I’m not defending her or anything but honestly, what do you expect? She’s a mainstream American politician. She might be better than most but if any politician at this point ran on a platform of not deporting anyone then they’d instantly be seen as too radical and “idealistic” by the media and the general public. I mean it took us a very long time before most people got on board with the idea that having a health care system similar to basically every other first world country wasn’t too radical.
The context for this was that a 95-year old Nazi war-crime suspect who happened to live in the district for which she is running for Congress was finally deported (he was actually ordered to be deported 2004 but no country would accept him until now, when Germany finally agreed), and the GOP attacked her for it, and then when she clarified that yes, she still wants to abolish ICE but some deportation will be necessary, like the deportation of Nazis suspected of being war criminals, the left attacked her for that, because that makes her a cop.
comic maximoff twins: explicitly jewish-romani and the children of holocaust survivors, has fighting discrimination and racism and what it means to be heroes in spite of oppression as an integral part of their narrative
movie maximoff twins: white, volunteers for and gets their powers from a neo-nazi organization
joss whedon: NAILED IT
The basic plot, which cannot be ignored even in the films, is that Harry, Hermione and Ron give up everything for their political struggle. They drop out of high school, they go illegal, defy the government, belong to an underground organization [The Order of the Phoenix], operate out of safe houses and forests and even raid offices of the government and banking offices. This is all done in principled opposition to the Dark Wizard Voldemort and a corrupt bureaucratized government that has been heavily infiltrated with his evil minions. This is revolutionary activity. But the movie version does not present it as such or emphasize these radical aspects of the plot, thereby entirely missing the dramatic sweep and action present in the first half of the last novel.
The novels recognize the importance of alternative media for political struggle. The mainstream press [The Daily Prophet] is shown as unreliable and unprincipled, eventually deteriorating into a fear-mongering propaganda machine for the Voldemort-controlled bureaucracy. For a while the alternative but above ground media [The Quibbler] publishes the real news, but it ceases to print after the daughter of the publisher is kidnapped. In the book, friends of Harry [Lee Jordan, with Fred and George Weasley as frequent guests] start broadcasting the real news from an underground radio station, encrypted with a password. This radio station becomes a critical link for the resistance, which is scattered and weak. Although we are treated to some radio broadcast updates in the movie, they are delivered by a disembodied and professional sounding voice, not our friends the Weasleys. This undermines the important message – a guiding principle behind the media coop – that in a serious situation it becomes necessary to produce your own media and not to rely on ‘professionals’.
The novel makes it clear that in this phase of the struggle the characters romantic lives take a backseat to their political activity, as Harry breaks up with the love of his life [Ginny Weasley] so as to avoid making her a target for Voldemort’s forces, who are known to use torture and kidnapping as tactics. The ‘love triangle’ that becomes the focus of the movie isn’t even really present in the books. In the books, the relationship between Harry and Hermione is totally platonic – Ron is shown as jealous, but the feeling is entirely without foundation. In the book Harry says to Ron: “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always been like that. I thought you knew” (pg 378, DH US Hardback). This conveys that men and women can be close comrades and friends without being involved romantically. But in the film, Harry and Hermione are shown dancing romantically, and Harry’s line to Ron about his brotherly feeling towards Hermione does not even make it into the film. This completely undermines the important message that jealousy is counter-productive and has toxic effects, which is an important feminist message for young people.
HP is one of the most fundamentally anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, radical books in a WHILE. The books are incredibly diverse in race and gender, including villains. While everyone was screaming about Pullman, and hanging their hats on the witchcraft in HP, Rowling basically put out a roadmap of revolutiinary youth.
Everyone likes to pull the, “Deatheaters are Nazis,” subtext but if you look at the timeline of the text and publication, it’s pretty clear that politically, this is an England/Ireland/Scotland/Wales under Tory rule and in the midst of the Troubles & Thatcherism from the start, with subsequent books written and published in a post-9/11 world.
Rowling wrote the root, branch, and flower of politics and power creating death and despair, where love and unity by choice were the strongest powers. There are reasons for that.
The word swastika derives from the Sanskrit root ssu(“Good”),asti(“to be”),[4][6]andka(making)[6]The older term gammadion cross derives from its appearance, which is identical to four Greek gamma letters affixed to each other.
What I find interesting is that this is actually a very very good representation of what can happen when white people culturally appropriate something.
The Swastika, long before the Nazis came about and started brandishing their own bastardization of it, had a strong religious and cultural significance to a LOT of people.
It didn’t represent anything evil, it didn’t represent a dictatorship that perpetuated one of the most well known genocides taught today.
It only started having this horrible association in the 1920’s when the Nazi party appropriated it as for their logo.
White people, white supremacists, taking something with an already well established past and meaning; and placing their own over it.
Because of these people, swastikas that do not have anything to do with the Nazi party are demonized in most people’s eyes because they don’t know any better, because white people wiped out it’s original meaning in white culture.
People seriously need to learn some history. THIS is the sort of damage that cultural appropriation can do in the long run.
LemonGrenade 