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The Chimalpahin Conference 2007: Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness October 16 - 18, 200 7
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The Politics of Evil: Resonances of Hitler and Fascist Ideology in Harry Potter Carmen Nolte English Department University of Hawai'i at Manoa Reading J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series as political fiction, I will explore the similarities between Hitler and Voldemort’s characteristics, ideologies, and systems of power in order to discuss how Rowling expands her portrayal of fascism from a historical aspect of the Third Reich to a current cultural problem. The series’ ultimate villain and Harry’s adversary, Voldemort promotes an ideology founded on a racist Self/Other binary system and maintains his power through the inspiration of terror, paralleling Nazi Germany’s Fuehrer’s tyranny and violent oppression of opinions digressing from his own beliefs. The commonalities between Voldemort and Adolf Hitler go beyond their hatred of “inferior” races and their enjoyment of violence to include their parentage, as neither fits the pure-blood ideal he so adamantly promotes. Voldemort’s hatred of non-wizards indeed stems from his loathing of his father, who did not possess any magical powers; similarly, substantial evidence suggests that Hitler’s abhorrence of Jews took on a new, horrific dimension when he found out about the possibility of his own ancestors being Jewish. A worldview split into a Self and an Other, with the Other comprised of those deemed racially inferior, thus results for both Hitler and Voldemort from a repression of unwanted aspects within the Self and therefore ultimately grows out of a self-hatred that is projected onto an Other. While Rowling creates obvious links between the antagonist in her novels and the Third Reich, she refrains from stereotyping racism as a concept endorsed only by “bad” characters and instead shows how a Self/Other binary based on race infiltrates and influences even Harry’s circle of friends, thus complicating the apparent good/evil dichotomy. She moreover depicts fascism as a contemporary issue that has not been eliminated with the downfall of the Nazi regime but that continues to pose threats to modern-day societies; fascist ideology is then portrayed to be not merely a “German problem” but a dogma with followers from different nations and diverse backgrounds. In fact, as the wise old wizard Dumbledore remarks, Voldemort can be beat only if the Hogwarts pupils work together with wizards from other nationalities – including the very Germanic Durmstrangs students. |
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