this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Harry was billed in early books as this "Anti-Voldemort", who'd lead Wizardy to a gilded age and do great things... But JK Is a Status Quo loving Neo Liberal and can't imagine a better world. In all of her works the system is corrupt, but it's fine because the only thing that would make it go wrong is one bad faith actor (In this case Voldemort), who will stumble upon some obscure rule that undoes him. (In this case, killing Harry who was at that time the last horcrux)
Harry becomes a cop and doesn't change the status quo because the world as it is is the best JK can imagine it.
It's kind of like how no one did anything about Trump, they kept waiting for him to trip over some rule that sends the system crashing down on him, but it never happened.
It never happened because the system is powerless to punish anyone, because the system is just an idea, it is immaterial.
The Electoral College isn't going to magically vote for Hillary because it recognizes Trump's evil. People have to recognize his corruption and change the system to combat it...
The Democrats never learned they couldn't just wait for the System to punish the Republicans after they accumulated enough good/bad boy points
Wtf do you people think "liberal" means? Some people think it means communist, some think it means socialist, some somehow think it means fascist. I'd love to what you actually mean when you use a word that has a specific meaning of "anti-authoritarian".
The word "liberal" is associated with the right everywhere except the US.
I think you meant neo-liberal.
I hear this a lot, so I dug a bit. What do others think?
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_Kingdom
Is it possible, that in the rest of the world, many partys call themselves liberal and after ages of conservative governments calling themselves liberal, many people in the UK have not heard "the left" call themselves liberal?
It may also be far too general of a term to be of value.
This is my main complaint. We humans love putting things in little categories and labels, but if you're using a word that you think means X and everyone else thinks it means Y or Z then suddenly we're all taking at cross purposes and everyone thinks everyone else is chatting shit.
The fuck? No
Liberalism is pro-Capitalism, therefore it's right wing.
Liberalism is also pro social freedom. We should specify economically or socially liberal, depending on the political party it may be a different percentage of each.
Liberal means centre-right to right in most of Europe, and right-wing in much of the rest of the world.
I was already contented with the fact that people here were going to circlejerk themselves into this.
Liberalism is an ideology of freedom. Freedom is a matter of circumstances. Being free to exploit others closes down your world thus it is not to be considered liberal. Neither will you be free if you get a cop on every corner or taking away your possessions in the name of equality.
You only really gain freedom through following the intuition on what would open up the world the most for the most people.
For America, the answer is more socialism. But the Democrats and the Republicans are neo-liberals.
In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won't revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.
Social Welfare is neither historically nor currently a liberal value.
Generally the idea seems to be social liberalism, e.g. people should laregely do what they want, and since a few decades bastardized with neoliberal economics, which are the opposite of freedom. E.g. ideas like reinstating slavery, selling children, murdering people with impunity all based on an arbitrary freedom of contracts.
American liberals are far right conservative/reactionaries sprinkled with some gay rights by most countries standards.
Isn't that American "libertarians"?
Firstly, thanks for actually giving me an answer! Secondly, that sounds insane, I've never heard any definition of "liberal" that means that, though I have heard that the USA just has their own completely different definition of the word. For instance in Britain the term "liberal democracy" is used to mean "not a dictatorship". Language is about communication, assuming everyone uses your own pejorative definition of a word is not good for discussion!
Hey OP, just in case you didn't gather this from the various other comments, in political science, Liberalism refers to a specific movement (think John Locke, social contract theory, abolishing various aristocratic privilaeges, etc) but can be applied to modern political philosophies too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Liberalism in media terms often means something quite different depending where you are in the world. But, it typically refers to something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism. Pro-market, pro-welfare (to a limited degree), somewhat focused on individual freedoms, etc. It's a wide-ranging term and can cover anything from as far right as America's gov't to as far left as something like Sweden's.
Here it means "Someone who is loyal to the status quo"
That sounds like the definition of "conservative"
So the exact opposite of "loyal to the status quo"?
As far as I can tell, it seems to be a catch all for "people I don't like". There's no real meaning and often times the same commentor describes conflicting idealogies as liberal.
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I only watched the first three movies and didn't read the books. Why do people say harry was a cop? I didn't get that impression from the movies I watched.
