[HPforGrownups] Grindelwald, Voldemort, and other dark folks

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 52369

Catlady:

>A powerful piece of fanfic ... it might make Grindelwald the hero and
>Dumbledore the villain of the piece ... but do we have ANY evidence
>that whatever Grindelwald did involved Muggles at all? It can be
>imagined that some powerful Dark Wizard could make quite a nuisance
>of himself robbing wizards of their wealth and forcing witches to
>fall in love or lust with him under Imperius, and killing Aurors who
>came to arrest him, and no Muggles involved at all.

Well, of course, we have no evidence of anything about him other than his
name, the date that Dumbledore bested him, and the fact that he was a
black-robe. I don't think I see him as a hero - I'm sure that Dumbledore
would have responded from the standpoint of _compassion_ in my little
excursus. But I keep coming back to the question of why dark wizards recur,
and what attracts followers to them. Now once again I can only respond by
thinking of what the key political issue would be for me if I were suddenly
pitchforked into the WW: the fact that wizards have these staggering
abilities to alter reality and yet there is a huge (and for me sinister)
bureaucracy enforcing a social norm that magical folk must all keep hidden.
>From there, it's just a short step to see repeated conspiratorial groups of
wizards (Voldemort, Grindelwald, Edric...) who want to change things and who
attract support by attracting those wizards who have either a desire for
domination over others, or who just want to be out of the shadows and
flexing their magical muscles. That's not to say that I'm drawn to the
Voldemortian view, of course, because I think there is a third possibility,
if you like an "anarcho-wizard" one which would remove the bureaucracy
without replacing it with some sort of dark lordship. But I'm way out in the
rocky, mined, and shark infested waters of Theory Bay on this one, which has
absolutely (AFAIK) no support in canon.

Incidentally, I still come back to the question of exactly what Voldemort's
pitch was, to attract so many supporters. Surely someone as sophisticated as
Lucius Malfoy would not have been convinced just by "I'm the dark guy, I
hate my parents, it's really unfair!" (which I know makes Tom Riddle sound
like Kevin the Teenager...)

Cheers

Ffred

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