Here's my thing about Harry Potter: It's a book series about a race (or group, or caste, or aristocracy) of privileged people (wizards) who have power (magic) over a race/group/caste/proletariat of the underprivileged (muggles). The villains want to enslave the underprivileged and prevent race-mixing, while the good guys are firmly against this--one of the protagonists is even mixed herself. So far so good. The point where you start to run into problems is when you start naturalizing this hierarchy. See Innuendo Studios on the origins of conservatism: conservatism (and eventually, fascism) is what happens when people begin to believe that some people are inherently better than others, that the natural world is full of hierarchies and so any attempt to produce a fully egalitarian society is stupid and counterproductive. We return to Harry Potter: the problem with even the good guy wizards saving muggles from Voldemort or whatever is that even in this scenario, the wizards are better than muggles. Even in this scenario, good wizards have to save the muggles from the bad wizards because obviously the poor disadvantaged muggles can't do it themselves. And why should the good wizards do this? Because racism is mean and those poor lil normies :/// It's aristocratic, colonialist, racist, Tory bullshit: a white savior complex in kid-friendly form. And these dumbasses call it punk?
I still don't get how even if it's all those things (in retrospect, maybe it made more sense when I was a kid), that J.K. Rowling is the exact opposite politically. And right wing commentators and middle-America hates that shit for reasons beyond religion. Is hierarchy natural? No, but that's because any definition of hierarchy might be inherently flawed. Notice you said egalitarian, not equal. There is neither pure equality or linear hierarchy. Just sheer chaos.
The same way you figure the fundamental lesson of history is that rebellion is pointless. You have your adaptation to what you see as the unchangeable universe, so does JK Rowling. In JK Rowling's mind, the aristocracy will always have power because in the UK, the aristocracy has always had power and it's not worth the fuss to complain about David Cameron and Boris Johnson being in the same pigfucker's union. JK Rowling thinks she's a liberal. You think you're a rebel. It's all the same. The thing is, I blame JK Rowling for your attitude.I still don't get how even if it's all those things (in retrospect, maybe it made more sense when I was a kid), that J.K. Rowling is the exact opposite politically.
More than that, it's a book series about a group of active people who want to use their power and a group of passive people who will allow that group of active people to do pretty much whatever the fuck they want so long as it doesn't disturb the status quo. The only real villain in Harry Potter - the only faction with zero sympathetic characters, the only group whose motives are never made anything other than execrable, are the press. And yeah - the British press are execrable but fuckin' hell woman I like how the stand you took was against the tabloids who were fucking with your life. The fundamental issue Rowling faced was the tension between the wizarding world and the muggles couldn't be maintained through anything other than fascism. If wizards are nice and muggles are nice and the only thing keeping them apart is the MInistry of Magic, the MInistry of Magic has to be dicks. And if the goal of your series is to preserve the hegemony of the Ministry of Magic, you get to be the nazis. And more than that, you only get to be the savior if you follow the rules to the letter.It's a book series about a race (or group, or caste, or aristocracy) of privileged people (wizards) who have power (magic) over a race/group/caste/proletariat of the underprivileged (muggles).
The point where you start to run into problems is when you start naturalizing this hierarchy.
It's aristocratic, colonialist, racist, Tory bullshit: a white savior complex in kid-friendly form.