This is not the first time Ms. Rowling’s bigotry has come up, far from it, but it turns out it it’s much worse than I thought. Ms. Rowling is now far past the doubling down stage, she’s pretty much etched her bigotry and indifference in stone now. I would never have read any of the Potter books if it hadn’t been for the astonishing reaction of Christians, all in a frenzy of “Witchcraft and Demons, Oh My!” I was an adult, and don’t have kids. Anything that got Christians so remarkably riled up deserved a look, though. I enjoyed the books, even though they were repetitive, and on the problematic side of seriously white and straight along with tokenism. I probably enjoyed the movies more, which were fun, because who doesn’t like magic? They were fun, a nice nerdy escape. Also, I’m a massive Maggie Smith fan, I’ve had a crush on her since early sproghood. I had planned on seeing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but that’s not going to happen now. I already know just how angry and upset that would make me.
In April this year, I posted about Dr. Adrienne Keene’s post on Native Appropriations regarding Magic in North America. If there’s one thing I’d like to make very, very clear, it’s that there are many Indiginerds who love the Potterverse, which makes it all the more heart-breaking and infuriating to see Ms. Rowling’s use of bigotry to further her own ends, and refusal to listen to the many Indigenous fans she has, and her apparent indifference to all the bullying and stereotyping she is subjecting Indigenous people to by sticking to her bigotry. As Dr. Keene said:
It actually makes me kind of want to cry. Harry Potter was such a formative series for me, and holds such a deep place in my heart–and to see and hear this feels like such a slap in the face to me and other Native Potter nerds.
So, if you’re a Potter fan, all prepared to be bristly in offense or defense, don’t. Just listen, please, because these criticisms are not coming from a place of hate. They are coming from a fellow place of love, and a deep well of disappointment. The Problematics of Potter came up on Ask N NDN at ICTMN, and Loralee Sepsey answered, in passionate detail. Here in the States, a great many people think Indians are dead and long gone, an almost mythical race of people, so everyone can play and be as bigoted as they like. I’ve encountered the belief of “oh, I thought Indians were dead” myself. There’s an article up at ICTMN about a young Indian, 12 years old, who wants to cut his braid off, because he lives in a primarily white suburb, and it’s not acceptable to be an ethnic Indian, and he’s tired of being teased, bullied, and stereotyped, at 12 years old. Non-native people, no matter how well intentioned, rarely think about such things. If they happen to be aware of the fact that Indians are not dead, they are rarely interested in the particular cultures, traditions, or languages of Indians. A great many non-natives are content to enthuse about “Native Americans” in the most embarrassing manner. There’s no knowledge to be had there, either. Quite the opposite, in fact. The ignorance can be appalling, and no, enthusiasm does not make up for it. Learning about a particular people, that would be a good thing to do. Understanding that there’s no such thing as one lump of ‘Native Americans’ would be a good thing. Understanding that Indigenous people care about how they are represented, and how their particular mythologies, cultures, and traditions are represented, that would be a great thing.
Ms. Rowling had a great opportunity in front of her. She could have not only learned herself, and met with members of the tribes she planned to write about, she could have helped to empower native people, along with showing basic respect, by allowing natives to own their own stories, their mythologies, their cultures, and their traditions. This story could have been a rich, strong, empowering, respectful, and accurate one. Instead, it’s the same old business of stealing from native people, disrespecting them, and promoting an appalling ignorance, deliberate lies, and propagating stereotypes. What will this latest installment teach children about Indigenous peoples? Nothing true. Ms. Rowling chose to go with using people as costuming, and having the same old colonial, white “saviours”, while not even bothering to give any native character a prominent role, let alone names, as only one native character is deemed worthy of a name. We get to be Ms. Rowling’s red shirts.
J.K. Rowling, with the release of the Ilvermorny School and Magic in North America stories on her website Pottermore, has joined the long list of people who portray indigenous cultures in a contextless and offensive manner, but she could become one of the most dangerous people on that list.
For those of you not familiar with the recent developments in the Wizarding World, Rowling has a new Harry Potter-universe movie set to be released in November, titled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which follows famed magical-creatures-curator Newt Scamander as he travels to the United States.
To set the stage for this expansion of magic into North America, Rowling released a series of pieces that explain both the history of magic on the original lands of Native America, and how the American Wizarding School, named Ilvermorny, was founded. As you can imagine, this is incredibly colonial and, at times, frustrating.
Rowling has over seven million Twitter followers and millions of fans who would take anything she gives them as scripture. According to the 2014 US Census, there are only five million American Indians. This many people receiving and consuming these incredibly colonized, flattened, and whitewashed depictions of indigenous cultures can cause serious harm to how the modern Native American is viewed, or if the modern Native American is even acknowledged as existent.
Harry Potter has grown to be much more than a book series and movie franchise; it’s spawned fan-fiction, roleplaying forums, nerdy tattoos and baby names, cookbooks and literary theories and theme parks, blogs that are dedicated to dissecting each book word by word, each movie frame by frame, to milk out every bit of magic Rowling has soaked it in. Harry Potter has become more than just fiction. For many people it was and is a way of life.
Before the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, the only Wizarding World we’ve been exposed to has been centered in England with Harry Potter and Hogwarts. There are allusions to other Wizarding schools, with students Bulgaria and France making an appearance in the fourth book, but no specifics of the Wizarding school in the United States have been previously made.
I suggest you go look at these pieces on the Pottermore website, and interpret them as you will. I’ve hashed out my feelings and opinions about these incredibly appropriative and offensive pieces in this blog post on Natives in America and in this interview with CBC Aboriginal.
I’m upset because J.K. Rowling seems to have done nothing more than read a few Wikipedia pages and Googled “Native American tribes in Massachusetts” as research for these stories. Not only that, she pays no homage to the true stories which the creatures she’s stolen have come from; in case you’re not familiar, Hogwarts and Ilvermorny both have a house system (which is a very British school structure) in which wizarding students are sorted into their first year.
At Hogwarts, the Houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, all of which have animal mascots and certain traits associated with each house that its members identify with. Here are the Hogwarts mascots: Eagles, badgers, lions, and snakes. Pretty standard animals, and the traits seem to make sense (although I’m really not sure about Hufflepuff… But then again, no one is).
