Why didn't DD reveal Voldemort's identity?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186900

Magpie wrote:
> <snip> LV being a Half-blood is not the thing that's supposed to be funny, since there's nothing particular funny about it. It's Voldemort himself that needs to be made into a figure of ridicule, just like Hitler. Hitler was laughed at loudly and often while he was trying to take over the world. Especially by the people defying him. It was part of resistance. You can fear something and still laugh at the person causing it. 
> 
Carol:
What's funny about Tom Riddle, the brilliant and handsome orphan who distinguished him at school by becoming first a Prefect and then Head Boy, and by winning an award for services to the school, being Voldemort? It's not remotely funny that he charmed so many people into thinking that he had to potential to be Minister for Magic or that he got away with unprovable murders (had Dumbledore been able to convince the MoM that Hagrid was innocent and Tom Riddle guilty of Moaning Myrtle's murder, he would have done so. Ha, ha, Voldemort's a Half-Blood raised in a Muggle orphanage? I'm not laughing. I see nothing to laugh about. It's a tragedy that he went bad. In fact, his story might even make people feel sorry for him--except for those whom he's already threatened, harmed, or recruited, and knowing his story--the parts that DD can reveal without also revealing that he's investigating Voldemort's past--would, IMO, make no difference.

And his being a Half-Blood *is* the part that people are arguing would make a difference. I'm pretty sure, however, that Lucius Malfoy and others like him know that there are no Riddles in "Nature's Aristocracy," and it makes no difference to them. Why not? Because Voldemort's power gives them power as his followers, and his agenda, insofar as it concerns torturing Muggles and putting Muggle-borns in their place, is his agenda.

We hear Draco, at age eleven, speaking of *two* kinds of Wizards, "our kind" (those with Wizarding blood) and "the other kind" (Muggle-borns). Half-Bloods aren't mentioned, but if only two categories are available, they would fall into the first one.

So, yes, of course, JKR does it for plot reasons. And, yes, of course, Dumbledore is secretive. But if we think of Dumbledore as a character capable of independent thinking, who is not merely JKR's puppet, he must have had reasons for not revealing Tom Riddle's identity.

Carol, who originally thought that Voldemort was foolishly blowing his cover by revealing that he had a Muggle father in GoF but now thinks that it made no difference to the DEs, who had other reasons to follow and fear him