Politics of Harry Potter
[2] Time magazine noted the political and social aspects of Harry Potter in their 2007 Person of the Year issue, where Rowling placed third behind politicians Vladimir Putin and Al Gore.
[3] Harry Potter's potential social and political impact was called similar to the 19th-century phenomenon of Harriet Beecher Stowe's popular, but critically maligned, book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which fuelled the abolitionist movement leading up to the American Civil War.
[8] Rowling also told the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant that Voldemort was modeled on Hitler and Stalin, as a megalomaniac and paranoid figure, and that she was influenced by the Second World War, which is "anchored in all our minds".
[12] Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny recommends reading The Deathly Hallows for its anti-totalitarianism in addition to classics from authors like George Orwell.
[21] In an act commemorating the Holocaust, actor Daniel Radcliffe, whose mother is Jewish, donated his first pair of Harry Potter glasses to an art exhibition inspired by a famous World War II photo of a mangled mountain of spectacles of victims of ethnic cleansing.
Radcliffe's Potter co-star Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy in the films, himself a Jewish Briton, was due to participate in the commemorations on National Holocaust Memorial Day, leading a service at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall.
[24] Bill O'Reilly joined in the political fray over Harry Potter character Albus Dumbledore's outing by asking if it was part of a "gay agenda" to indoctrinate children.
[28] Discussing the controversy, Rowling told the BBC that "Christian fundamentalists were never my base" and thought it ridiculous to question if a gay person could be a moral compass in the 21st century.
"The moment Draco got what he thought he wanted, to become a Death Eater, and given a mission by Lord Voldemort, as he did in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, reality finally hit him," Rowling said, because his dream was "so very different".
[45] These sentiments are mirrored by Jeffrey Weiss in his article, "Harry Potter and the author who wouldn't shut up", published in the Dallas Morning News.
Rowling, who worked for Amnesty International, evokes her social activism through Hermione's passion for oppressed elves and the formation of her "Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare".
But in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the campaign turns out to have had enormous unforeseen results, with house elves joining the struggle and making several indispensable contributions to Voldemort's final defeat, including saving the main protagonists' lives.
Rowling described her admiration of Jessica Mitford since age 14, her time at Exeter University "not quite the chance to be the 'radical' I planned", and said the later books dealing with Harry's hormones, and deaths would be unlike other children's series like the Famous Five.
"[50] James Morone wrote in the American Prospect in 2001, "Magical headmaster Albus Dumbledore practically awards bonus points for breaking rules.
"[51] Isabelle Smadja of Le Monde wrote that Harry Potter is the first fictional hero of the anti-globalist, anti-capitalist, pro-Third World, "Seattle" generation.
[citation needed] In his article for the John Birch Society's magazine The New American, Constitution Party Communications Director Steve Bonta compared Harry Potter negatively to The Lord of the Rings, saying, "The Potter books read in places like diatribes against the modern middle class, especially whenever Harry confronts his ludicrously dysfunctional and downright abusive adopted family, the Dursleys.
][additional citation(s) needed] The critic Anthony Holden wrote in The Observer on his experience of judging Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the 1999 Whitbread Awards.
[58] Literary scholar Ilias Yocaris argued that Harry Potter "probably unintentionally ... appears as a summary of the social and educational aims of neoliberal capitalism."
In this "pitiless jungle", education only aims to "give students an immediately exploitable practical knowledge that can help them in their battle to survive," while artistic subjects and social sciences are useless or absent.
Yocaris concludes that "like Orwellian totalitarianism, this capitalism tries to fashion not only the real world, but also the imagination of consumer-citizens," producing literature that suggests that no alternative is possible.
"[62] Newsweek magazine asked Alfonso Cuarón, director of the third film based on Rowling's Prisoner of Azkaban if the villainous wizard Voldemort still reminded him of George W. Bush.
[33] Slate Magazine also says Rowling takes jabs at the Bush and Blair administrations suggesting the Ministry of Magic's security pamphlet recalls the much-scorned Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System).
[64] The People's World claimed the books draw you "into the politics of the wizarding world—the 'Educational Decrees' from the toad-like Ministry of Magic representative, the high-level connections of 'war criminals' from the last rise of Voldemort, the predjudice [sic] against 'mudbloods' and 'half-breeds.'"
[68] The Scotsman cites "Delighted teachers who have hailed Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as a blistering satire on years of politically motivated interference in the running of schools".
"[17][non-primary source needed] Andrew Slack, founder of the Harry Potter Alliance, writes about the "Muggle Mindset" in which "Lindsay Lohan supersedes news about genocide, men assess their 'worth' by their paychecks, women's bodies are treated as commodities and our educational system preoccupies itself not with stimulating children's curiosity but rather getting them to efficiently regurgitate information on standardised tests.
[71][72][73] The Capitalism Magazine website says that, "With a long-term war in progress and threats of further terrorist attacks on American soil," Harry Potter isn't mere escapism and "shows a world in which happiness can be achieved, villains can be defeated, and the means of success can be learned.
She also notes the parallels in the community's response saying Fred and George Weasley's shop makes a mint selling Shield Cloaks and the new Minister for Magic jails an innocent man, hoping to stave off panic and create the impression that he's taking action.
[78] In These Times featured Slack in 2007, in an article about Muggle Activists where Slack said, "The Harry Potter parallel to Darfur is simple: With both the Ministry of Magic and the Daily Prophet (the Wizarding World's mainstream news source) in denial that Voldemort has returned and evil is afoot, Harry and his underground rebel group, 'Dumbledore's Army,' work with the adult group, 'The Order of the Phoenix,' to awake the world.
We in the Alliance seek to be Dumbledore's Army for the real world, working with anti-genocide organisations, such as 'Fidelity Out of Sudan' and the 'Genocide Intervention Network,' to wake our governments, corporations and media up to the fact that 'never again' means 'never again.
The group says that by aggressively marketing sugar- and caffeine-laden drinks to young fans of the Harry Potter series, Coke is helping fuel the childhood obesity epidemic.
