Why do 'purebloods' hate Muggles?

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 47272

Chthonia (Interesting name, btw - how should I pronounce it?) wrote:
> I've been trying to get my head round what is driving the
> Voldemort supporters – though from Harry's (or more generally
> a Gryffindor) point of view `they went bad' might suffice,
> it's not a very convincing (or interesting) argument in my opinion.
> 
> Maybe all the Death Eaters were motivated by various individual 
> combinations of lust for power, desire to offset their own sense of 
> insignificance by aligning themselves to a powerful, directive 
> force, or destructive urges to wreak mayhem.  But throughout the 
> books there's this constant emphasis on bloodlines, and while we do 
> geta reason why Riddle/Voldemort would hate Muggles, and hence 
> direct his movement that way, there also seems to a more general 
> prejudice (expressed most forcefully by the Malfoys), and I can't 
> really see where its roots might be.

There have been comprehensive analysis of what exactly motivates DEs
individually (Lucius' desire of power, for example. Others for
cruelty, fun, peer presure, whatever). However, the *mass* of people
who support Voldemort's actions (and there are always people who give
support without actually participating directly) are probably
motivated by fear. As you said:

> I wouldn't (thankfully) claim to be an expert in genocidal
> conflicts, but from what I do know they tend to be founded on an 
> irresolvable, deep-seated sense of either injustice or threat. To 
> give two examples if the former: I vividly remember discussing the 
> situation in the Balkans with a Serbian colleague about 8 years ago, 
> trying to understand what was going on, and he began by talking 
> about events that had occured 1000 years ago.  Similarly, I've 
> spoken topeople bitterly embroiled on both sides of the Troubles in 
> Northern Ireland, and both sides had their litany of ills that the 
> other side had perpetrated.
>
> This is not the case at all in JKR's Wizarding world, where one
> `side' (Muggles) is completely oblivious to the very
> existence of the 
> other, so there is nothing to feel threatened or bitter about 
> (unless one makes the assumption that our inquisitions 
> and witch burnings were actually carried out against this Wizarding 
> community, rather than being a completely Muggle phenomenon.  I 
> doubt this assumption – there is nothing to suggest it in the books
> (unless I have missed something) – though OTOH there are very
> good political/commercial reasons why JKR would avoid any such 
> implication)
> 
> Chthonia

There is no actual need for *both* sides fearing and hating the other.
Hate, in this case, is a consequence of fear: if you fear something,
you change your way of thinking so that you hate them, and that gives
you the courage to fight against them. The next step is de-humanizing
your adversary: once you manage to convince yourself that whatever it
is, it's got no right to live, is much easier to commit atrocities
agaisnt them. All this is, of course, wrong. The process to follow if
you fear someone is to try and understand that fear and reach an
agreement (something equivalent to mutual defense pacts, but aplied to
social relations).

Going back to the sides idea, there are cases where only one of the
sides hates the other. The WW is one of such cases, since the muggles,
as you point out, are unaware of the existance of a bigot group that
hates them. This makes no difference for the bigot group, except it
makes their attacks easier.

The rest of your analysis is very good: in my view of canon, the fear
of the pure bloods towards the muggles is very ancient (not quite 1000
years, but close enough): when the muggle population started to
increase, dwarfing the wizard population, the wizards realized that,
if the muggles ever wanted to destroy them, they would be in dire
straits. No matter what advantage magic would give them in such a war,
a disadvantage of 100 to 1 is almost always equivalent to total
destruction. This fear is possibly behind the decision to hide - but
in the "warrior culture" of the WW, some families would resent having
to hide from the muggles. That sort of grudge can either disapear or
grow, and in some cases it has grown indeed. Coupled with the fact
that they feel they're better than muggles anyway (since they can do
magic and the muggles cannot), the "purebloods" really feel that they
are the ones that should be out in the open, with muggles hiding from
them. Take into account that "old families" tend to have an egocentric
streak, having to hide from inferiors is going to cause them something
akin to physical pain.

Not that it really matters, but for sake of completenes: were muggles
really intending to destroy the WW? There is no proof that they ever
took a rational approach against it, but it is entirely possible that
the inquisition and the witch burnings were intended against wizards,
inefective as they were (Harry writes an essay for History about the
ineffectiveness of witch burning in PoA), so the wizards were right to
hide. But there is a certain egg-and-chiken problem here: maybe the
muggles realized that the wizards were going into hiding, and they
didn't want people with such powers to fade out of view. In this sort
of situations, if you dig enough, you find blame enough to go around.
No-one's hands are ever totally clean. But, as I said, that was some
800 years ago, so it no longer matters, except to a few pig-headed
"pure bloods".

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf