#<- not actually just using this 2 tag bc this is like. long + essay-ish

[rollercoasterwords]

Hey rae! So, I have a topic that I’d like to hear your opinion about because I feel like it’s been talked about a lot (at least from the media I consume) and that is saying that liking DE characters makes you anti-Semitic/ ‘support’ Nazis. I know how you feel about rosekiller, which I totally support, if you wanna be a hater, please do, but…hmmm I don’t know how I feel about people calling each other every name in the book for liking a DE. I mean that’s the same with regulus, I’ve seen quite a few people talk about how they hate him because he’s DE and liking him/any other DE makes u anti-Semitic. This has me questioning my morality and my pov because I refuse to be associated with people as horrible as Nazis, and I think that you always give a good perspective on things and so if you also think that liking these characters associates a person with them then I seriously need to sit down and have a 1:1 with myself, y’know?

Also, on the same topic i feel like there’s a huge controversy with liking Barty and hating Snape, which I see how that could be wrong, but we know more about Snape and he’s done things to characters that we really know and love so I kinda feel like not being fond of him but liking Barty is valid-ish?? Because yes, if we can erase huge parts of Barty’s character to make him more likeable&redeemable why wont we do that with Snape? I still don’t know how to feel about this whole thing because I think questioning things about yourself is a good thing and it helps you learn&grow so I’d just like to hear your thoughts (rosekiller hatred put aside). Like, if you think rosekiller is the most boring ship in the universe and if you wanna hate on it, please please do!!! Express your opinion!!!! But it kinda rubs me the wrong way to hate on the people liking DE and associating them with a hateful group. If you don’t wanna answer, that’s more than fine, you can totally ignore my ask!!! I understand if you don’t wanna share your opinion on this topic. Have a good day!!

hi! i appreciate that u value my opinion + i'm happy 2 talk thru my thoughts with u, but before i do i wanna make it clear that i am not any kind of expert in antisemitism + am not jewish myself, so you should not be taking my thoughts as like. The Ultimate Opinion on this issue at all--like, i'm happy to discuss, but i do not by any means have the authority to just deem something Good or Bad for u, y'know? nor would i ever want to! i don't really think issues like this can be boiled down to a simple "it's totally okay and no one should ever get upset about it!" vs "it's morally evil and no one should ever like these characters!" (also - if any jewish mutuals or followers wanna weigh in + let me know if there's anything i'm missing/overlooking/etc please do!)

so, i've seen at least some of the discourse you're talking about floating around online. i've seen some jewish people saying that blorbo-ifying death eater characters ignores the nazi allegory and makes nazi-allegory characters sympathetic, which is antisemitic. i've seen other jewish people saying that it's offensive to simplify naziism, a much larger, real political issue, down to calling fictional characters "wizard nazis," and that it belittles the actual historical significance to use antisemitism as a talking point in this discourse about which characters it is or isn't okay to like. that's why i say that i don't think you're gonna find One Cohesive Position on like....what's okay or not okay; it's just something you're gonna have to parse for yourself, and while i do think you should be giving particular weight to the perspectives of jewish people on this issue, that obviously doesn't mean that every single jewish person is going to agree.

anyway, i've mostly stayed out of this discourse partially bc i don't really care about most death eater characters and partially bc, as i said, i do not feel like i am any sort of expert who is like. qualified to discuss the ins and outs of antisemitism in hp fandom spaces. so again, this is just gonna be a conversation about my thoughts as they currently stand--not a lecture where i'm telling you what's right or wrong, and not a set-in-stone Stance on the Ultimate Truth of this matter or anything.

currently, my feeling on this whole quagmire of discourse basically boils down to: i think it's reductive to broadly state that anyone who likes/engages with death eater characters in fandom in any way is automatically antisemitic; i think there is more nuance to the situation and boiling down the issue to an overarching generalization is not necessarily the most useful way to address antisemitism in this particular fandom space.

and there are various reasons that i feel that way, which i'll try to break down below:

death eaters are not a 1:1 allegory for nazis

this is something that i think gets lost in translation a bit when we just say "oh the death eaters were wizard nazis." while, yes, i think jkr was definitely making some allegorical nods to naziism + hitler, particularly with the blood purity aspect of death eater-ism, personally i think that had less to do with jkr actually having a good grasp on the politics of nazi fascism and more to do with jkr being the kind of liberal who just goes "hmmm who's the Worst Person in history??" and then just cherry-picking bits and pieces of like. naziism to give her Bad Guys an easily recognizable cultural referrant to associate with their Badness. (i mean--from the critiques i have seen regarding jkr's own antisemitism that is embedded in the hp text, she clearly was not writing the death eaters as like. a disavowal of antisemitism.)

something that concerns me is that treating death eaters as a 1:1 allegory for nazis sort of obscures some very important, very fundamental differences in the fascism of actual nazis. in hp, death eaters are positioned as a fringe "terrorist" group, in that they are opposed to the wizarding State. they obtain power through largely "illegitimate" (again, by the metrics of State power) means by way of a coup; in this way, a fundamental aspect of the death eaters as Bad Guys is that they are not legitimated by the State--something that very clearly speaks to jkr's own liberal politics when it comes to defining Good versus Bad.

