The Pensieve-McCarthy Analogy

[coriolan_cmc2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 31168

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "irbohlen" <irbohlen at e...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "lazaraspaste" <lazaraspaste at y...> wrote:
> > > But before that. As regards Crouch Sr: rereading GoF, I think 
> > you're 
> > > probably right to see Crouch in an Ashcroft role. 
> > 
> > Delurking just to put in my two cents. I always felt that 
Crouch's 
> > role during the Pensieve trials was far more analogous to Joseph 
> > McCarthy during the Communist witch hunts of the 1950's or even 
> > Kenneth Starr. Those trial scenes played for me like a Senate 
> > Commitee Hearing Investigating Death Eater Activities rather than 
a 
> > traditional criminal trial. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong 
but 
> > I think that in Senate Hearings they have the right to sentence 
if 
> > they find someone guilty.

The McCarthy analogy to the Pensieve trials is  180 degrees wrong.  
McCarthy made *false* accusations of Communist Party membership 
and/or of actively and consciously working to advance the Communist 
Party's agenda in the US.  (Ol' Tailgunner Joe couldn't even keep his 
own numbers straight: there were as many as 205 or as few as 51 card-
carrying communists in the State Department, according to his varying 
utterances.)  The Senate, a legistlative body, is limited to fact-
finding in its hearings – it cannot sentence anyone to prison, a 
function which is given to our judicial system. (Although it can 
expose malfeasance that the judicial system can then pursue – it can 
also grant immunity to prosecution in exchange for testimony).  

One may argue that the Pensieve Trials were improperly administered, 
that there were significant conflicts of interest (e.g., a father 
trying his son, etc.), etc. etc.  But you can not argue that this was 
a "witch-hunt" (in the Muggles sense). There was genuine guilt! 
(which also renders the Ken Star analogy inoperable from the liberal 
perspective, though not from mine). Voldemort's followers were 
culprits in a malevolent and wicked politico-terrorist organization, 
and it was clearly the responsibility of the Ministry of Magic to 
bring these malefactors to justice.  A much better analogy would be 
Nuremberg.  Again, men whose association with an evil regime was a 
matter of record, and whose guilt was often clear were tried and 
usually convicted by a jerry-built assemblage of post hoc laws.  
Because the guilt of the Nazis was so evident, few at the time 
questioned the process through which this guilt was established.  One 
of the few who did was Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio: read JFK's chapter 
about this in Profiles in Courage.

>From a website on Nuremberg, we read:

http://www.courttv.com/casefiles/nuremberg/legacy.html

"In the view of most historians, Nuremberg's legacy is mixed. They 
are generally favorable to the attempt made by the Allies to bring 
some form of international judicial accounting for the horrors of the 
Nazi regime. To this day, Nuremberg remains the most thorough record 
of Hitler's rise to power, and the planning, launching and execution 
of World War II. As such, it was no small achievement, and one that 
was forged out of the chaos and rubble immediately following World 
War II.

But some argue that the International Military Tribunal was a 
victor's justice, and the trial has been criticized for a variety of 
reasons. The list of those accused was somewhat arbitrary. There also 
were basic misgivings. The accused had been charged with violations 
of international law, but such law was binding on nations, not 
individuals. Individuals, it was argued, could be brought to justice 
only under the laws of their own country, not on the basis of a new 
order established after a war. It may have been imperfect justice, 
but there was no alternative."

Right! We couldn't just let the Nazis off scot-free – even an 
imperfect justice was better than avoiding the situation altogether. 
Same thing with the Wizard World of JKR.

The most serious offense of the M.O.M was their refusal to let 
certain individuals stand trial.  If Sirius Black (for example) had 
been allowed to testify, it might have alerted others to the 
possibility that Peter Pettigrew was still alive, and to have enabled 
him to be bought to justice.

   - CMC