The Foolish, Power-Drunk Rampage of JK Rowling's Haters
Her detractors' desperate need to smear her with even the most baseless of claims puts the best selling author of all time back in the headlines.
The latest attack on JK Rowling comes in the form of an accusation of antisemitism. Her rabid bullies, desperate for any morsel of “news” that would help them further indict her, took a clip of Jon Stewart talking about the goblins in Harry Potter, and ran with it to smear her on Twitter as an antisemite. News outlets picked up the story as if it was worthwhile, while Jon Stewart himself issued another video clarifying that he was not accusing the author of antisemitism, but using Harry Potter as an example of the invisibility of deeply embedded antisemitic tropes and characters.
The Jon Stewart clip is from a month old podcast episode, and doesn’t touch on JK Rowling, Goblins, or Jews at all until the last five minutes, when Stewart and his guests are bantering about Bar Mitzvahs, whereupon Stewart remarks "Here's how you know Jews are still where they are." He then explains that when he saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, he had an instinctual reaction that the goblins—the bankers of the wizarding world, portrayed in the movie hoarding gold and riches, with long noses and miserly expressions—resembled historical antisemitic propaganda, used in Nazi Germany but ranging all the way back to the Middle Ages. Stewart’s follow up video makes it clear that he was commenting on the invisibility of such tropes in fantasy folklore even today, and that he does not think Rowling has anything to apologize for.
Additionally, the portrayal of goblins in the film and in the book are distinct enough that it is just plain wrong to say that the film imagery of the goblins is drawn from Rowling’s imagination.
This is how low her opponents are willing to go. To misrepresent Jon Stewart's words and attempt to smear Rowling despite the reality of Stewart’s own intent and context.
A man named Rafael Shimunov posted the clip on twitter, pompously declaring “So @jonstewart recently broke Hollywood's complete silence on @jk_rowling unapologetically maintaining antisemitic folklore through Harry Potter.”
According to LinkedIn, Shimunov is a Communications Director at the Athena Coalition, a political organization purporting to fight for democracy. Ironic that a communications director is skilled in going viral for his dishonesty and his ability to take short clips out of context in order to fling mud at a woman whose name is sure to help him get more clicks. I guess that’s what makes you successful in comms these days. It’s clear that Shimunov is doing this to advance his personal agenda as he goes on to say “The scene Jon Stewart is referencing was shared by me in 2018, when Rowling was smearing the left as antisemites and only beginning to embrace her infamous anti trans views.”
So this is where we are at. The desperation to win the culture wars by liberal-left acolytes sees them trading any integrity they may once have had to advance their personal ideologies. Truth has been sacrificed in the woke ascent to power, and in their power-drunk rampage the wokies make fools of themselves by inventing easily debunked smears. This is the inevitable result of the decline of political thought as intellectuals, media barons, and journalists erode any form of public trust for the short term gain of scoring political points on their adversaries.
The Foolish, Power-Drunk Rampage of JK Rowling's Haters
The Anti-Defamation League and others have long had success in pigeonholing people as anti-semite if they dare to question or criticize the activities of the the Israeli state and militia towards Palestinians, and its now 55 year old military occupation of Palestinian territory. The success of the trans activist ideology in pigeonholing people as transphobes if they dare to question the idea that a woman could have a penis is equally astonishing, and one gets the feeling that the parallel between the two campaigns is not purely coincidental. So it was only a matter of time before the ideologists would start flinging antisemite mud at the "transphobes" their hate campaigns had failed to silence. I think thankfully their hour of glory has waxed and is now on the wane because so many people can see through it and are becoming aware of their own vastly greater number and thus less afraid to come out and say plainly and clearly as you do in your Plebity article on the hate campaign against Dave Chappelle, that the emperor has no clothes on. I thank and salute you.