And here are the Ilvermorny houses: Thunderbirds, pukwudgies, Wampus cats, and horned serpents; unlike lions, eagles, snakes, and badgers, all originate from Native American mythologies. Please, if you come from the tribes whose stories contain these creatures, please tell me if these house traits make any sense at all. Or if this artwork is accurate. Or if how they’re portrayed in the Ilvermorny story is accurate. Because as far as I know, it really isn’t. At all.
The Harry Potter fandom can be a beautiful thing. Harry Potter is a timeless, wonderful universe that has brought so much joy and escape for young people, and has integrated more young readers into the literary universe than ever before. To see so many young people come together to discuss one thing, to create art and media inspired by that one thing, and to love one thing… It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful and wonderful and inspiring. But with the introduction of these creatures and indigenous peoples into the mix, it’s very possible that indigenous Harry Potter fans who once felt at home in these circles can become alienated and be forced out of them.
The farther the fandom takes this new Ilvermorny source material, the less connected with indigeneity these creatures and stories become and more with Harry Potter. The stories we have held onto for generations are stolen from us with a click of a button and a Tumblr aesthetic board. We still have them within our own tribes, but instead of us being able to share our cultures with mainstream world society in a respectful and contextual manner, we’ve had the chance stolen from us by a Scottish woman with a bloated platform and no resources besides Google and colonized assumptions.
People are asking why we’re so upset over “fiction,” but it’s important to remember that mythologies aren’t fiction. Mythologies are born from a collective, from years of tradition and a connection to the land on which they stand upon, and have survived for generations despite what obstacles lay in the way of them carrying on. Mythologies are sacred. Fiction is beautiful and wondrous and creative, but it can always be attributed to the individual and said individual receives glory for their work. It doesn’t seem right to me for an individual to be praised and to be recognized for using ancient mythologies to make a profit without giving them appropriate and accurate context, and without giving them the respect and recognition they deserve. It is especially disrespectful if, like Rowling, it is an individual who doesn’t hold the cultures of the mythologies within them, is using these mythologies to paint an outdated and inaccurate picture of an already marginalized group, and is using these mythologies to fatten their already morbidly obese cash cow. I believe that if Rowling had seriously consulted tribal communities about their stories, about how they would have wished to be represented, about their histories, and about the world in which they exist in, then she would have been able to create the American wizarding school respectfully. But she didn’t.
J.K. Rowling has refused to acknowledge that we still exist, and that we’re humans, and that we’re not plot devices or selling points for her to use lazily in her fiction. She has yet to acknowledge that several of us are outraged over her recent stories, and her silence is deafening. Her dismissal of our voices has led the way for her diehard fans to launch racist, sexist, violently worded attacks on indigenous critics via social media (myself included); I wonder if she’s seen the racist slurs, the sexual comments, the stereotypical jabs at us being stuck in the past, being too savage and simple, being too drunk or stupid or stuck on the reservation to acknowledge the “real world” and know “real history.” Part of me wonders if she would even care. Her silence hurts, and the harmful effects of this misrepresentation have already begun to spread and infect.
J.K. Rowling taught a generation to stand up against discrimination and injustice. She inspired us to speak up against prejudice, to fight for the greater good, to be brave and to listen to our hearts, and to spread love, not hate. But her silence is deafening, and it makes me wonder if she’s ever going to acknowledge the harm and the hate she has caused by the release of these stories.
Rowling has a responsibility as an author, an artist, and a creator with a massive fan base to uphold the integrity of her universe, and to respect the cultures from which she is borrowing from, especially if they are not her own. She has failed indigenous peoples, she has failed her fans, and she has failed the Harry Potter universe through her misrepresentation of Native American cultures. Because of her massive influence, we need to call on her acknowledge her mistakes.
We’re still here, and we are idle no more. We’re waiting, J.K. Rowling, but not quietly, not patiently. We won’t be silent. We won`t be content with the drivel you have dumped on us. As much as your fans can lecture us, harass us, insult us, and make fun of us for being too PC and childish and stupid for taking this to heart, we will always carry our right to be respected in our hearts.
It`s not that radical to ask for respect. It`s not that radical to ask that you respond to us instead of ignoring us and dismissing our critiques as unimportant. As Sirius Black once said, “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
Loralee Sepsey is Owens Valley Paiute from the Big Pine Paiute Reservation in California, and is currently studying English, Education, and Native American Studies at Stanford University. Follow her on Twitter at @LSepsey.
ASK N NDN: J.K. Rowling’s Take on Native Culture Is Dangerous. Magic in North America. Magic in North America Part One: Ugh.
And just for good measure, here’s one of the milder responses to a Native person (Dr. Keene) asserting that using various native cultural myths is not okay:
It's FICTION you twat. She can write whatever the fuck she wants! She's not talking about ethnic cleansing here.@NativeApprops
— Stephen Myler (@Nerdheist) July 4, 2016
It is a form of ethnic cleansing, and a type of cleansing which has been used on Indigenous people for hundreds of years.
(Facepalm) And from what I can see pukwudgies aren’t even animals… dammit. How difficult could have been to use something like… dunno… bald eagles, bisons, bobcats and rattlesnakes instead? Then you’d have got American flavor without having to appropriate anything.
Kreator:
It wouldn’t have been. There even would have been a choice of eagles: bald, golden, spotted. Those animals would be more equivalent to the ones at Hogwarts.
Pukwudgies lure and kill, but Rowling has them associated with healing. There isn’t quite enough WTF for that one. I’m seriously bent about the Thunderbird, she’s reduced Thunderbird to a lowly cousin of a phoenix, which is beyond outrageous.
I would be interested to know what you think of Clash of Eagles (the recent one, by Alan Smale). It’s an alternate history in which the Roman empire lasts long enough to invade North America, and what happens when they do. I’ve only read the first of the three books (the third is in galleys now), but as a white man reading a book by a white man, it seemed like a fairly human portrayal of the people involved. Most of the story involves the Mississippians at Cahokia being at war with the Haudensaunee coalition, so at least it doesn’t treat all natives as one group. But who knows what blind spots I have?
I found the one Harry Potter book I read to be fairly uninteresting: heavy on window-dressing but not much in the way of interesting story.
Usually with bestsellers I wait until the author’s second or third book. If their books start to balloon in size, I don’t bother -- reasoning is that the first book was well-edited with the author willing to listen to advice. Once they get famous they get full of themselves.
