral justification.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 12. Under such worldview, nothing can be objectively good, and nothing can be objectively evil. Instead, the only absolute lens through which to judge the world is power. The ascendant oppressor-oppressed lens (which focuses of who holds power) applies this same view.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 13. The readers who disavow JK Rowling largely do not view the world through the lens of good and evil. They view it through the oppressor-oppressed lens, with themselves being the oppressed.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 14. Under such lens, they can “contextualize” any evil action (such as death threats against JK Rowling) so long as it serves the ends of the oppressed. It such case, in their view, the action is not evil.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 15. This ideology propelled Voldemort to power, as he continued the similar critical theory ideology pushed by another evil character Grindelwald a few generations prior.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 16. Grindelwald also sought subjugation of the muggle world. In today’s speak, we would call it “decolonization” of muggles. His “contextualization” for such efforts rested on the magic community’s historic “oppressed” status at the hands of the muggle world.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 17. Notably, protagonist character Dumbledore (an academic intellectual) was initially enamored by Grindelwald’s grandiose plans until eventually disavowing the objectively evil means by which Grindelwald used to impose his worldview.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 18. In the real world today, the same readers who disavowed JK Rowling now largely fall into groups who “contextualize,” rather than condemn, the Hamas atrocities. You see this, for example, in the “Queers for Palestine” movement.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 19. Their refusal to condemn the Hamas atrocities relies on the same worldview as Voldemort. It is the fruit of a critical theorist worldview that does not believe in objective good or evil.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 20. The rapid disavowal of JK Rowling by her readers is likely associated with the rise of a critical theory worldview among such readers.
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@jk_rowling @meganphelps 21. If you adopt the worldview of Voldemort, it makes sense that you will eventually disavow JK Rowling. If you deny the existence of good, you will eventually disavow all that is good. If you disavow good, you will eventually justify evil. END.