Googling around, I’ve seen a lot of users and journos claiming they are a jewish stereotype. I struggled to even compare them to what HP did. And as a partially jew, I’m really jealous of qualities these bigots paint and the thinking process Quark put to work. He’s probably my favorite character of the whole franchise.
Meanwhile, over on Reddit, you’re the racist if you call the Goblins anti-semitic because you’re assuming that they look Jewish. My brother in Christ, I didn’t write the books or direct the movies.
It’s not like JK is some paragon of moral character either. She’s already a prolific transphobic bigot, are people really shocked that she is also racist and an anti-semite?
I get it. If someone else doesn’t think they look Jewish and hasn’t even though about it then someone else saying these fucked up looking goblins look Jewish does sound a bit jeez dude.
I can imagine someone going
“Well it’s obvious just look at their noses”
“…”
“What, it can’t be a coincidence that they’re also greedy bankers!”
“👀”
They don’t look Jewish. They look EXACTLY like the horrible racist cartoons mocking Jews from WW2 and before. So anyone who really doesn’t get the connection clearly is just ignorant of historical racism.
Are goblins themselves historically a racist caricature? Because I can think of other instances of goblins depicted with big noses and being greedy money-misers as if they were Jewish stereotypes. World of Warcraft for one. Most fantasy games, really.
None of those also put them in a bank that had a huge star of David on the floor, tho.
Goblins don’t always look like that: https://www.britannica.com/art/goblin
But the art varies depending on the artist, and sometimes they are used like that. Just like tolkien apparently modeled his dwarves after Jews. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarves_in_Middle-earth#:~:text=Tolkien elaborated on Jewish influence,Tolkien said "The dwarves of
Here’s a racist cartoon from the 1940s to see how specifically HP lines up. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544586
Maybe they are. Recently it was found that the Japanese Tengu may have its origin in an encounter with Jewish travelers back in olden times.
And the bank having a Jewish symbol can be attributed to the movie director allowing it unchanged. Or that it went forgotten and undetected. Or that it was a magical symbol that the goblins used for their security. Can’t Jewish imagery have a place in a magical society? The goblins had curse breakers slumming it in the pyramids. They went around and took what was useful to them.
But none of that. It’s racism because tweet, tweet little Birdy.
Hello.
Am a Jew. Am well read on history. I never saw the connection. For me the hp goblins have always been just what a goblin would physically look like.
That they are bankers and deal with money it never occured to me that they would be a Jewish stereotype.
I’ve had this discussion before so I’m very likely to just stop responding after this message but I wanted to show even us affected people aren’t always seeing the same thing you are. Have a good one
As a black man…
Are you suggesting a Jew would not have a relevant perspective about alledged antisemitism?
I’m suggesting that you cannot be well versed in the history of racism against Jewish people and unaware of what I posted. So the remaining options are they they’re not Jewish, and are trolling, or do not actually know history, and are confident in their ignorance.
Either way, their post becomes irrelevant.
So because I don’t agree with you my options are
With allies like you, who needs enemies?
Who said I was an ally? I’m just re-teaching what I’ve learned. I have no skin in this game.
Assuming it’s not 1 or 2 then yes it’s 3. This isn’t an opinion conversation. It’s factual that those drawings were used in racist ways, that banking was used as a racist job, and that Rowling copied both. You can choose to not care, that’s an ok opinion. But you can’t have an opinion that says that facts aren’t facts.
Yeah the key phrase here is “stereotypically Jewish.” In reality, people look like all kinds, but our stereotypes are very specific. And fucked up, just to be clear