Danger in designating an "Other" / Bad magic (wasRe: Deathly Hallows Reactio...)

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 173923


> Betsy Hp:
> <snip>
> *However* what I'm referring to is the incredibly civilized way the 
> Allies delt with defeated Germany.  It would have been so easy to 
> just massacre entire cities and towns.  I'm sure some of the rescuers 
> wanted to after releasing people from the death camps.  But they 
> didn't.  They held the Nuremberg trials instead.  They made sure the 
> guilty were punished but they also enabled Germany to atone and move 
> on.  They allowed Germany to seperate itself from Nazism.  *And* 
> there were examples of Germans who did protest, who did rescue.
> 
> (The same is true of Japan, actually.)
> 
> Which is in contrast to DH in which Death Eaters and Slytherins were 
> pretty much synonymous and Slytherin remains the "bad" house.  Rather 
> than say the house that builds really great cars. <g>
> 

Neri:
your analogy perhaps isn't very accurate. Being a Slytherin is not
like being a German. No one is born a Slytherin, they choose to become
one. Slytherin is an ideology, a racist ideology that is more analog
of being Nazi, not of being German. The question that interests me
isn't why after 19 years Slytherin still have a bad image (I doubt
that 19 years after the WWII neo-Nazis in the USA or Britain, not to
mention in Israel, would have a better image). The interesting
question to me is why haven't all Wizard parents, especially those who
grew up in Slytherin House, told their children "blood purity is an
evil ideology. It was responsible for many atrocities during the war.
When you go to Hogwarts to be sorted, you tell the Hat: don't put me
in Slytherin. Not Slytherin, not Slytherin". After all, isn't this
what Germans did after WWII? Didn't they renounce Nazism and racism?


> Betsy Hp:
> Oh, and no thought is given to *why* Voldemort rose up out of 
> Slytherin.  That maybe all of this shame piled onto Slytherin has 
> given rise to a monster.  Much as the shame piled on Germany after 
> WWI gave rise to Hitler.
> 

Neri:
I've always had the impression that Voldemort rose up in Slytherin
because their ideology suited him so much. In the Wizarding World it
was Voldemort and his DEs who gave rise to VW1, not the other way
around. I don't know a single clue in canon that Slytherins suffered
any shame before VW1. 


Neri, who also dislike Dumbledore browbeating Snape to kill him, but
notes that Snape didn't seem to require that much browbeating.