Johnny Vector:
Never heard of this, and I doubt you’d find me reading it. Most white people simply cannot do a decent job with anything native, let alone historically so.
The Haudenosaunee coalition? Is that supposed to be alternate for the Haudenosaunee Confederation? The Haudenosaunee advocated for peace, and they did remarkable things, in forming the confederacy and the league of nations. The notion of them being at war means I won’t ever read those books,* leaves a sour taste in my brain. I would recommend reading about the actual Haudenosaunee though.
* Yes, the Haudenosaunee fought, briefly. Their lasting legacy has been establishing peace in a time of great conflict and terrible genocide. I guess that wouldn’t be interesting enough for a book.
Johnny Vector:
Apologies ahead of time, I don’t mean to jump all over you. It’s not about whether or not Indians are portrayed as “fairly human”. We are human, whether anyone likes that or not. Generally speaking, Indians in literature by white people are portrayed in specific, stereotypical ways. Often, if a person portrays Indians as for real human, they end up being basically white, with the odd stereotype tossed in now and again.
What this is about is using native peoples a fodder for plotlines, not giving a damn about how you representing those living, thinking, feeling people. White people have a tendency to think of Indians as some type of cool property, because other white people love reading about Indians, as long as what they are reading doesn’t correspond to reality in any way. As Loralee noted in her blog post, Rowling didn’t have Jesus show up as a teacher at Hogwarts, the whale who swallowed Jonah wasn’t in the lake. Rowling obviously felt her personal mythology wouldn’t be good fodder for her stories, but she feels perfectly free to plunder various Indigenous cultures, and doesn’t even bother to learn about the cultures, but writes whatever colonial shit occurs to her.
At this point, I don’t really care if some white author portrays any Indians as “fairly human”, I just wish they’d leave us the fuck alone and plunder their own peoples, their own backgrounds, histories, and mythologies. In such books, you’ll note that it’s not exactly a thing, having the Indians win. We never win.
We rarely even get names. In Rowling’s latest mess, exactly one Native character has a name. Gee, thanks.
I’d also highly recommend reading Gyasi Ross on the Haudenosaunee model of peacekeeping.
https://proxy.freethought.online/affinity/2016/07/16/thats-not-political-correctness-thats-fixing-inhumanity/
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/07/14/there-hope-time-follow-indigenous-model-peace-america-165140
I loved and enjoyed the Harry Potter books, but I couldn’t help noticing how poor the worldbuilding was. Sure, she started writing when she couldn’t have known that people would dissect every word of it. And that’s problematic enough when it turns the UK into a way too white place and gets even worse when she does it to indigenous people.
NOt everything is just a prop to use.
Giliell:
Yeah, I enjoyed them too, but I had the same problem. As far as the world building went, it was terribly colonial, everyone boxed up all nice and neat, white, straight, and naturally, the two classic genders. The odd bits of tokenism bothered me a lot, and given how she wrote the initial books, it’s easy enough to see why she took refuge in the same colonialism, but it doesn’t excuse it.
There are Potter fans all over who now hate any and all Indians with a passion, and given that her fan base is at least a couple million more than all the native people in uStates, that’s a lot of hate and bigotry.
It may be just because I am white, but I really don’t understand the arguments the author is making.
In general, it is very difficult to make up completely original fiction. There is, therefore, a tradition among fiction authors to borrow legends, mythologies, and traditions, mix and match them, and “spice them up” into books. JKR is in no way intending to accuratly represent the rich history and tradition of the Natives; rather she is just borrowing some snippets of information (like names of creatures but not their traditional attributes) and interpreting them her own way.
As a Jew, should I be insulted by Jonathan Stroud’s books that talk about how Jewish kings were wizards (practicing magic, incidentally, is completely against Jewish law)? Should Greeks be insulted because Rick Riordan wrote a series of books portraying the Greek gods in a modern world? Almost every fictional book, especially fantasy, borrows from somewhere. Even the original Harry Potter books are not completely original and use snippets taken from cultural tradition, both European and otherwise.
I agree with the author that it is important to study other cultures, including but not limited to Native Peoples, to try to gain a fuller understanding of their beliefs and history. This does not, however, mean that every time someone borrows a cultural tradition to help then come up with ideas for a book that they are an evil bigot and all of there work deserves to be spurned.
The Thunderbird could eat all the Phoenixes in the world with nary a blink. And burp out lightning.
(Seriously, J.K.? Seriously?)
Pukwudgies sound a bit like fairies -- the trickster, child-stealing fairies as originally found in a lot of old folklore. Their occasional skill at getting people lost sounds a lot like the Latvian wood spirit vadātājs which could be translated as ‘one who leads around’ i.e. makes you lose your way. I don’t think there’s any way I can associate a creature like that with healing, holy shit.
It took me a long time to read the Harry Potter books because everyone was just so over the moon about them, and I have a heave distrust of the general public opinion. In addition, it looked like watered down versions of other fantasy stories I’d been reading for years already, often commented on by others with less interest in the fantasy genre -- and all of a sudden, here everyone was, swooning over some boy wizard who is somehow special (hint: that’s how it works). I ended up reading the books only a few years ago, because we started reading the first one as a bedtime story and I realized I would have to talk about the book(s) with my kids. They enjoyed them, but I hope they’ll be more of a gateway-to-fantasy series for them.
The movies were fun, for the most part. The usual arrangement of good characters, annoying characters, and the characters fundamentally awesome but seen too little (Maggie Smith, please). Not impressed with PoC representation and portrayal, though. And holy shit Snape -- I love Alan Rickman, but that whole story arc was pretty twisted up and… weird.
Anyway. Middling-to-good grades from me, tanked by the author’s horrible attitude towards learning new things and writing more interesting narratives.
Also thanks for introducing the (real) Wampas cat, that is an awesome story.
Also, seeing as how I bothered to take a quick peek at the Pottermore site, did Rowling honestly start the history of magic in North America with the 14th century??? Umm… ?
theguywhocares @10
Here’s a quote from one of the links in the OP’s link, by Lorelee Sepsey, which might put things in a little more context for you:
There’s a lot more on the subject in the text before and after that quote, but maybe that quote might help you decipher the difference between making something up by borrowing elements and all-out using someone’s culture and religion in your own way to move your story along.
