The Harry Potter books used to be sacred lore to the woke generation until the author committed the unforgivable crime of defending the rights of women against the encroachment of trans-women. Yet, it doesn’t take a very close reading of the texts to discover so many things that appear to have slipped under the notice of the progressives and form the core beliefs of the fictional world she created:
Amelia crossing paths with Harry Potter and the gang seems much more appropriate than it might have in the past
Potential is largely hereditary, family is most important, the media are lying parasites, the state can’t be trusted with education, and children should be taught armed self-defense.
These are not subversive readings. These are the plot.
The Harry Potter series was the most successful publishing phenomenon of the late twentieth century. It sold half a billion copies. Progressive parents handed it to their children as a parable about tolerance and the courage to stand against prejudice. The movies grossed eight billion dollars. The author became an icon of liberal cultural production and then, by a process that remains opaque to the people who made her famous, a figure of political villainy for holding positions indistinguishable from mainstream liberal feminism circa 2005.
Set aside the author. The books exist independently of whatever J.K. Rowling believes or is believed to believe. Read them for what they actually say. The worldview encoded in the narrative structure, the plot logic, and the moral arc is not the worldview the books were marketed as containing. It is considerably more interesting.
Blood Will Tell
Magic is inherited. This is the foundational premise of the entire fictional world and the premise from which everything else follows.
You are either born a witch or wizard, or you are not. No amount of study, effort, practice, or desire will make a Muggle magical. The reverse is also true: Squibs, born to magical families but lacking the gift, cannot acquire it. They are defective members of magical lineages, pitied and often hidden. Argus Filch, the Hogwarts caretaker, is a Squib. His bitterness and cruelty toward the students is the bitterness of a man who can see the gift in others but will never have it himself.
[…]
Family Carries Everything
Harry survives Voldemort’s killing curse because his mother died to protect him. Not a metaphor. A literal magical mechanism. Lily Potter’s sacrificial love created a protection charm encoded in Harry’s blood that made him impossible for Voldemort to kill directly.
[…]
The Press Are the Enemy
The Daily Prophet is introduced early and is corrupt throughout.
[…]
The State Cannot Be Trusted to Educate Your Children
Dolores Umbridge is a government administrator appointed by the Ministry of Magic to reform Hogwarts.
Her arrival at Hogwarts in Order of the Phoenix is the politicization of education made literal. The Ministry does not trust Dumbledore. The Ministry does not want students to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts. A student body trained in combat magic is a student body that might resist. Umbridge’s curriculum is therefore purely theoretical: no spellcasting, no practical application, only reading approved texts about defensive magic that the students are forbidden to practice.
[…]
The books contain other lessons that the progressive readership tended not to discuss.
House-elves are slaves. They are hereditary servants bound to magical families, forbidden to disobey direct orders, and conditioned to punish themselves for disloyalty. Dobby is freed and becomes a hero. But Dobby is the exception. Most house-elves, including the Hogwarts house-elves, do not want freedom. Hermione’s Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare is played for laughs. The elves reject her knitted hats. They are offended by the offer of liberation. Dobby is a weirdo.
The narrative does not resolve this. The house-elves are not freed after Voldemort falls. The epilogue does not mention them. The implication is that hereditary servitude is acceptable if the servants are happy, and these servants are happy. Whatever else this is, it is not an abolitionist text.
[…]
What The Books Actually Taught
The Harry Potter series is a fundamentally reactionary conservative text dressed in the aesthetic of liberal tolerance.
It teaches that ability is inherited and the argument is only about whether pedigree or demonstrated ability should determine status. It teaches that family is the highest loyalty and the source of the most powerful magic. It teaches that the press serves power and the only response is to route around it. It teaches that the state will capture education to produce compliant subjects and that the answer is to arm the children. It teaches that some people are born for greatness and others are born for service, and the main thing is to get the sorting right.
None of this requires reading against the grain. It requires only reading.
