I love this series. Like so many others, I grew up reading the Harry Potter series. I’ve read through it approximately one million times and it’s amazing every. single. time. I can’t name another series that has so much staying power, and I read A LOT.
A lot of the reason, in my opinion, that the Harry Potter series has so much appeal is that embedded in the whimsy of a wizarding world with marvelous features like funny potions and a mystical castle are surprisingly dark themes; themes that are frighteningly familiar in today’s world. The real one, not the magical one.
What do I mean? Let’s take a look.
Racism
We encounter this theme fairly early on in the series. In the very first book of the series, Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone for those in the UK), the idea that some wizards think themselves superior to others based upon their genetics appears. While some characters (rightfully) dismiss this idea as nonsense, it is a very real prejudice that exists in the world. In Book 2, Chamber of Secrets, we learn that there is even a slur for these so-called “inferior” wizards and witches: Mudblood.
I don’t need to tell you that this is obviously a parallel with the N-word, and the sentiment behind it is the same. Prejudice against people because of things they can’t control, in this case genetics, is nothing new in our world. J.K. Rowling illustrates how ugly this can be throughout the series.
Ugly Acts
During an otherwise uneventful and enjoyable sporting event at the beginning of Book 4, Goblet of Fire, Harry & the other protagonists are rudely awoken in the dead of night by a crowd of people in hoods and masks parading through their campgrounds while holding a family of Muggles (non-magical people) hostage above them with magic. Frighteningly reminiscent of the disgusting activities of the Ku Klux Klan in our world.
This is called “Muggle-Baiting”. The racist pure-blood wizards view non-magical people as beneath them, like animals, and thus feel justified in torturing and killing them for sport.
If you think that wouldn’t happen in our world, I invite you to look at some of the comments about Ilhan Omar.
Escalation
In Book 5 and beyond, this behavior intensifies. Due to the return of Lord Voldemort (I’ll touch more on him being an analogue for a fascist dictator later) emboldening them, these racist wizards (Death Eaters) start outright killing those they believe beneath them: Muggles and “Mudbloods”.
There is also the concept of “blood traitors” in the novels. These are wizards who are “pure-blood” – that is, they are 100% magical and have no “Muggle” blood in their families – but who do not believe in the inherent superiority of magical bloodlines.
The Weasley family are the most prominent example of this. They are maligned by other pureblood wizards because they don’t believe that being pure-blood inherently makes you superior. This, obviously, is a nod to “race-traitors” in our world: white people who do not treat black or brown people as inferior.
Slavery
Yes, there is a depiction of slavery in this series. House-Elves are a race of creatures, that, as their name implies, serve wealthy wizarding families. They perform all sorts of duties for them, mostly menial tasks such as cleaning and cooking. In other words, tasks that the well-to-do wizards view as beneath them. House-Elves, though they also possess powerful magic, are bound by enchantments to prevent them from using it except in service to their masters.
Should they disobey – or even think about disobeying – an order, they must punish themselves severely.
The Depiction of Slavery
We see two starkly different depictions of House-Elves in the series. First, there’s Dobby. Dobby is a slave of the Malfoy family, one of the pureblood families that view Muggles with disdain. He is treated like garbage by his masters. When he disobeys them to warn Harry about a plot to sow discord at Hogwarts School, he is forced to punish himself, which he does by repeatedly bashing his head against objects and even ironing his own hands.
At the end of Book 2, Harry manages to free Dobby from the Malfoys and Dobby is thrilled with his freedom. He leaves and we don’t see him again for some time.
The next time we see Dobby he is living it up with his freedom. Dobby’s life is great now; he’s gotten a job at Hogwarts and is even being paid! However, he is treated as something of a pariah by the other House-Elves.
The other elves we see in the series are quite content with their servitude. Indeed, they seem to love their masters and their work, and see Dobby’s pleasure with freedom as something of a scandal. The other major House-Elf in the series – Winky – illustrates this attitude.
Winky is the slave of one of the Ministry’s officials. She, unlike Dobby, is very devoted to her “family”, as she calls it. Upon being freed, which is depicted as a sort of “firing”, she is so distraught she never really recovers, turning to alcoholism. This, she claims, is the “correct” response to being freed from servitude. Far from enjoying freedom, house-elves seem to relish servitude.
The Slave Parallel
It’s obvious that the house-elves are an analogue for slaves, and their situation an analogue for slavery in general. In fact, Hermione Granger explicitly calls it slavery several times after learning about the truth of their servitude.
This is accurate, and yet, the wider Wizarding world – even otherwise good wizards like the Weasley family – view Hermione as bizarre and misguided when she begins a crusade of elf-rights. They say that elves enjoy their slavery, and that freedom would be doing them an injustice.