And then there’s just the fact that in the internet age Rowling has every opportunity to get in touch with North American indigenous peoples of all kinds, and talk to them about their culture, religion and aspects of magic in their folklore. If only for historical accuracy. But if you’re going to portray an oft-invisible and much-maligned group of people, why not do it right?
theguywhocares
Also, this:
Trust me, it’s not because you’re white.
theguywhocares
Which is exactly the problem. Now, this would be a lot less of a problem if that particular kind of “borrowing” didn’t have a long tradition grounded in colonialism and racism and didn’t have real world now and here implications. Every discourse in which the colonial side gets repeated uncritically reinforces those notions.
Let’s take a look at the house system, for example: It’s a very British thing. And it’s totally appropriate for a British boarding school steeped in aristocratic traditions and bullshit. There’s very little criticism of it in the original books and that’s bad enough. But now you take that system and completely transfer it to North America, making wizard history mirror Muggle history. This reinforces the ideas that Native People needed white colonisers and couldn’t come up with some sensible system of passing down their magic lore without some nice white saviours to come along.
And then you take those mythical beings without paying much attention to their original background and they basically become your wizarding world equivalent of US sports teams with names starting in R for example.
Caine @6
A name given by the white woman protagonist, no less.
Since you brought that up… That would be their right, yes, and in fact there’s a precedent: the Greeks were actually pretty pissed at the distorted portrayal of Greek mythology in Disney’s Hercules, and the movie was panned in the country as a result.
By the way, about Riordan’s books (the Percy Jackson series):
Blargh.
theguywhocares @ 10:
I expect your lack of understanding has much more to do with your obliviousness, ignorance, privilege, colonial mindset, and implicit bigotry than your skin colour. Pity you couldn’t figure that out, but y’know, I’m pretty sure you did, because that “It may be just because I am white” business is often a precursor to bigotry apologia.
I don’t believe you when you say you don’t understand the arguments. So, of course, being the ultra-good sort of white person, not the privileged, bigoted white person, of course you read what I wrote, then what Loralee wrote, and dutifully clicked over to read both parts of Dr. Keene’s Magic in North America, then clicked over to read Loralee’s blog post, and the article at CBC, then complain that you don’t get it.
I fail to see where any of us could have been less clear, and I know an asshole when I see one, and boy, are you an asshole, “guywhocares”. Seems to me if you cared, you might try comprehending what you read. Or, you know, you could try reading all of it first.
This got me thinking: What would be challenges for sensibly portraying Indians and magic in North America?
First thing would be to acknowledge different traditions and ways of life. The British wizarding community mirrors Western society and its consumerism. They just use different means to the end.
It also raises questions about communities. British wizards have self segregated into a separate community. Would Native magicans have done the same? Would they have stood by and watched a colonial force murder their communities? Or were they murdered just the same by the western wizards?
And last but not least, race relations: How are Native (and black) wizards and witches supposed to “blend in” when the very colour of their skin makes them a target? What about black communities?
Kreator:
I read those too. Riordan has a serious problem with the white, straight, cringe-worthy tokenism thing too. In one of his short stories, he let loose with an obvious bit of “nappy headed” bigotry. He managed to not go over the line with his later introduced Indian character, but of course, she’s Cherokee, and a child of Aphrodite, so he managed to do the effing Cherokee princess thing anyway.
Hopefully this is a good place to put this, I found a list of indigenous speculative fiction compiled by Cherokee author Daniel Heath Justice (Link to PDF at the bottom of the page):
http://imagineotherwise.ca/scholarship.php
Giliell:
No. If such a story were done right, it would bear no resemblance to the earlier books in any way. Indians of any tribe simply would refuse such a system, and we have never just stood by and watched a colonial force murder at will. That much at least, is actual history.
This is like what I was writing about being at the camp. That’s tiospaye, extended family, community. As Phyllis Young repeatedly said, in preparation for one of the 7 sacred ceremonies, “we adopt in, we don’t adopt out.” The ceremony is one of adopting all the people who are not of the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota nations, so they are family. If this story had been done right, it would have been a million times more powerful than all the previous works, and radically different, too.
Stellatree, thanks!
I highly recommend these essays in Invisible 2:
Not Your Mystical Indian by Jessica McDonald.
Colonialism, Land, and Speculative Fiction: An Indigenous Perspective by Ambelin Kwaymullina.
@Caine
Your right, while I did read through this entire article I did not click through to any of the reference material. What I am wondering is why this makes me an A**h**e. Did you read my entire comment and all of the books that I mentioned in it before going on your tirade about my first sentence? I am trying to take part in a conversation about an issue which I (admittedly) do not fully understand and in which name calling should really not have a place.
theguywhocares @ 25
If you take the time to read the links, perhaps you will understand more fully. Sometimes participating in a conversation requires preparation. Caine has very kindly gathered a lot of information for you already, does she have to actually spoon feed you?
@Kreator
Based on that article you mentioned and some other quick research, Hercules was not banned in Greece. Rather, the Greek government would not give Disney permission to show the movie or have parties for it in certain holy locations in Greece. This is exactly in line with my argument.
Fiction can and has drawn heavily from mythology and history. This is completely fine. It must be stressed, however, that the fiction is separate from the mythology and to bring them back together would be a problem. If JKR were to fly out to cahokia (first Native location that popped into my head) and start giving tours of “the burial mounds of famous wizards,” or some garbage like that, I would agree that it was a problem. However, to borrow some stories and names, while not claiming to be actually connected, is completely fine.
Here, this is seriously dumbed down, so most anyone should be able to comprehend it:
As Ms. Rowling never had any intention of changing one fucking thing in her continued Potteresque stories, and is obviously comfortable only in a colonial box (or empire box if you prefer), with the typical white colonial [empire] saviours, why bother with a setting in which Native people are still in full control of their land? Ms. Rowling could have simply set her story a bit later on, after the genocide, and kept her characters exactly as she likes them, white, colonial, and narrow minded, like herself. In that setting, her aristocratic British boarding school system would work, because idiotic, genocidal, white colonialists were still impressed with that sort of shit.
That way, she could have just left us out of it, rather than dragging us into her idiocy, propagating misinformation, distortions, lies, stereotypes, and bigotry, and she wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble of stealing from a seriously oppressed and marginalized people.
NO, IT IS NOT COMPLETELY FINE.
