casual hatred

[threeplusfire]

The other day I caught the new Harry Potter preview on television. Wow. The Death Eaters are much more sinister looking than I expected. Is it just me or do they look an awful lot like the KKK in that preview? This is where the story takes a darker turn though, and I’m curious to see how that will play out on film. Two more weeks and it will be out!

Speaking of the Klan, they will be in Austin this weekend. How lovely. They are coming to show their support for Prop 2, banning gay marriage and civil unions. There is a group planning on mooning the Klan, which is delightful and a brilliant tactic. Mostly I hope we can just ignore them. I feel bad for businesses in the area. Nothing to depress sales like a group of fanatics in pointy hoods screaming through bullhorns.

The new episode of SVU this week dealt with white supremacists and was superbly terrifying. How do you deal with the children raised in these homes and schooled down to the bone in bigotry and fear? What can you do for them? Does reason ever trump blind hate? I have no idea. It gives me the hives. You end up with things like Prussian Blue. I feel sad for those kids.

It is all such a fine line to walk with the issues of free speech and hate speech. I have no answer for that question either. I believe so strongly in the right to expression. It might just be easier if we had laws against being a complete and utter idiot, but then who will arbitrate that? Me of course! And then I will ship all the stupid people into the sun and live happily ever after.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Not to be a DE apologist, because they're out of their minds and it shows most when it comes to matters of "purity" and so forth, but they _suck_ as an allegory for racism, because magic is an _ability_, and while one could argue that the modern technology of Muggles is equivalent to magicla ability, they don't see that, and there's really no particular reason they should be able to (wizards not getting the muggle world seems pretty damn clear). While all teh breeding stuff makes them wonky loons, and the fact that some very powerful folks aren't purebloods (Voldemort for one and Snape for two) makes them hypocrits, certainly the DE worldview is somewhat more understandable than racism. I get the allegory, but I think it's weak as hell.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Also a good point. It's not racism per se, but more elitism?