This is a clear parallel to the attitude of many whites regarding slavery from back in the day. Many, many people back then, though they might have agreed that slavery was not ideal, stopped short of advocating for freedom of slaves. They used the same arguments that the wizards use for house elves. “They like it.” “It would be bad to free them.” “They wouldn’t know what to do with freedom.” With the exception of a few people – like Hermione in the wizarding world – they viewed slavery as an opportunity for minorities, not a grave injustice.
But Is It Really Slavery?
One might say that since the house-elves in general genuinely appear to enjoy their servitude, that this isn’t a true analogue for slavery in the real world. However, there were several cases of slaves enjoying their servitude in the past, and even siding with the white masters against other slaves who sought freedom. There was even a term for them: Uncle Tom. So it is not a stretch to see house-elves as analogues to slaves.
Further, this is generational. We see, through Winky, that many house-elves are the latest in long lines of slaves. Is it surprising to see that, over the years, they may have accepted their fate and even found some form of enjoyment from it?
Many people internalize their station in life as being ideal simply from never having known anything else; when you’re raised a certain way, it can be almost impossible to imagine a better existence. In this way, Harry Potter again holds a mirror to our own world.
Propaganda
Starting in Book 4, we begin to get a window into the wider world of Harry Potter. We also begin to see the power of propaganda and its effects on the average person.
In the past, I’ve written about propaganda in our world. Let’s examine how Rowling introduces the concept in the wizarding one.
Early on, Rowling introduces us to the concept of a dishonest reporter: Rita Skeeter. Throughout the book, Rita pops in and out with articles about Harry in The Daily Prophet, the wizarding world’s main newspaper. Each time a lie-filled article appears, Harry becomes the object of taunts and jeers from the rest of the students at Hogwarts. Despite the often obvious untruths in them, they always seem to be believed without question.
This is an example of how most people believe whatever they hear or read when it is presented by a trusted authority – in this case a trusted newspaper columnist. Blind faith in authority can be extremely dangerous. While the examples in Book 4 were often relatively harmless, resulting in no more than schoolyard taunts, it was merely an introduction to the concept of state propaganda. J.K. Rowling kicks it into high gear in Book 5, Order of the Phoenix.
Advanced Propaganda
In this book, Harry Potter receives the brunt of a full-scale, state-sponsored propaganda campaign against him. Unwilling to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned, the Ministry of Magic attempts to discredit Harry through copious amounts of propaganda in the Daily Prophet. It is accomplished mainly through a smear campaign to make Harry appear crazy and untrustworthy.
The Daily Prophet – at this point a puppet of the Ministry – has been linking his name to crazy stories they print as a smear tactic. They print ridiculous tall tales and link Harry to them with phrases such as “a tale worthy of Harry Potter”. This campaign lasted months.
We can see the parallel to this in our own world when it comes to populist politicians running for office. The corporate news outlets always smear Bernie Sanders with ridiculous claims that are swallowed by people who don’t know any better. In this way, like the Ministry did to Harry, they seek to undermine his credibility. They want people to think he’s a joke.
Effects of Propaganda
Predictably, Harry has a rough time during his fifth year at Hogwarts because of this smear campaign. Even people he previously considered friends start turning against him because of the propaganda. This is obviously exactly what the Ministry intended; an isolated person is less of a threat than a popular figurehead.
Perhaps most shocking is the case of Percy Weasley, of the Weasley family I mentioned previously. Here we have a striking example of how propaganda and a love of authority can have extremely damaging consequences – and rip apart families.
Divide and Conquer
Percy, as a character, was always the “good one”. What I mean by that is that he was a rule-follower and very obedient to authority in school. He also had a liking for wielding authority himself. In the first 3 books he never missed an opportunity to emphasize how he was a “prefect”, which is the wizarding equivalent of a student leader with certain authority over other students.
Predictably, in Book 5, he is one of the ones who swallows the Ministry’s propaganda immediately. He turns on Harry, and he even turns against his own family, all of whom side with Harry & Dumbledore (the headmaster of the school) against the Ministry’s lies. He turns his back on his family and leaves the house, preferring to cast his lot in with the Ministry. Throughout the book he pops in and out as a sickening sycophant to the Minister of Magic. He even goes so far as to try to convince Ron Weasley, his brother and Harry’s best friend, to abandon Harry.
Percy is a perfect example of how otherwise normal people can succumb to propaganda from authority. Even later, in Book 6, when it’s obvious that Voldemort is back and Harry was telling the truth the whole time, Percy remains estranged, unable to admit he was wrong. His pride gets in the way. An example of this in the real world are people who put their support behind lying politicians and then, even when confronted with mountains of evidence, still refuse to admit they were duped.