I have one rule here: don’t be an asshole. You’ve broken that repeatedly. If you repeat this absolute bullshit one more time, you will be banned. I recommend you shut the fuck up, “guywhoisanidiotbigot”, and figure out how to comprehend what you read.
I’m very sorry that I hurt anyone with my comment. I was assuming that on a blog called “Free Thought” with the subtitle “Reason, Discussion, Opinion” we would be able to discuss and express our opinions without being cursed at for it.
In my future comments I will endeavor to only say exactly what the other readers and commentators want to read.
Oh look, the standard line from assholes, trolls, and bigots everywhere. You guys really need to get together and come up with a new script, this shit is old. As for cussing, oh my. If you can’t cope with reading a cuss word, yes, run off. Personally, I’d be more upset about someone informing me I was an ass and a bigot, and I’d want to correct that, stat. Priorities, how in the fuck do they work?
Oh, you won’t need to fuss your tiny brain over that, because you won’t be able to say anything more. Bye.
@30
“I thought this was FREE THOUGHT blogs!11!1!!”
Drink!
@theguywhocares #27
It is completely fine to you, because it is not your culture that has been butchered and presented completely nonsensicaly to the world at large.
Fiction has an important role in our understanding of the world and learning about it. There are undoubtedly milions people around the world who now read Rowlings portrayals of Indian mythology and take them as being the genuine article. In minds of many people, perhaps for generations, this mythology will now forever be at first and foremost represented by what Rowlings mangled version, without ever knowing that what she wrote is a lie. Thus she contributes to the elimination of the real culture of Native Americans.
BTW, try to read more carefully what people write. nobody claimed the movie Hercules was banned in Greece. It was “panned”, and rightly so. Similarly the movie “Enemy at the Gates” was panned in Russia for its excessively inacurate portrayal of Russian culture during the WW2. But I guess that was OK for you too and those uppity Russians should not be upset that their struggle in Stalingrad was potrayed nonsensically and that this portrayal of the battle of Stalingrad is now in many heads perceived as true.
By Gob you are clueless. If you really care, try to put yourselves in the shoes of marginalized people and try to see the thing from their perspective. Right now you are not trying to understand what Caine says, you are trying to argue that she (a Native American) has got it wrong and you (White Dude) have it right by default. You are not listening, you are talkint over her.
Check your privilege at the door, please.
Sidenote: US has taken colonialism to completely new degree, when Holywood now appropriates cultures around the world, even European ones. Holywood movies about Greek mythology or anything containing East European cultures are just awfull.
Vivec @32
::snort::
Vivec:
Free Thought, rather than Freethought has become the new Meyers.
I shall have more tea!
*facepalm*
This is why reading the links and all the other links within to gain understanding is important. Otherwise, what’s the point of providing the resources? Not to have intelligent conversation, obviously.
And the name-calling is up to the host (in this case, Caine): her house, her rules.
So basically, wherever YOU say the line should be drawn, that’s where the travesty begins. Never mind the opinions of the people actually affected, because -- duh! -- they’re probably too irrationally emotionally invested in the issue!
*sigh*
Toodles, guy. Who cares [about your stupid opinion on a subject you admittedly know little about and don’t plan on learning about]? I don’t.
Thank you for teaching me these important lessons. I have learned a lot from all of you.
Long before the majority of Europeans had even heard of the new world and it’s natives, my people, the Jews, had long been oppressed and marginalized. In around 400 BCE the Babylonians invaded our land, destroyed our temple and led the rest of the people away in chains. this happened again in around 70 CE with the Romans. All through the years since then the Jews have been the subjects of Crusades, pogroms, expulsions, and Inquisitions. Less than 80 years ago a great part of Europe, led by the NAZI Germans, decided they wanted all of the Jews dead and took measures toward that end. 6 million Jews were killed in that attempt. Still, to this day Jewish synagogues and businesses are regularly the target of attacks.
I guess it is time for me to start a blog where every time someone mentions Jews in a context that I can trash them and call them names because I am a member of an oppressed people and that is what we are supposed to do.
I hope you will all realize that this specific post was intended to be slightly sarcastic, though I hope you will recognize the point I am trying to make.
I thought the idea of online comments is to further the discussion on the topic being discussed. What is the point of comments on a post if the only people you allow to comment are ones who agree with what you say? Is it just for a pat on the back?
Yes, indeed. That does not mean I must let an oblivious bigot maunder on and on and on, saying the same shit over and over, while absolutely refusing to understand one word anyone else has said. That would be you, guyidiot.
I’ve allowed your last two comments because it’s fun for people to have the occasional chew toy. I would suggest, however, as you are ever so delicate, you start exercising that tiny brain of yours. Also, as you demonstrated you’re someone who doesn’t even know the philosophy of freethought, or how to spell it, you might want to shut the fuck up for a moment, and consider just how unrelentingly dim and ignorant you are. You’re on the fucking internet, for chrissakes, you could have looked something up, and spared revealing yourself as complete ass.
Oh, and I dearly hope your first name isn’t Marcus, and you haven’t published anything, because if it is, and you have, I will come down on you like a nightmare from your deepest personal hell.
theguywhocares @38
How do you intend to further the discussion when you haven’t read the material we’re discussing? This is an honest question.
Please do not publish this post, for Moderators eyes only.
Before I leave and never look back I just want to thank you. I did learn a lot today (about the way people think) and I could not have done it without your help. I hope, even through all the screaming, my ideas in some way helped give another perspective on the subject. Thank you and enjoy your day and your blog.
p.s. No, my name is not Marcus and I have no idea who you are talking about.
guyidiot:
Oh, cupcake, this is not the oppression olympics. That alone speaks to what a dyed-in-the-wool bigot you are. My people, and other indigenous peoples have been on Turtle Island for tens of thousands of years. Long time, pumpkin. A great many people have been subjected to brutal genocide, forced assimilation, and the non-stop theft of their land and resources, which continue to this day, almost all of those peoples being indigenous, around the world.
If you could manage to read past your own nose, you’d know about the current battle my people and other indigenous people are in, right where I live. So please, spare me your attempted one-upmanship. It’s a filthy tactic commonly used by asshole bigoted white people. Bingo!
No, you don’t get that.
Oh please, you didn’t learn one damn thing, you don’t care in the least about any of the issues raised, and your ideas are nothing but bigotry and ignorance, so, no, you did not help in any way.
