Comedian Jon Stewart Accuses J.K. Rowling Of Promoting Anti-Semitism In The Harry Potter Franchise
Comedian Jon Stewart has made quite the bold accusation against J.K. Rowling, as he recently claimed that the renowned British author has been blatantly promoting anti-Semitism in Harry Potter, particularly in Warner Bros. film adaptations of her books.
In a fairly recent episode of his eponymously-named podcast, the comedian explained that he believes Rowling is an anti-Semite based on his belief that the goblins running Gringotts Bank are based on Jewish people.
“Here’s how you know Jews are still where they are,” asserted Stewart. “Talking to people, what I say is, ‘Have you ever seen a Harry Potter movie?’ And people are all like, ‘I love Harry Potter movies!’ and I’m like, ‘You ever see the scenes in Gringotts Bank? Do you know what those folks that run the bank are? Jews.'”
The comedian then referenced the anti-Semitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whilst suggesting that J.K. Rowling knowingly based the designs of the goblins for Harry Potter, even before they were visualized for the films, on racist caricatures of Jews.
Stewart said, “Let me show you this. It’s from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I just want to show a caricature, and they’re like, ‘Oh, look at that. That’s from Harry Potter, and you’re like ‘No. That’s a caricature of a Jew from an anti-Semitic piece of literature.'”
“J.K. Rowling was like, ‘Can we get these guys to run our bank?’ And you’re like, ‘This is…it’s a wizarding world. It’s a world where it’s like. The train station has a half thing and no one can see it. And we can ride dragons and you’ve got a pet owl. Who should run the bank? Jews,'” he further assessed.
The comedian then implied that Rowling’s anti-semitism ran so deep that even if she attempted to make the goblins running Gringotts Bank not look like racist Jewish caricatures, these efforts only made things worse, mockingly framing her writing process, “Yeah, they look like Jews, but what if the teeth were sharper?”
Stewart then recalled how the first time he watched the original Harry Potter film in theatres, he expected the audience to notice the supposed racist stereotypes, only to quickly realise that nobody else seemed to have viewed them that way.
“That was one of those things where you expect…It reminded me of those horror movies where everybody’s been taken over by the thing but you haven’t,” recalled Stewart. “It was one of those things where I saw it on the screen and I was expecting the crowd to be like, ‘Holy s—t, she did not, in a wizarding world, just throw Jews in there to run the f—ing underground bank!'”
“And everybody was just like, ‘Wizards,'” the actor-comedian recalled, explaining that “Even Dobby was like, ‘That’s f—ed up. Those are Jews.’ Dobby’s like, ‘Dobby… Dobby doesn’t have anything against Jews. Dobby doesn’t understand.'”
For cheap laughs, Stewart then proposed that the next book in the series should be titled “Harry Potter and the Reichstag Fire,” alluding to the arson attack on the Nazi Party’s Reichstag building in 1933 that paved the way for the rise of then-Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
What do you make of Stewart accusing Rowling of promoting anti-Semitism in the Harry Potter series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below or on social media.
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