alt Hacker NewsI'm not gonna lie: it has always struck me as extremely racist to claim that goblins are caricatures of Jews. No normal, reasonable person reads Harry Potter and thinks "Jew" instead of "wacky fantasy creatures".
I'm not gonna lie: it has always struck me as extremely racist to claim that goblins are caricatures of Jews. No normal, reasonable person reads Harry Potter and thinks "Jew" instead of "wacky fantasy creatures".
> No normal, reasonable person reads Harry Potter and thinks "Jew" instead of "wacky fantasy creatures".
It was a pretty obvious thing for us Germans when the movie came out. Caricatures of Jews that were used in the time leading up to 1933 are taught and analyzed at schools here. Crooked noses, deal with money, hoard money... it's not that far away. There's a pretty good blog post with actual imagery, if you want to read further [1] - although I admit that JKR just used existing folklore as a foundation, just as with other elements of worldbuilding.
That shofar however, now that's intentional. HL came out many, many years after I read about the issue the first time. And 4chan, inevitably, immediately identified the goblins as jews.
[1] https://jewitches.com/blogs/blog/goblins-jews-and-antisemiti...