Is Harry Potter A Left-Winger?
Or so claims a French philosopher. Jean-Claude Milner says:
Reading it, one can see that J.K. Rowling — like many cultured English people — believes there was a real Thatcherite revolution, that it was a disaster, and that culture’s only chance is to survive as an occult science….
Harry’s uncle and aunt – Muggles par excellence – live like heroes of Margaret Thatcher’s world, in a neat little estate where all the houses are identical…
One can equally say that modern England is a world where the Muggles have indeed taken power, first with Margaret Thatcher and then with Tony Blair – a world where the omnipotence of the middle class is given free rein…
So we have on one side the Muggles, where oppression means power over things; and on the other hand Hogwarts, where knowledge enables one to resist the materialism of the Muggles — but also opens the way to power over people…
What a load of complete and utter bollocks.
I can also point out that Harry spends most of his time constantly breaking the rules of the school, about a clear allusion to the State as that Harry’s aunt is named Marge means that she is a reference to Margaret Thatcher, means that he – and thus Rowling – is opposed to the large centralised State that socialists so desire. Especially when this is added to by the absolute ineffectiveness of the Ministry of Magic, with an incompetent Minister, who yet is convinced of the correctness of his own opinion. Also, add in the constant references to the free-market, through the Weasley twins, and the way that the rule-fanatic Hermione becomes less and less straight-laced about obeying the rules throughout the seven books. Thus I can conclude that Harry Potter is in fact a right-winger.
Yet all of that is utter rubbish. My paragraph as well as the passage by Jean-Claude Milner. Harry Potter is a fictional character, the Harry Potter books are a fictional series. They are set inside a fictional world. And, most importantly, they are written primarily for children. They are no more politically motivated than any fiction series. They all follow the same basic patterns, with any political motivation of the author absolutely subsumed by the necessities of telling the story.
You can read anything you like into most fiction books. For example, now that it has been revealed that Dumbledore is gay, there is bound to be people who will read entire levels of gay sub-text into it. You can read anything you like into these sorts of books if you cherry-pick the bits and pieces which support your hypothesis. Harry Potter is neither a left-winger or a right-winger – or at all political. You can only possibly read these things into most fiction books, especially those primarily aimed at children, with much effort and by ignoring anything which does not support your hypothesis.
Harry Potter is not “deeply political”, but absolutely a-political.
Source: The Telegraph
Of course he’s not a left winger, he just looks a bit strange these days!
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