Posted on 05/09/2009 2:18:42 PM PDT by Winged Hussar
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series might well have been influenced by her country's experience in the years before the Second World War, and some of the characters seem to have historical or contemporary counterparts. Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Neville Chamberlain) does not wish to believe that Lord Voldemort (Hitler) has returned, and he uses the media to smear anybody who says otherwise. Fudge instead accuses Professor Dumbledore (Winston Churchill?) of assembling a private army with which to take over the Ministry of Magic as opposed to defending it against the Death Eaters: obvious counterparts of Nazis. The Death Eaters' preoccupation with genetics and their description of wizards with non-magical parents as "mudbloods" who should be exterminated is an obvious reflection of Nazi racial ideology.
Dolores Umbridge is a particularly loathsome character in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and she uses extrajudicial methods to punish anybody who dares suggest that Lord Voldemort has returned. She forces Harry Potter to write "I must not tell lies" with a pen that cuts the words into his flesh, and then she turns Hogwarts into a police state with her own private Gestapo. Dolores Umbridge has numerous real-world counterparts like Kathy Owens (Bucknell University), Barbara Grossman of Tufts University, and now British Home Secretary Jackie Smith.
...Needless to say, Dolores Umbridge had her real-life counterparts during the 1930s. They ranged from isolationists such as America First and Father Charles Coughlin to actual Nazi sympathizers like the German-American Bund. We must really wonder what Jacqui Smith would have said and done when Adolf Hitler's agenda, like that of the militant "Muslims" with whom Ms. Smith seems to be trying to protect from criticism, was to slaughter millions of innocent people and destroy recognize as Civilization.
(Excerpt) Read more at israpundit.com ...
Guilty!
Sounds strikingly familiar to what’s happening on this side of the pond.
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