The theme, was Re: Ginny hexes / kinds of bigotry /etc

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

> Pippin:
> I don't see each kind of intolerance being presented as a separate 
> issue. 

I see them as having different manifestations and thus requiring 
different treatments, so I'm tending to specificity.  House-elves 
have a different situation than werewolves--we've gotten lots of 
hints that SPEW is onto something but Hermione is going about it 
wrong.  We've gotten very few hints of a solution to the werewolf 
problem, but the two are not completely equivalent.

> If you are right, and Snape's grand motivation is racism, then 
> she's done the same thing with him, because Snape's racism barely 
> raises its head.

I don't think his grand motivation is *racism* per se, although she's 
managed to mark at least young Snape with a brush that is so rarely 
used as to be exceptionally notable.

But we do have the continual impression of Snape as someone rather 
convinced of his own quality to the point of superiority, and if you 
buy the connections I would make between believing in pureblood 
ideology and the Dark Arts, and the mutual attitudes I think they 
share--there's a motivation for you.  Building frustration and 
resentment over the course of the books, unlanced tends to fester.
 
> Nora:
> > No, because you can't do what he does with Muggles.
> 
> Pippin:
> ?!!! ::boggles:: Of course you can. Or are you saying  there aren't
> any Muggle dictators in JKR's world.

You can't have the same kind of setup that Voldemort has with 
Muggles, because they can't teleport at will, etc.

> Pippin:
> Huh?
> I thought Dumbledore said just the opposite, that if Voldemort had
> True Belief in the pureblood philosophy, he'd have thought Neville, 
> being a pure-blood, was more likely to have the power to vanquish
> him.  Voldemort shows he understands that the pureblood nonsense
> is just that, by going after Harry.

Except that it shows that he does believe in the blood stuff as an 
indication of something, he goes for the child he thinks is most like 
himself.  I'm not saying that it's consistent at all, but it does 
seem to play into his thinking: I'm thinking about how he talks about 
Lily, and that he may have dismissed her precisely because of 'what' 
she was.  His loss, as we saw.

-Nora basks in the warm winter weather for another day