The WW is fascist? (was the DE are Nazi?)

[naamagatus]

No: HPFGUIDX 124743



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" 
<delwynmarch at y...> wrote:
> 
> 1) Authoritarianism and the absolutist tradition: power must lie in
> the hands of one ruler of the state.
> 
> As you yourself pointed, Nora, this is something quite common in the
> WW. Even right now, three people are "competing" for the title of
> absolute ruler: LV, Fudge, and DD. All three of them have loyal
> followers that think that everything would be perfect if their own
> champion was the only ruler.

LV and his aspirations are far different from the definition and 
expectations of the Minister of Magic position. First of all, the 
authority lies not in the person, but in the position. That's a huge 
distinction. Compare to the cult of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, for 
instance, and you'll see the difference. Secondly, conflating the hem-
kissing DEs with the free speaking, if loyal, followers of DD is to 
ignore precisely what makes the one group fascist-like and the other 
not. Further more, DD is the leader for practical reasons (he is the 
wisest, the most experienced and the most powerful wizard) and in 
order to serve an external cause, not as a cause in itself.

> 
> Fudge: not really any mythology... yet. Give him another decade or 
two (which he won't have), and I'm sure we'd see some tall stories 
>surfacing.

Fudge has been Minister for quite some time, and he remains a gray, 
uninspiring figure. The whole MoM has a very bureaucratic flavor, in 
fact. It is against this grayness that DD (and Voldemort) stand out 
as charismatic leaders.

> 
> I also feel that the mythology about the Founders is related to that
> point. After several hundreds years, the sytem the Founders imagined
> is still in place at Hogwarts, it hasn't been replaced. Kids are 
still
> proud to be from this or that House, to be connected with this or 
that
> great Founder. It's a big deal that Harry is a true Gryffindor, for
> example, and it was ominously meaningful that young Snape was a
> Slytherin. "A sense of the destiny of a particular people", indeed.

But it's not carried outside, to the adult world. It remains very 
much a school thing. The loyalties generated are personal (like the 
friendship between the Marauders continued after their school years), 
they don't divide the society into warring or conflicting sub-
cultures or groups. 
Other than that, there is certainly no sense of a common or special 
destiny that the wizarding society feels. The OoP conflict with Fudge 
rests on the disinclination of Fudge and most of the WW to continue 
their routine, comfortable lives. This seems to be the general desire 
of this society.

> 
> 3) Organicism: a system in which everyone's place is precisely
> defined and fixed.
> 
> The WW in its entirety is very much such a system. We even know that
> the wizards spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out 
a
> system that could categorise every single magical and non-magical
> creature... with the wizards on top, of course.

Nora pointed out the anarchism and lack of order of the WW. While the 
MoM attempts, with its laws and regulations, to bring order, this 
most resembles a parody of modern Britain (or any Western state, 
really). 

> 
> And once again, we have the House system in Hogwarts, where students
> are *literally* sleeping and eating and living in fixed places
> depending on which House they belong to. Not to mention the unspoken
> but very important rules of preeminence between the different 
>Houses.

The boarding schools of Britain had all these features, and more (for 
instance, the institute of fagging), but that doesn't make and didn't 
make Britain a fascist society. Organicism is where the entire 
society is thus organised (think Sparta). 

> 
> 4) Obedience to the leader and system are of primary importance.
> 
> We've seen that again and again. For example, there are laws to
> prevent wizards from doing magic in front of Muggles, complete with
> punishment for doing so, and special forces to enforce that law.
> There's also a law preventing underage wizard from doing any magic
> during the holidays, and Harry suffered at their hands even before 
the
> MoM got on his case.

Every democratic state has laws and a police and justice system. 
Obedience to the law and obedience to a person are very, very 
different. See above.
> 
> 
> 5) Disruption of traditional or previous class distinctions, which
> are redefined by new criteria distinctive to each incarnation of the
> fascist system.
> 
> This is exactly what happens to Muggleborns when they enter the WW.
> Suddenly, things such as race, religion, money, position of parents 
in
> society, schools they went to, ancestry, intelligence, talents,
> previous accomplishments, or whatever, become of no importance. But 
on
> the other hand, something that had never mattered before, the fact
> that their parents are not magical, becomes quite an issue. The WW
> makes no effort to respect the particularities of the Muggleborns. 

The WW is as old a society as the Muggle society. What Nora means 
here (as I understand it), is the way that fascist regimes disrupted, 
redefined existing class distinctions that preceded the regime. This 
we do not see at all. Fudge is certainly all for maintaining the 
status quo - in fact, that's his sole agenda. Voldemort and the DEs 
disrupt the existing distinctions by radicalizing them, whereas DD is 
the progressive who wants to eradicate them. 
 
>It
> is expectd of the Muggleborns that they turn into perfect copies of
> the wizard-borns, period. What they might bring to the WW is deemed 
of
> no importance, they must now make their life rotate around this one
> particular attribute : magic. Nothing else matters.

I understand your point of view, but it is entirely personal. There 
isn't the slightest hint in canon that JKR views this in the same 
way. Unlike non-human species oppression, for instance, this is just 
not a concern for her.

> 
<snip> 
> 
> 9) Enforcers of the regime loyal to the dictator.
> 
> Umbridge was very loyal to Fudge, and she wasn't the only one. Even
> the Daily Prophet people were loyal to the Ministry.

But Umbridge wasn't typical, as I see it. Fudge wields a lot of power 
as Minister for Magic, but the type of pressure he put on the Daily 
Prophet isn't much different from the pressure exerted on the media 
in democratic countries, particularly when some national threat is 
perceived (or imagined).


Naama