Deep Insights from China: America ‘Is Quite Similar’ to Voldemort

China’s Global Times propaganda outlet published an opinion column on Sunday declaring the United States was “quite similar” to Lord Voldemort, the primary villain in the Harry Potter book series.

The Global Times declared America “the ‘Dark Lord'” of the world and a “human rights destroyer,” proclaiming that “the world has suffered from the U.S. for too long” and must soon ensure that American foreign policy “backfires,” without elaborating.

The column was accompanied by a bizarre attempt at a political cartoon showing Voldemort, a fictional British wizard, locking various rogue states allied with China into wooden chests in the Oval Office.

Lord Voldemort, whose real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle, is a wizard born in 1926 who embarks on a quest to conquer the wizarding world and eradicate individuals who do not come from pure wizard stock, prizing “pure-blood” wizards and establishing a cult known as the “Death Eaters” who set about attempting to conquer Britain and imposing a dictatorship. The Harry Potter books use Voldemort as an allegory for bigotry, totalitarianism, and genocide and highlights the contributions of people with “mixed” wizard blood, to the greatest of British magic communities and to the ultimate defeat of Voldemort.

The Global Times does not remark on Voldemort’s attempted genocide of “muggles” and those of mixed magic heritage, despite the similarities between the fictional narrative and the current ongoing genocide of Uyghurs and other non-Han ethnic groups in China under dictator Xi Jinping. Instead, the Times compares Voldemort’s rampant mass murder, torture, and other human rights abuses to American sanctions on rogue states.

“Fanning the flames to create turmoil, using economic and financial hegemony to sanction opponents, and forming cliques to create political isolation – the US is using its hegemony to undermine the international order,” the Global Times declared. “In fact, the US government’s approach is quite similar to Voldemort’s – they both believe in power, recruit followers, use violence, and repeatedly want to kill competitors in order to maintain supremacy.”

“In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort’s arrogance and unchecked need for absolute power lead to his eventual demise,” the Chinese publication observed. “Unmasking the nature of US government as Voldemort, its face has now been revealed to readers piece by piece.”

The Global Times specifically objected to America’s sanctions on Russia, a response to Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine after eight years of proxy war in the eastern Donbas region – and sanctions on other human rights criminal states such as “Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.” It cited an alleged professor comparing economic sanctions to “chemical and biological weapons.”

The Chinese newspaper revealed that its particular objection to the sanctions against Russia is that they “are the biggest blow to globalization” possible. Xi has personally touted globalism – or the interconnectedness of global economies such that they are no longer functional independently – as an “indisputable reality and a historical trend.” Xi has also condemned countries that have attempted to build economies independent of China’s slave-tainted manufacturing sector as “isolationist.”

“The US is not only the Ukraine Crisis Instigator and Cold War Schemer, but also the Instability Brewer, Poison Disseminator, ‘Vampires’ in the war who spread plague and creates hatred, a Human Rights Destroyer who committed grave crimes against humanity, and the ‘Voldemort’ of Global Order,” the column concluded.

The “vampire” remark appeared to be a reference to a past Global Times article published in late March featuring an equally bizarre political cartoon depicting President Joe Biden as a short, portly vampire sitting at the Oval Office desk.

This week’s article is not the first time the Communist Party has invoked the nearly all-powerful Voldemort to attack its geopolitical rivals. In 2014, then-Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming invoked the children’s book to attack Japan’s continued maintenance of the Yasukuni Shrine, a monument and tomb for Japanese soldiers that includes World War II criminals in its ranks.

“If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation’s soul,” Liu declared in a column at the time.

China is arguably the world’s worst human rights criminal, engaging in the aforementioned genocide of Uyghurs as well as the violent, often deadly, repression of anti-communist political dissidents and members of nearly every religion outside of the confines of the Communist Party establishment, including the Falun Gong spiritual movement, independent Christianity, Uyghur Islam, and Tibetan Buddhism.

China also imposed strict censorship on all media available to Chinese citizens, including Harry Potter books and films. Warner Bros. has been facing global condemnation this week after bowing to a demand from the Communist Party to censor the latest film in its Harry Potter series, Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore, to remove romantic dialogue between the protagonist of the film and another man. The Global Times justified the censorship by claiming that Chinese audiences lack “critical thinking” and could be “influenced” by a gay relationship.

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