Why do 'purebloods' hate Muggles?

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 47284

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "chthonia9" <chthonicdancer at h...> 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.
> 
<SNIP>  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 to
> people 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. <SNIP loads of interesting stuff>

It is an interesting question, and I would venture to make a 
parallel with the current terrorist campaign - V. and his followers, 
after all, did seem more like terrorists than anything else.  It's 
not clear to me that they were on the point of seizing control of 
the "government" of the WW, or what that would even look like.  But 
they were creating a lot of instability, fear and destruction.  Like 
the Serbs, the Irish and now the Islamicist terrorists, there seems 
to be among the pureblood wizards a feeling of some lost golden age, 
when things were properly ordered, i.e., when they had the superior 
position they deserve.  The wizards would have to admit that 
the "rot" set in very early, while Salazar Slytherin was still 
alive, but fanatics can usually take those problems in stride.  I 
think you're right when you point out that families like the Malfoys 
see it as unjust that they should have to live in hiding from their 
inferiors, and to have these same inferiors also encroaching on 
their world and being treated as equals is just intolerable.  I 
don't know just what the eventual consequences of a Voldemort 
triumph would have been - war on the Muggle world?  Probably not, or 
at least not at first.  It probably would have been an "ethnic 
cleansing" of the halfbloods and mudbloods, and down the road, who 
knows?  Maybe there was some thought that an all pureblood wizardry 
would eventually become strong enough to conquer the Muggle world.  

Wanda

>