In defense of Percy, he does eventually see the light and admits he was wrong at the end of Book 7, reconciling with his family and joining the fight against evil. We can only hope that people in the real world do the same in the upcoming election.
Fascism
Accompanying the propaganda campaign in Book 5 are the beginnings of a crackdown at Hogwarts by the Ministry of Magic. Ostensibly, this is to protect the students and help ensure a proper magical education. However it’s obvious that the real motive is to try to quell a “resistance” against the Ministry based around the return of Voldemort. The first step in this crusade was the appointment of a Ministry official, Dolores Umbridge, at the school as a teacher.
I feel comfortable stating that Umbridge is the most reviled character in the whole Harry Potter series. I’ve never seen anyone even try to defend her. Voldemort, the main antagonist, is more sympathetic than she was. She was a truly evil human being, and she wasted no time in enforcing the “Ministry-approved” narrative at Hogwarts.
Fascism Rising
Through an escalating series of “educational decrees” from the Ministry, Umbridge is imbued with more and more powers until, ultimately, she ends up as de facto head of the school following Dumbledore’s fleeing from impending arrest on trumped up charges.
Umbridge’s ascent to power is a stark reflection of how fascism rises in the real world. It starts with the lie of “security” and “protecting people” from a perceived threat to the status quo. What this threat is can vary. Sometimes it’s a vague group (“terrorists”). Other times, it is a rival political faction. In all cases the goal is the same: sow fear amongst people to justify the increasingly long arm of the authority.
From there, as the regime encounters resistance, a crackdown starts. Censorship is enforced under the guise of security. There are often new laws giving the state expanded authority on previously un-regulated institutions. We see this in Harry Potter in the form of the educational decrees giving Umbridge – an agent of the state – unprecedented control over Hogwarts.
In the end Umbridge is ousted, Dumbledore returns, and we see the wider Wizarding world made aware of the truth. However, the propaganda & fascism doesn’t end here. In fact, it gets worse in Book 7.
Full Government Control
In Book 7, Voldemort has essentially won. Through his machinations he ends up effectively taking control of the Ministry of Magic. He installs a puppet as the Minister and pulls the strings from behind the scenes. The result is strikingly similar to the effects of real-world fascist regimes.
People live in terror. No one knows who to trust. Anyone could be a Death Eater or sympathizer or, as often happens in these circumstances, just a person who is afraid and wants to save themselves and their families by selling out others to the authority. There are daily deaths and disappearances.
Conditions get worse for Muggle-borns through new laws requiring registration and proof of bloodline. I don’t need to explain how this is a parallel to the treatment of German Jews during the reign of Adolf Hitler.
With Dumbledore dead and Harry & his best friends on the run on a quest to save the world, Voldemort fully takes over Hogwarts by injecting Death Eaters into the school as teachers and appointing one as the headmaster.
A Hostage Population
We don’t see much of the Voldemort-run school as we follow Harry elsewhere, however we get a picture of it near the end of the book when Harry returns to liberate it. The picture isn’t pretty. Hogwarts is unrecognizable from the vibrant place it once was in previous books.
The students are living under enemy occupation, essentially. It mirrors the conditions in occupied territories during the Nazi regime of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Dissent is harshly punished and students who speak out are tortured.
Despite this, a resistance thrives. Some of the students form a band of rebels opposed to the regime who operate in secret and do what they can to help the others, at great personal risk. This is an example of the heroism that often manifests during these times. We see this in the real world in the form of the famous Paris Resistance during World War II. It is a familiar parallel.
Voldemort’s regime is defeated in the end. Good triumphs over evil. But not before a massive battle occurs, during which several of our favorite characters lose their lives. Rowling accurately captures the cost of victory and the toll that war has on people. Yet, the battle had to happen in order to overthrow the terrible regime.
In Conclusion
America is grappling with the effects of the rise of fascism. Fortunately, we are still in the “rise” phase. It hasn’t become complete authoritarian takeover. We still have time to fight it. We must trust our own figurehead just as the wizarding world trusted theirs. Harry Potter was the only person who was able to defeat Voldemort. Bernie Sanders is the only person in our world who can defeat Donald Trump. We have a chance to reverse the course of fascism taking root in our country. It may be the only chance we have.
We cannot waste it. We can’t fall for the tricks of the establishment and their propaganda like the magical world fell for the propaganda of the Ministry of Magic. Let’s be better, and hopefully we can avoid our own Battle of Hogwarts.