Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
As A Jew I agree
The Jew-goblin argument, which has been made ad nauseam on social media and in various thinkpieces (and has been highlighted in the news cycle recently following a viral Jon Stewart soundbyte), is effectively this: The goblin characters in the Harry Potter series, known mostly for their role in running the wizarding bank Gringotts, are antisemitic, because they look like Jewish caricatures and perpetuate antisemitic stereotypes.
I disagree. The Potter goblins are diminutive, hooknosed, saurian creatures, with creepy long fingers and crafty natures. They have exceptional financial skills and stop at nothing to acquire or protect money and precious objects. What is antisemitic is the fact that anyone would encounter such a character and think: “Aha, a Jew!”
Jews do not run the economy, do not have a cultural disposition toward prioritizing monetary gain over human emotion and also — and I would really like to emphasize this point — do not look like goblins. This depiction of goblins is offensive to bankers, not to Jews, and the reason it is offensive to bankers is because the goblins in the Potter world are synonymous with bankers, and Jews in the actual real world are not. Are all fictionalized bankers supposed to be cheerful, generous and definitively Anglo-Saxon in order to avoid potentially dipping into antisemitic caricature? I defend the right of the minor set-dressing fairy-tale characters in this invented world to be gross and good at money. I defend, mostly, my right to peruse the internet without encountering more people complaining that the goblins in a children’s series I cared about a decade ago are antisemitic. Please, complain about something else.
https://forward.com/culture/480388/...tm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_3480610
The Jew-goblin argument, which has been made ad nauseam on social media and in various thinkpieces (and has been highlighted in the news cycle recently following a viral Jon Stewart soundbyte), is effectively this: The goblin characters in the Harry Potter series, known mostly for their role in running the wizarding bank Gringotts, are antisemitic, because they look like Jewish caricatures and perpetuate antisemitic stereotypes.
I disagree. The Potter goblins are diminutive, hooknosed, saurian creatures, with creepy long fingers and crafty natures. They have exceptional financial skills and stop at nothing to acquire or protect money and precious objects. What is antisemitic is the fact that anyone would encounter such a character and think: “Aha, a Jew!”
Jews do not run the economy, do not have a cultural disposition toward prioritizing monetary gain over human emotion and also — and I would really like to emphasize this point — do not look like goblins. This depiction of goblins is offensive to bankers, not to Jews, and the reason it is offensive to bankers is because the goblins in the Potter world are synonymous with bankers, and Jews in the actual real world are not. Are all fictionalized bankers supposed to be cheerful, generous and definitively Anglo-Saxon in order to avoid potentially dipping into antisemitic caricature? I defend the right of the minor set-dressing fairy-tale characters in this invented world to be gross and good at money. I defend, mostly, my right to peruse the internet without encountering more people complaining that the goblins in a children’s series I cared about a decade ago are antisemitic. Please, complain about something else.
https://forward.com/culture/480388/...tm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_3480610
