It was the young wizard’s biggest challenge yet: understanding why those who should be defending their civilization were pretending that nothing was happening or even becoming apologists for the other side. Barry Rubin tells the tale that began with a headline in the Daily Prophet newspaper: “Minister Fudge Urges Engagement; Accuses Harry Potter of Voldemortphobia”
News item: The Iranian newspaper Kayhan, has criticized officials there for allowing the sale of the new Harry Potter book, claiming the series is a Zionist project in order to disrupt the minds of young people.
“The main thing is to try and convince as many people as possible that You-Know-Who came back, Harry….[Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge] is absolutely refusing to believe it’s happened.”
“But why?” said Harry desperately. “Why’s he being so stupid?”…
“Because accepting that Voldemort’s back would mean trouble….”
“It’s hard to convince people he’s back, especially as they really don’t want to believe it in the first place.”
—Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, pp. 93-94.
What’s going on here?” Harry said angrily. “I personally saw Voldemort gathering his followers but when I read the Daily Prophet it would seem there is no real threat. And now they want to negotiate with Voldemort?”
“That’s not all,” Hermione explained. “The newspaper is trying to make you sound deluded for exposing the truth.”
“Yes,” Ron added, ”and there are a lot of people now who favor giving aid to Voldemort in order—they claim—to moderate him.”
Certainly, the MSMM (Mainstream Magical Media), had long been blind to the return of Voldemort and his Death Eater movement. The Order of the Phoenix, the group formed to fight Voldemort, had a lot of blogs but the followers of You-Know-Who seemed to control all too many of the biggest institutions. Even on the Internet, Draco Malfoy had even developed one of the most popular blogs of all, “The Daily Draco” and some of the blander naïf’s from one of Hogwarts’ houses had created the “Hufflepuff Post.”
Harry just didn’t understand. How could anyone not see the terrible things going on around the world: the suicide bombing attacks; the organized incitement of hatred, the attempt by an extremist movement to take over and enslave millions of people? Why were they constantly attacking the victims and ridiculing those trying to expose these dangers, distorting their words and slandering their characters?
Gee, I was wondering the same thing.
-LizaJane
You can read the whole thing here: Pajamas Media, article by Barry Rubin
The Author’s note says: As popular as the Harry Potter series has been, it is still just a set of novels about a fantasy situation. Thank goodness nothing like this could happen in the real world.
