Wizard supremacy (was:Re: Nel Question #4: Class and Elitism)

[alshainofthenorth]

No: HPFGUIDX 125918


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> 
> Betsy: "Every piece of Wizarding history given to us by JKR speaks 
to
> a large calamity that occured back around the middle ages and ended 
in
> a mass retreat of the entire Wizarding World. The entire WW revolves
> around keeping their existence secret. This is not the actions of a
> victorious people."

Jim:
> Not a calamity, but a widespread pattern of persecution that led to
> the Wizards going underground. We know from our Muggle history that
> war never ceased, and persecution of minorities didn't, either.  How
> many witch-burnings and pogroms did the wizards have to see before
> they decided this wasn't their party?  Actually, I suspect wizards 
had
> been hiding for a long time before their concealment was codified 
in 1692.

I'd need to check on my sources again, but the witch craze during the 
era actually bordered on mass psychosis in Northern Europe. A common 
trait in witch trial protocols from all over Europe (haven't studied 
the Salem records as much) was that the intent of the witch or wizard 
didn't make any difference whatsoever. Every kind of magic, Light or 
Dark didn't matter, was punished just as harshly. I don't think it's 
a small wonder if magical people finally had it with Muggles who 
couldn't even see the difference between good and bad magic. 
Attempting an explanation probably only led to the stake.
 
And about the witch hunts: In one of my favourite fanfics, the author 
has a grown-up Neville Longbottom musing that the lessons in History 
of Magic might not have been dull and boring by accident (AJ Hall: 
Dissipation and Despair). The smugly stated theme of Harry's history 
essay in PoA and the glib account in his text book give me similar 
suspicions.

*Was* witch-burning in the Middle Ages (two misunderstandings; first, 
witch hunts belonged in the 17C [the medieval bugaboo was heresy, not 
witchcraft], second, witches in England were hanged, not burned) 
really all that pointless as Harry's history book suggests? What if 
you were a Squib? What if you didn't have a wand ready? Or what if 
you for some reason didn't know how to perform a Flame-Freezing 
charm? Harry uncritically accepts his text book without looking for 
corroboration from other sources, but then we already knew that he 
isn't much of a scholar. (And if the Dursleys do own an edition of 
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I'll bet anything that Harry isn't 
allowed to touch it.)

Magical historians must have their biases as well, internal and 
external ones. It's a no-no to whip up antagonism against Muggles, as 
a true account might have done, and it wouldn't do much good to 
present witches and wizards as helpless victims of Muggle bigotry for 
exactly the same reason. So what do they do to get out of this Catch-
22? They breezily belittle and explain away the entire problem.

(All right, it's possible that I'm attributing unnecessarily sinister 
motives to Bathilda Bagshot, author of "A History of Magic". But the 
wizarding world seems to have its collective head in the sand about 
so many issues that a few more won't make much difference at all.)

Alshain