Delingpole: J.K. Rowling Is Wrong on Vegas, Gun Control, Islam, and Everything

The Associated Press
The Associated Press
James Delingpole

Do you remember that scene in Harry Potter and the Saucer Full of Surrender Monkeys where the staff and pupils at Hogwarts finally decide to abandon the struggle against the forces of evil?

Voldemort, they’ve realized, is just too darn scary; the Death Eaters are too ruddy devious, what with all their lies and ruses and shape-shifting antics; and besides, who is anyone to judge, be they witch, wizard, mudblood, or muggle, whether the forces of light really are morally superior to the forces of darkness?

“Perhaps it’s just a matter of perspective,” Hermione tells an enthusiastic, jazz-handing audience at the United Nations of Wizardry. “Maybe what we’ve been taught by our chauvinistic, patriarchal, judgmental society — that the Avada Kedavra curse is wrong; that the Cruciatus is cruel; that the world would be a better, freer, happier place if it wasn’t ruled by sinister cloaked figures who want everyone to submit to their domineering, intolerant religious death cult — are just a reflection of our white wizardry privilege.”

What happens next, of course, is the famous scene where — under the supervision of Dolores Umbrage and the Ministry of Magic — all the staff and pupils at Hogwarts hand in their magic wands and burn them on a huge pyre.

“If no one has wands, no one can harm anyone ever again!” cries Harry, flying cheerfully above the pyre on his Firebolt broomstick.

“Hang on just a minute,” says Ron. “How come Lucius Malfoy and Draco Malfoy and the Carrows and Bellatrix Lestrange and He Who Must Not Be Named haven’t handed in their wands yet.”

But no one pays any attention to Ron because everyone else is far too busy celebrating. They’ve handed in their wands which means all the bad stuff they don’t want to think about has all gone away and now they can live happily ever after…

No, of course, you never read that book because J.K. Rowling never wrote it.

The reason she’s a bestselling author is that she understands the archetypes of successful fiction: good must always prevail over evil; a heroic few must battle against near-insuperable odds, even at the risk of dying in the process, in order to preserve the traditions of their culture; qualities such as courage, steadfastness, honesty, loyalty, compassion, and self-sacrifice are virtues to be celebrated, while vices such as cruelty, bullying, self-centredness and general wickedness are to be deplored; there is a right and there is are wrong — and all decent people know the difference and act upon it…

This stuff sells because it’s hard-wired into us and also because, from the Bible and the Odyssey to Lord of the Rings, stories are how we make sense of the world, our place in it, and how we learn to live a good, fulfilled life.

By following these rules in her fiction, J.K. Rowling has become one of the richest and most successful authors in history.

So why is she so contemptuous in real life of the values she champions in her fiction?

Let’s take her all-too-predictable response to the Las Vegas killings:

Yep, she wants everyone’s wands to be taken away. Just like she would never have allowed to happen in the Harry Potter books. But just like did happen in the UK in the wake of the Dunblane massacre. This led to such unintended consequences as the hamstringing of Britain’s Olympic pistol shooting team (which now has to fly to Switzerland to train), but of course had no noticeable impact on the use of firearms by criminals, because hey criminals don’t care what the law says on gun control or anything else — that’s why they’re criminals.

Unfortunately, because of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling now has a social media audience of over 12 million on which to inflict her half-baked political insights. Indeed, as I discuss in this badly-produced but must-watch vidcast with my brother Dick, J.K. Rowling has undoubtedly become one of the most Annoying People on Twitter.

Even more unfortunately, the SJWs among her fanbase only encourage her. Here, for example, is someone from the online SJW rag the Independent congratulating her on a “mic drop” moment. That is, supposedly, she has come up with a put down so effective that there is simply no comeback.

Here is that “mic drop” moment:

Yes, nice one J.K. Except it’s not actually that clever is it?

In the last decades many thousands of innocent people have been murdered in the name of Islam, including 25 mostly teenage girls punished for the crime of going to the Ariana Grande concert mentioned in Scott Presler’s tweet. As Presler rightly notes, the murderer’s chosen weapon was a suicide bomb. The fact that bombs are illegal in the UK appears not to have deterred him.

And how many of these teenage girls killed — plus the other 250 boys, girls, moms, and dads who were wounded — in that Manchester explosion had read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and contributed to her vast fortune?

Pretty much all of them, I would guess. Which means they would all have been familiar with one of the series’ main themes: the epic struggle between the forces of good (Dumbledore, Harry Potter and his pals) and the forces of evil (led by Voldemort).

The forces of evil in Harry Potter are ruthless, violent, cruel, single-minded and bigoted. They despise those who are not racially pure — “mudbloods” — and have utter contempt for non-wizards — aka “muggles.”

Possibly it was Nazis J.K. Rowling had in mind when wrote these baddies. But if you had to look for parallels in the modern world, as experienced by most Harry Potter readers, it wouldn’t be Nazis you’d pick, would it? You’d probably go for the one so contemptuous of others it refers to Jews as pigs and considers white Christian girls (and Sikhs) so worthless as to deserve being drugged and gang-raped repeatedly.

It’s not Nazis, say, that are most likely to cut your throat or stab you to death when you’re a pretty girl walking with your cousin outside Marseilles railway station. It’s not Nazis that blow you up at an Ariana Grande concert or machine gun you at an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris. It’s not Nazis that mow you down when you’re walking up the Ramblas in Barcelona or shopping in Stockholm or trying to cross Westminster Bridge or London Bridge.

But J.K. Rowling, in common with so many of the liberal chattering classes, doesn’t want you to think about this.

After the Manchester bombing, she directed her ire at conservative commentator Laura Ingraham (who had criticized the gesture politics of the Eiffel Tower going dark in solidarity).

After the Westminster Bridge murders, she directed her ire at conservative commentator Katie Hopkins for having the temerity to suggest that Britons were a bit bothered by the fact that they can no longer walk the streets of London without worrying about being offed by some murderous jihadi.

In the world of J.K. Rowling, it seems, Islam is an entirely blameless religion of peace and its adherents are lovely people who just want to integrate and live in harmony.

The fault, when things go wrong, lies with people like Nigel Farage. Apparently…

Yet despite knowing what amazingly decent people all Muslims are, she hasn’t yet come good on her “Refugees welcome” offer by housing any Syrian refugees in any of her palatial mansions. Funny that, eh?

 

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