1. People point out that Harry Potter is traditional and right-wing. It is set in a boarding school, it’s aristocratic, concerns magic, and is obsessed with bloodlines(!). Yet, it is beloved by the liberal left. Why?
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2. The answer is that Harry Potter does as James Bond and most Western action films do (esp. comic books & war films). It takes ideas of elitism, honour, and violence and uses them to defend liberal or democratic values.
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3. This is in line with liberal elitism, of course. Liberal conceive themselves as an elite that draws more and more people up through education. It is just a “good elite” that can use violence and hierarchy in a safe way.
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4. Thus, though Potter’s world is ostensibly a very rightist, the “bad guys” are recognisably Nazis—they are too obsessed with blood purity, and so Rowling’s world is ideologically perfect from a liberal elitist perspective, viz...
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5. A liberal elite uses its hierarchy and violent potential against a more wicked elite (usually Nazi, but sometimes Marxist-Leninist). This is apparent in James Bond and most popular entertainments. The war is always against the “eternal Nazi”.
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6. This is partly why left liberal are so annoying and smug. They believe that they are the “nicest” elite in history, and they also deny their own violent and hierarchical natures (their hypocrisy) which they claim to be working against.
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Replying to @tomxhart
It’s more than that, I think. In the absence of belief in an Eschaton in which all earthly wrongs are righted, all their actions here on earth become a secular theodicy, i. e. ‘We have to make everyone equal or else the martyrs of Auschwitz/Jim Crow will have suffered in vain!’.
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Replying to @Konstant_V @tomxhart
For them the Problem of Evil belongs to history and is to be solved by technology, social or otherwise. They fail to perceive the capacity for evil inherent in human nature.
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Replying to @Konstant_V
Yes. What I call technocratic liberalism is a secular religion. This is why I support “traditional” religion. I think humans make up religions whatever they do, but the ones made up on the spot tend to be awful. The old ones have survival value, although are occasionally silly.
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Yes, my thinking is informed by Taleb & John Gray—& by the philosophes, Voltaire thought his servants should believe lest they slit his throat! Practically, I’m torn between Xianity (culturally made me) & a quasi-Buddhist pantheistic approach—couldn’t be culturally Buddhist.
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