Funny, I didn’t hear any screaming, just a lot of whitesplaining.
Stellatree @ 44:
Yeah, same here. I guess if it contains cussing, it’s screaming.
Wow, that was like, a hyper Godwin. My meter literally exploded.
I’ll take a step past Drink! and say Down the cup!
I’d say that this article about BLM is a very pertinent one for guy, but I doubt he’d understand it.
I wonder why anyone would think this won’t happen. After all, there’s a Potter theme park which damn near rivals Disney now, so why would anyone think the bloated platform of Potterism won’t show up with a “special Native American” version?
O WAYT IZ THIS MOR WITEGUY PURRSPEKTIV BCUZ TRULY THERE IZ NO OTHER PERSPEKTIV IN WRLD!
How’s that for some screaming.
How is this relevant at all? Latvians were subjugated by various countries since the late 12th century! O noes! I’m still oppressed! (Well… There’s stuff to be said on that subject in the context of western European perceptions of eastern Europeans, but anyway.) We’re all Indians! Plus some of us even got some kind of land back (lookin at you, dontcareaboutyouguy)!!!
Yes! Freedom of speech! You can even call it Free Thought!! Plus: this is what all oppressed people are supposed to do, it’s like mandatory if you want to carry the Oppression Card, mmkay? But you have to do it on your own blog and on your own time and your own house rules and form your own oppressed perspective and be mad about all the oppressed things YOU want to be mad about, but you can’t tell other people how to be properly oppressed, esp. if you don’t take the time to educate yourself (using the freely provided information!) on their particular oppression. That’s against the rules of Oppression Club.
See the trouble is not that you’re offering some sort of alternate, brand-new, unique perspective. You’re coming in here and muddying the floor with your stupid whitesplaining, mainstream racist bullshit, and nobody around here has the time or the energy to wash that crap out of the carpet.
kthnxbai
Also, if this is your attitude:
… You are learning all the wrong lessons and it’s no surprise you’re incapable of discussing subjects about which you self-admittedly have very little understanding.
Your perspective is shit.
(This isn’t the same commenter as that white knightly one from a couple days ago, is it?)
Charly:
You know, as soon as I posted that I actually knew that thetrollwhodidn’tcare was going to make that “mistake.” I must be a psychic!
@thguywhocares (not)#37
And strangely enough, in your effort to trump the opression of other people with that of your people, you somehow managed to miss all the points made so far. You are so busy trying to claim the prize for the most opressed, that you fail to try and empathise with those who are also opressed in a different way. And in the case of Indians, not that much a different way, because genocide of Native American in North America exceeds holocaust in scale and duration.
A hint to the wise -- when you think about the opression of Jews next time, you might benefit from pondering how much the portrayal of Jews and Jewish customs in fiction over the years -- as greedy moneylenders (like in Ivanhoe), with visious religious rituals (baking virgin blood in bread) -- has contributed to their perception by the public. Perception, that accumulated a lot of this garbage over the years and culminated in the holocaust.
Get this through your skull -- even fictional potrayals of real people have consequences in real life.
rq:
Don’t think so.
Charly:
That’s an extremely important point, and those very old stories do still have an impact today, centuries later. Adding more bigotry, lies, and distortions to the common pool of knowledge will do damage for generations.
Charly
Yes. This.
You know what’s funny*?
Way up there, in comment #16, I actually tried to calmly engage theguywhoabsolutelydoesn’t care. You know, tried to further the conversation, foster understanding, that sort of things. No bad word or angry tone, just trying to make him understand what’s at issue here, using an example from the Potterverse.
Guess how much reaction that got. How the discussion went. How fruitful the exchange was.
*for a certain unfunny and unsurprising value of “funny”
Giliell @ 56:
Should have called guy something with stars in it, like a**hole. That would have gotten his delicate attention. Anyway, your post @ 16 was is excellent, and re-reading it reminds me of something that’s been bugging like a splinter under my skin.
Why would anything called Ilvermorny have houses named after beings from Indigenous mythologies? That does not make the least sense. If anything, it puts me in mind of all the colonial ‘Indian schools’.
Giliell
You didn’t know? Apparently you were screaming!
Caine
I read through the histories and the house descriptions, and there’s so much wrong with them, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a half-way intentional nod to Indian schools.
Goodness, look what happened while I was off reading about the Haudenosaunee as well as articles about the portrayal of Indians in writing. There’s a lot of it to read, just starting with the links already provided, so I’m not done yet. It’s kind of taking away time I could otherwise use to make stupid comments. Shoot.
Right, back to learning.
Johnny Vector @ 59:
I would so love to read a story about a world divided, always at war, who decides to try and adopt the Haudenosaunee Confederation’s method of brokering peace between people who are enemies, and it works, and the world stops breaking out in wars every 5 minutes.
Actually, I’d like that in reality, too.
rq:
Oh, that’s just great. As if there wasn’t still a tonne of trauma from that inflicted on generations of families.
rq
Must be some stealth capslock man app: whenever a woman writes something, it makes it appear in screaming caps together with inserted nasty words.
Caine
It makes total sense in a colonialist white setting where white wizards conquered the world just the same as white muggles did and then went on to use Indian names like sports teams.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that Rowling simply cannot write America, at least not without significantly changing the context of British wizardry. She simply denied the history of British colonialism in the original books. She included the odd non white character and acted as if those people simply appeared in Britain, much like the rest of British society is doing, and could they please stop coming?
Going to the Americas you can no longer do this. You need to ask the questions about colonisation, genocide, slavery. You either admit that your wizards are basically as shitty as everyone else and include them in the colonial system, killing Indian wizards who defend their people, enslaving African wizards, or you change history.
As you said, no Indian would have stood by and watched their people being murdered because of some bullshit statute of secrecy enacted in 1692 (What a nice colonialist time. Slavery is still the thing of the day and so is murdering indigenous people. But we’Re supposed to believe that black and indigenous wizards loftily agree upon a statute that would leave their families and people helpless).
That’s a general problem for low or primary world fantasy literature (that means fantasy literature that has earth as a setting like the Potter or Twilight books and not another, different world like Middleearth): Your worldbuilding either has to be very careful because you quickly reach points where the sole existence of your heroes would have far reaching consequences for the world we live in, or it has to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist, which is what Rowling simply should have done instead of expanding to the world.