He is not a cop, he becomes a cop after he graduates, despite a heavily recurring theme of the books being how corrupt, incompetent, and unjust the Wizarding government and judicial system is.
Rowling never really seems to connect the dots and think, "Hmm, maybe the Aurors are part of the problem," very much a "cops good no notes" mindset for some reason.
If you want to give her the benefit of the doubt you can assume she thinks Harry will be a reformer, but, also, in the books she never really seems to think anything but the status quo is good so probably not.
Don't forget: Harry was groomed to become an Auror since like book 4 or 5. Old ass men were like "yes, come here 15 year old, let me tell you about my awesome job that you should definitely take once you graduate!" Like, Harry is seen deliberating over the decision and he feels coerced into it, then at the end of book 7 he's like "okay fuck it I'm an Auror now". Truly wonderful writing.
TBF I read the books too long ago to remember well what was the state of the depicted society except for an obvious negligence for student safety. In part it's because I wasn't old enough to notice that.
I think it did feel "govt bad cops good" at that point and I didn't think about the government and cops being parts of the same system 😅
I mean the cops are also doing the bidding of the obviously corrupt minister, with the exception of Kingsley Shaklebolt, who is an undercover agent of Dumbledore.
The entire concept of "fighting dark magicians hurr durr" is never put in the context of how subverted or openly on the side of dark magicians the ministry of magic is. Sometimes it is hinted at, like how Arthur Weasley is dissapointed that the department for the missuse of muggle artifacts is chronically underfunded and wizards that like to play harsh pranks and torture muggles aren't punished properly.
i'm gonna be completely honest with you, almost everything you said after 'graduates' went over my head. i have no clue what an auror is, did you mean the aurora like the thing in the sky?
auror = cop but with magic
Because in the epilogue it's said that Harry ended up joining the Aurors (wizard cops) after Voldemort was defeated.
ah ok thanks for the clarification! wish i read this before replying to DragonTypeWyvern
So the books early on hype up the idea that Harry Potter will grow up, defeat Voldemort, change the Wizarding world for the better, and fix the corruption in the Ministry of Magic that lead to Voldemort's Return...
In the actual ending, Harry grows up to become an Auror, which is basically the Wizarding World's version of a cop, and they answer directly to... The Ministry of Magic, which hasn't changed leadership... and is still ran by the people who didn't want the masses to know Voldemort existed even whilst literal children were dropping like flies because of his douchebaggery because "That would make us look bad!"
Imagine if George Washington's story ended up with him, having just won the Revolutionary War, becoming a soldier in the British Navy instead of becoming US Present... It's that kind of vibe
lame, day-by-day im more satisfied with not reading harry potter (mostly cuz the magic didn't make sense to me and i kept mixing up the names of the characters...)
It really doesn't, especially when it's revealed (Very early on) that magic is literally just saying the right words and waving your wand...
But how can wizards be stronger than other wizards if this is the case? Which the book states that some are....
And there are Wizards said to create new spells all the time as part of their jobs... but... how the fuck does that work if the words and wand movement are all that's important? In most settings where it's via some magic essence combined with force of will, it makes sense how you could conjure up spells... but here it's like somehow being able to create a new console command for a software you can't update or modify...
Plus the scale of what magic can do changes depending on the scene...
Hagrid, a high school dropout with a broken wand concealed inside an umbrella, can effortlessly turn Dudley into a pigboi..... but learning how to take on just one animal shape is super difficult and only a select few called Animgai can do it... Sure....
Oh and an IMPOSTER Mad-Eye Moody casually turning Draco into a full-on ferret despite Animagis being this rare and overly difficult to learn thing is also bullshit.. (neither Moody nor the imposter were an Animagi)
And Hogwarts Legacy just has Animagi as a common enemy type despite them being so rare, but... hey there I can forgive it because without them we wouldn't have good enemy variety (Why are all the creatures in the forbidden forest spiders!??!?!)
Like, what are the rules? Because if Rowling doesn't care, why should I?
yeah this was my kinda sense, why do fans tell me it's simple? i like brandon sandersons system, doubly so because he has like different implementations of the same magic system in different series in the same universe ('cosmere')