but real-life nazis rose to power specifically by using legitimated State power. this is really fucking important to understand!!!! historically, fascism is often perpetuated by the logics of State power, and that's part of what allows it to take hold--people think, "oh, it can't be that bad, after all, we elected this fascist leader." etc. while hitler did attempt to gain power through a coup in 1923, that specifically failed and led to him pivoting and seeking control by becoming a legitimate part of the German government. he solidified his power using completely legal means, from within the State. this is very, very different to how voldemort + the death eaters take power in hp, and also very opposed to jkr's State-centered politics about Good vs. Bad. while i think it's important + useful to recognize the ways in which death eaters draw allegorical connections to nazis and how that can perpetuate antisemitism if we're not aware of it, i think to simply paint death eaters as nazis can actually lead into the trap of thinking fascism is something that is opposed to the State, when it is more often something that grows out of the State.

liking a death eater character is not always gonna translate to liking death eaters

so, aside from the whole sticky situation with nazis as an allegory for death eaters in the first place--what's more important to me when thinking about how someone likes/engages with death eater characters is gonna be the way they engage with those characters, and what that reflects about their own politics.

if someone likes a death eater character because they like death eaters and think that like...there are no issues with the death eaters' beliefs or positions, then....yeah that's a major red flag. but most of the people who like these characters, from what i've seen, tend to do one of two things:

1 - explore the character because the character broke away from the death eaters in some way (regulus, snape, etc). this usually requires an exploration of how the death eaters are bad, because it requires an exploration of why the character turned away from them. i'm gonna be interested in how someone explores that issue and what that says about their own politics, but that's a case-by-case basis, y'know? and even if i personally think someone is still missing the heart of the issue in their "death eaters bad" story, it is still a "death eaters bad" story--i don't really think a person is aligning themselves with the death eaters if they're specifically writing about how they are bad and why someone initially taken in by their beliefs would later turn away from them.

2 - explore a character who hasn't broken away, looking at why a person might align themselves with death eaters and how someone might buy into that sort of political rhetoric. again, this is a case-by-case basis for me in terms of looking at what sort of politics is reflected, but generally speaking i do not think that writing stories about why or how someone might become a fascist is Always Morally Wrong. in fact, i think these stories are very necessary in helping us understand how fascism takes root in real life.

if someone is just writing "death eaters ra-ra!" fanfiction then. yeah i might take that as a red flag. but the death eaters are so clearly Bad Guys that i personally have not come across any examples of someone doing that, even if i have come across stories where i don't entirely agree with the politics of how someone is writing the death eaters as Bad.

liking a character in the context of fanfiction is not always going to translate to liking that character as a death eater

a lot of people write aus and stories where the death eaters don't even exist. in those situations, i struggle to understand how liking the characters, in and of itself, would be antisemitic, as the character has specifically been turned into not-a-death-eater and is oftentimes basically an oc.

liking a fictional character is not a simple moral reflection of how someone actually thinks - what i'd be more wary of is someone absorbing the neoliberal politics of hp without question

this is kind of getting back into repeating some of the points above--but again, for me personally, this is an issue that i evaluate much more on a case-by-case basis rather than trying to broadly apply One Rule. since i can't automatically know someone's reasons for liking a character, the context in which they like the character, etc, what i tend to judge more is the specific way i actually see them interacting with that character--how they write them, what stories they like to read, their hcs, etc. again, i am not an expert when it comes to judging antisemitism, so i do also try to make it a point to see what my jewish mutuals are saying when this sort of discourse comes up. but for myself, i tend to be more wary about the politics underlying specific pieces of writing rather than which characters someone is choosing to write about.

all that being said, i do still think it's fair if someone views liking death eaters as a red flag, y'know? like, everyone is allowed to judge for themselves what they see as red flags in this fandom space, and if someone is saying "i think it's antisemitic to like death eaters," i personally don't really think i have a right to go and argue with that person, for obvious reasons. since i do sometimes write about death eater characters, i try to be very aware of what kinds of politics are underlying my work and what sort of messages someone might take away. but if someone needs to block me, avoid my work, etc, i obviously don't have an issue with that--everyone is allowed and encouraged to curate their fandom space in a way that's best for them, and if someone has a boundary regarding interaction with death eater characters, that's their boundary to keep, y'know? i don't think it's productive (unless maybe you yourself experience antisemitism and it's a conversation you want to have) to go to that person and argue about why they're wrong, as if they need to tell you your actions are actually morally okay with them. sometimes people are going to have issues with the things you write or read in fandom, which is why you need to develop the ability to reflect + weigh these sorts of issues for yourself, and grow comfortable with the idea that there is not always going to be an ultimate Right and Wrong answer for How To Behave.

as for the snape vs barty [or insert whatever other death eater character here] - my thoughts on that are essentially. i truly do not think it matters which characters you like or dislike. you can like one death eater character or not another. it's fine. you don't have to like one character over another. this is fanfiction. the moral stakes are not that high.

the only instance in which i would say liking one character over another gets hypocrticial is if you are saying that people shouldn't like a character. for example -- if you are running around the internet saying that snape is a disgusting character and nobody is allowed to like him, but at the same time you're blorbo-ifying barty crouch jr. then, yeah, that's annyoing and hypocritical. but if you're just chilling in peace, reading + writing ur fic and not policing the things that other people are allowed to like or dislike, then i truly do not think it matters if you like barty crouch jr. but not snape. i'm all for self-reflection and thinking about why you personally might like one character over another, but at the end of the day writing + reading fic is not any kind of activism; it's a hobby, it's for enjoyment. i promise that u do not need to have a moral crisis about disliking severus snape from harry potter lmao