Oh, and if we’re playing Oppression Olympics: I’m pretty sure that Babylonian men as well as Jewish men oppressed their women, so I win.
Interestingly, the history by Rowling does not mention slavery (not once!), so no black wizards and witches to make any kind of agreements. At all. There’s people called ‘Scourers’ which seem to be evil formerly magic people who renounced magic and are now doing their damnedest to remove all magic from their own families and everywhere else (reminiscent of the KKK?). But there’s no slavery, nothing about the arrival of wizards and witches from Africa (which would have been a cool and painful story, too -- the mingling of Nativa American, various African, and colonial magics and skills). Or a story about defeating slavery through magic (everyone’s magic!) but then rewriting history so it looks like the Civil War. Or something.
This is a massive fail.
And that name thing still bothers me. No names for Native Americans. The one pukwudgie who gets a name has it imposed on him by the ‘heroine’ (because he doesn’t want to reveal to her his actual name). Now if that isn’t reminiscent of Indian schools, I don’t know what is.
I could make a list of the wrong things I saw in the descriptions, and I doubt I’d even get a quarter of what’s wrong with them. Seriously, Rowling, the internet is your friend.
Despite his banning, I’d just like to grab this for a moment:
I am trying to take part in a conversation about an issue which I (admittedly) do not fully understand
That, right there, is the root of a heck of a lot of problems. They way you take part in conversations about issues you don’t understand is by listening. If you need to, you ask questions, and then listen to the answers. If you don’t understand the issue, and even know that you don’t understand the issue, then there is no point in you declaring your opinions, because your opinions are worthless.
If you sit down in lecture on quantum physics with no real understanding of the topic, you don’t then proceed to tell the lecturer that they’re wrong about the things they’re trying to explain to you.
Oops, missed the blockquote…
Me too! Based on some parts of the book I was referring to (references to the futility of fighting all the time, etc.), I would not be surprised if that happens in the second part of the trilogy. Of course the Romans are going to come back, having been thoroughly destroyed by the Cahokians (except for the one guy) in the first book, so that conflict remains. Guess I should get on with reading it.
I have to say, I have hard time to wrap my head around how a Jew could be this clueless about cultural appropriation, discrimination and the diverse direct and indirect ways by which different groups of people are being erased around the world.
I am a white guy with plenty of privilege. But I am also a member of a nation that, while not being subjected to the horrors POC have had (and have) to endure, still descended from people who gave the germanic languages the word “slave”, a nation that had undergone a few hunderd years of systemic germanisation in an attempt to erase its language and culture, and which is still by many people in west Europe seen as inferior and dirty (the primary reason for Brexit were not Muslim immigrants, but Slavs -- Poles and Czechs) . This knowledge helps me to understand issues I have very little knowledge about and almost no personal experience of, because I can look to similarities and parallels between what I know about my nations history and culture, and what happens elsewhere.
I would expect an educated and knowledgable Jew to be able to do the same, and even better, because I myself have never been great on the whole national identification thing and my knowledge of history is very patchy.
_______________
On J.K.Rowling and slavery -- Wizards in her world are a bunch of fucking racists already, and they are still slaveholders and are still engaging in genocides -- against giants and centaurs. About the only really decent person in all of the books is Hermione Granger, everybody else is an asshole and a racist to more or less realistic degree. The cavalier way in which evidently sentient and sapient beings are being slaughtered and cooked into potions is sometimes jarring.
So she could very easily write about how white wizards conquered POC alongside white muggles and how wizard world history copies that of ours and it would not be inconsistent with what she wrote up to date in the slightest (the “realistic” option). Or if she did not wish to do that, she could write about how wizards overcame their racial prejudices long before muggles started to work on the same (the “kids friendly” option). Or about how wizards of different colors were forced to overcome racial prejudices and join forces to hide magical world effectively from muggles, because there is so little of them that even magic would not help them if they were not united (the “wizards were the most persecuted” option). Or how wizzards are so full of prejudices against muggles in general, and against other sentient species, that a mere skin color is unimportant to them (the “dark” option, and in my mind the most consistent with how wizards are portrayed in the books).
I have not read too much about her latest schtik, but from the little what I have read it seems she took the “lazy” option. She had a winning formula, so she changed a few inconsequential details and presents it as something new. Possibly it is more of a facelift than a new model. I might be wrong. I really like Harry Potter books and movies and I do not intend to spoil that by reading/watching something that seems like half-cooked spinoff.
Charly:
That’s an excellent point. I was quite disturbed over the treatment of dragons in the series, they were basically the cattle of the wizarding world, good for expensive clothing and blood for potions.
I also cringed, a *lot* over how Hagrid was portrayed. Half giant, but still shown as almost retarded, unthinking, clumsy, lets things “slip” all the time, and so forth. In a later book, the portrayal of Hagrid’s relative and other giants was beyond cringeworthy. Why would you be automatically stupid just because you’re large? Oh, and Lady whatsherface from the school in France, at least part giant, but completely in denial.
But Hagrid? He was decent. Cared about all living creatures, not just wizards. Like Hermione. And both are ridiculed.
Giliell:
Yes. And in the case of Hermione, she was cast as the “keeper of morality” in all the books, in the age old traditions of misogyny.
I had issues with the easy dismissal of the subjugation of house elfs by our supposed hero Harry Potter, and also the house elfs’ insistence that no, they were fine being subjugated, because that’s just how it is!
The final book marginally addressed some issues with goblins and property and what belongs to whom and why, but not particularly satisfactorily.
I was thinking of a fanfic type piece from the point-of-view of Native American wizards and witches, where they do have schools and they do have a complex system of education and knowledge-sharing based on their thousands-year life and culture on Turtle Island -- and they create a network of magical outposts that work with escaped slave magicians to liberate even more slaves and fight against colonial rule. They have a disdainful (or at least, ‘not particularly impressed’) view of the single school colonialists have managed to establish, because who the fuck needs wands for magic anyway (that stuff about ‘sophisticated wand magic’ is a colonial self-comforting descriptor that denies the inherent unreliability and limitations of needing an external tool for your magic -- like putting training wheels on your mountain bike). Also magical being guest teachers, who are treated with respect and acknowledgement, and serve to deepen understanding of the life connection between all things, and the value of all living beings; black wizards and witches also incorporated as equals with valued alternative perspective. (A minor character would be a colonial child who decides to learn the Native American way, but has difficulty wrapping their head around the different way of thinking, but they might eventually get it, while at the same time serving as an example of colonial thinking for the others. They’d just sort of ask silly questions in the background.)
