Antichrist!(insert main character here)

[i_karkaroff]

No: HPFGUIDX 46375

Technically it's still possible for Voldemort to become an Anti-
Christ parallel, if dramatically unlikely.  Fudge's suppression of 
information relating to his activities gives everyone's favourite 
Dark Lord a lot of room to maneuver, and if he's smart, he'll build 
up massive support while he can by pushing the law-and-order hot 
button.  For him to be so politically effective and influential in 
the first place, he would have had to have a vast support system.  
The seeds are still there - most wizards don't seem to care for, or 
at least care _about_ Muggles and this is an open door.  He still has 
the rest of the series to Get Smart and start buttering up the 
populace, but I think we all know that's not how it's going to turn 
out.

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Melody" <Malady579 at h...> wrote:
> Ok, I see what your saying.  There could be closet-Voldie supporters
> that run under radar.  Big possibility.  We have, after all, only
> heard from the big supports of both sides.  There had to be a few
> country wizards and witches that had a poster of Voldie on a back 
wall.

*nod* Actually I think it essential that there were lesser supporters 
of Voldemort because JKR seems to be drawing the DEs as the 
terrorists of the WW.  Terrorism doesn't spring up out a vacuum - 
it's usually based on legitimate grievances, but taken to an extreme 
and usually has a significant amount of popular support. 

> I guess the question is why are the Death Eaters followers of
> Voldemort?  What would they have to gain?  Don't they know evil
> *always* looses to good?  Have they not studied history?  Well that 
>is a possibility with the way Prof. Binns teaches, and who know how 
>long that ghost has been at Hogwarts.

No, they don't know that evil always loses to good because, well, 
that's a literary cliché, not a historical fact.  And I'd have to say 
it's very likely the DEs don't _know_ they're in a book ;)  History 
does not teach us anything like what you've posited, rather it 
teaches us that conflicts come and go.  Stuff happens.  Then more 
stuff happens.  Proper history should be taught without moral 
judgments, because it's always more complicated than you suggest.

Why do the DEs follow Voldemort?  Probably because they _do_ have 
something to gain, should his goals be accomplished.  The greatest 
motivators are threats to wealth, religion, family and culture.  
Obviously the DEs, who perceive Muggles as a threat, are operating 
under several of these motivators.  They should also expect to have 
positions of high status in Voldemort's New World Order.     

>Now it seems the choice of the masses is to 
>align themselves with Voldemort by leaving him alone or be tortured 
>and killed.  It was not a attempt on Voldemort's part to bring 
>supports on his rhetoric.  Only on the quickness of his death happy 
>wand.

How do we know that Voldemort didn't try to bring over the masses 
with rhetoric?  What _was_ Riddle doing all those years?  And you 
don't think that Lucius Malfoy and Voldemort's other mouthpieces 
aren't trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to woo the masses?  I'd argue 
that his 'death-happy wand' is actually harmful to his campaign.  
People are only ignoring him because they don't want their peaceful 
lives disrupted and they'll keep on ignoring him until his presence 
is shoved in their faces.      

> The anti-christ bewitches (hehe) the world to believe his intentions
> are good, and his goals are the ideals to attain.  That is when evil
> really takes over.  When it reaches into the mind and convinces the
> world it is not evil.  It seems to me that Voldie has not figured 
>that fact out.  Hitler did.  He brainwashed a nation.  Voldie seems 
>to not have such a campaign.

Well actually he didn't brainwash a nation, he just gave the people 
someone to blame for their problems by tapping into an existing 
prejudice, which would be soooo easy for Voldemort to do a la the 
Muggles.  But.  He's not going to.  He strikes me as just a bit too 
wacky to get it together and really lead an effective coup.

I have to agree with Melody that Voldemort isn't an Anti-Christ 
parallel.  He could be, but he just won't make over those hurdles, 
the poor guy. ;)

~MartianHousecat