Anyway, I don’t think I have the understanding to write this in a way that wouldn’t, in the end, be just as offensive, but it floated around my head as an idea all of last night.
I hope I am not derailing.
Yes, Hagrid was decent too, but he was not a wizard, only half a wizard. And he was an excellent example of how much prejudice wizads at large held against anyone who was not wizard enough. Additionaly he was so absorbed in caring about animals that he sometimes forgot to spot that they are indeed really dangerous (viz his surprise that Aragogs descendants were ready to eat humans -- including him -- unabashedly) and that is not a good thing.
Looking at my bookshelf, I am not aware of a trope where women get cast as “keeper of morality”, so this did not bother me (that is not saying the trope does not exist, only that i do not know about it being in the books I read). Hermione is the only person in Potterverse I really like. Even Mrs. and Mr. Weasley have faults that would lead me to have a serious argument with them (to their credit, they both were presented as being able to be reasoned with). One is way too keen to own a slave, the other one tends to look at muggles as inferior, child like, and it does not make too much a difference that he has a benevolent and not a malevolent spin on it.
All wizards have too little regard for bodily and mental autonomy of virtualy everyone else.
What is undoubtedly mysogynist about the books is the ratio between male/female characters (my estimation, I did not perform conclusive analysis). While the portion ratio between good/bad female characters is approximately 1/1 (which is why I did not have big problem with Hermione), and the portion for good/bad male characters ist similarly equal, overall there are 2 plot significant male characters per each female.
Dragons are portrayed as mere big lizards, they are not portrayed as sapient, so honestly I did not have dragons in mind. I thought about mandrakes, who are deemed “mature enought to chop up” after their acne has cleaned up, they stopped being seclusive and threw a “party” in one of the greenhouses and started to move to each other pots. A plant that is capable not only to move, but of caring about their appearance, partying (which implies the capability to communicate, enjoy, socialize etc.) is evidently sentient and sapient.
Charly
Considering how fast he was kicked out of Hogwarts, this is very true.
I’ve always had a soft spot for both Neville and Luna, and wish both characters were differently developed, while maintaining the same quirks of character. Esp. Neville, who had a good chance of being as awesome as Harry, and would have been a nice subversive hero, considering Harry’s the one always getting all the attention re: the prophecy. But Luna, too, who is an oddball needing way more page- (and screen-) time. But this is definitely a derail and more a matter of taste, the point being that for me Hermione wasn’t the only likable character.
(Which reminds me, I think in the fifth book, where Ginny goes out with Dean (?) for a while, and her brothers don’t like it one bit (and this point is really, really pushed) but in the movie he’s a black student… suddenly the whole disliking of Dean took on a very distasteful angle.)
rq @ 72:
I’d read that.
¨
This was also a point against Hagrid, who dismissed Hermiones S.P.E.W. out of hand too. What was completely glossed over was that houseelves had no choice on the matter -- those who were unhappy because they were mistreated, were forced by spells to work for their masters anyways, or suffer punishment. It was a choice between liking your owners and working gladly, or not liking them and having to work anyways and burn/break your own fingers for not liking them and thinking naughty thoughts.
This has reminded me of this Darwin’s experience:
“…in the voyage at Bahia in Brazil he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered “No.” I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answers of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything….”
House-elves had their master always present, at least by proxy -- in binding spells.
Let’s not forget that Rowling conveniently killed off the only being who could make radical changes in regard to house elfs -- Dobby, and he died protecting wizards.
Caine
If I ever tried to write that, I’d be relying on you for proofreading and general correctivity quite a bit. :D
Oh yes, I was thinking about Dobby as well this afternoon. I think that Dobby never actually became a “free Elf” always only a freed Elf. He’s always totally grateful and never ever angry about, you know, having been enslaved.
It’s a missed opportunity, again. Rowling could have made a wonderful point about how “good people” can still support the subjugation of other people, their enslavement. How the wonderful Molly Weasley could still wish for a slave.
@Caine, 23:
I think you’ve answered your own question (“Why didn’t she do it right?”). The woman has a product to sell, and that second billion won’t make itself.
@Caine, 42:
Ouch, bit anti-Semitic.
———————-
The Potterverse is, even on the most cursory examination, a vomit-inducing celebration of all that’s wrong with British culture. Clue no.1: it’s set in a boarding school. The chance to go to this school is held up as being the greatest thing ever. Inquiries to real-life boarding schools rocketed after the books came out. Obviously most of those enquiries ended with the words “How much? Oh, er… OK. Thanks anyway.” It’s bizarre how a benefits-claimant single-mother wrote this paean to the wonderfulness of 1% and all their traditions, and as a direct result joined their ranks and ended up richer than the Queen.
That she should follow this up with shameless cultural appropriation with a side-order of colonialism should be no surprise at all.
Do you have a link to the origin of this colloquialism?
sonofrojblake:
Oh the fuck it is. Don’t make shit up. http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/can't+see+past+the+end+of+nose
It’s a variant of an old expression regarding self-centeredness.
Since this thread has been woken, there’s a great poem, J.K. Rowling and the Cursed Colonial here: https://walkerwrackspurt.wordpress.com/
Thanks for that link, Caine (the poem).
(Aside: I also have feelings about how J.K.Rowling has named a vicious, violent werewolf after a powerful figure in Norse mythology (and as ‘dead’ mythologies and religions go, this one seems to be undergoing something of a revival). Not the same level of appropriation, but it certainly speaks to her casual disrespect of important figures in the mythology of other cultures.
Now I don’t know if this is just me being unaware that Fenrir is actually a popular (or at least common) name in Scandinavian countries, but considering the original idea behind the name, I have feelings.)
rq, oh, I hated her appropriation of Fenrir’s name, when her character was nothing more than a sadistic thug, with a thing for preying on children.
Fenriswolf is an important part of many destinies, and of course, ragnarok.
Sorry, I should have more clearly flagged that “bit anti-Semitic” comment as humour, subcategory poor attempt. It blindingly obviously wasn’t anti-Semitic. At the risk of dissecting a frog, that was the point, and the target was theguywhocares and his “my people, the Jews” noise, not you. Apologies for any offence caused.