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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – …and that would be bad ‘We must not publish a study that says we’re harming children because people who say we’re harming children will use the study as evidence that we’re harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.’
– J.K. Rowling puts the boot in.
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As so often on this and various other matters Ms Rowling’s devastating turn of phrase effortlessly bats away any opposition. Some of her earlier posts (I haven’t used X for many years so don’t know if she has changed her position) show too much TDS for me to ever consider her fully on my side. She certainly wouldn’t care though so, with minor reservations, more power to her pen.
The passage that Rowling is rephrasing there uses the same logic as the government refusing to collect and publish migrant crime figures because they would only be used by the far right to oppose migration. I find it a breathtaking piece of sophistry, we must suppress evidence that a policy doesn’t work as it would only strengthen opposition to the policy. Yes, and?
“… show too much TDS for me to ever consider her fully on my side… “
Actually, the one item of J.K. Rowling’s TDS I saw, filled me with delight. The gist of it was that she does not like Trump, does not like his manner of speaking and is unappreciative of his public persona. But she is utterly against any movement to either censor his comments or deny him the ability to visit the U.K., because ‘once you head down that road, there’s no turning back’.
I interpret her to be in line with Voltaire’s “I disagree with what you’re saying, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it.”
That is very interesting, thank you for the link.
What i find especially noteworthy is that JK Rowling did not comment on what Trump DID, she only commented (negatively) on what Trump SAID. I myself give little weight to what people say, if & when i know what they have done; and am prejudiced against people who give more weight to speech than to action.
But i am favorably disposed towards JK Rowling, not just for standing up to trans insanity, but also for the implicit libertarian and anti-Islamist message of her Harry Potter series; although she might not be aware of it herself.
Like a stopped watch, JK Rowling will be correct twice a day. Other than that, she’s got bog standard idiotic leftist views.
@Joe Smith
Like a stopped watch, JK Rowling will be correct twice a day. Other than that, she’s got bog standard idiotic leftist views.
She definitely is a bit leftist in some of her views, but it is worth taking a step back and considering. She has put her fortune and her liberty on the line on this issue of protecting kids from the crazy medical trans lobby, standing up for women’s sports, and, frankly, in tyrannical Scotland, has stood up boldly for the idea of freedom of speech. I haven’t put my liberty or fortune on the line, I just write dumb comments on websites.
She has said in effect: “I’m rich and powerful, so hit me with your civil and criminal charges. I have the ability to defend myself and publicize what you are doing, even at hazard of my fortune and liberty. Stop picking on powerless people. If you are going to be a bully, try fighting with me instead, even though I might lose, I’m definitely going to draw some blood.”
That makes her a shockingly admirable and courageous person, and she deserves the support and encouragement of all decent people for her stand, even if I don’t agree with everything she says.
Fraser,
My thoughts exactly. And somehow I think her ideas will outlive the thoughts of the “fish people” (Salmon[d] & Sturgeon). Well, certainly the former! Is that too soon to get jockulent about “Lardy Braveheart”?
Of course you can be brave with somewhere around a £billion in the bank. The chance of any of this coming to bite her on the arse are slim (although an ex-SAS detail to deal with the real mentalists won’t be cheap). The establishment will still prosecute those who won’t have the funds to fight them.
Compare with Tommy Robinson who also has strong views but who’s life has been ruined by the state persecuting him for pointing out the rapey RoPer problem.
If JK throws a few quid into his legal defence fund I might change my view on her.
Rowling isn’t a leftist, she’s a centrist liberal, at best. Her support for Gordon Brown puts her immediately outside of the realms of being sensibly called a “leftist”.
I can’t speak to her views on puberty blockers — I have no data, and my thought experiments rapidly headed into unknown terrain. Weaseling, mealy-mouth researchers, administrators, and politicians, I got plenty of experience. And judging from Harry Potter, JKR has no love for weasels. More power to her, I say.
“And judging from Harry Potter, JKR has no love for weasels. More power to her, I say.”
Ehhh, the absolute best one that can say about the books is that she was – I’ll charitably say “in good faith” – *very* naive when she wrote them. She’s got a “chosen one” (ie. ancestral) story on top of a story of a character aspiring to be a bloody cop of all things, on top of all the subplots about the house elves and so on. It’s all *extremely* liberal, and overall, it’s pretty rubbish if one wants to make anything serious of it.
In all honesty, The Hunger Games did a better job, in terms of “popular YA fiction” of the time. They were silly, but had more fortitude.
It’s mildly entertaining enough, I guess, but it’s hardly pushing the dial. The films were okay and well acted, but suffered from the same broadly liberal but not explored enough crap that the books did.
If JK Rowling can get kids into picking up books and reading them, then all power to her.
If you want kids to read YA fiction from a small-state perspective, pick up a pen and write something for them!
Exactly – they will cover up the truth, indeed blatantly lie, to cover up their abuse of children. Abuse by drugs and surgery (oh yes they do that to), preventing these children one day having children of their own.
This is a struggle against evil – against terrible evil.
And I make no apology for pointing out that both K. Harris and T. Walz, fanatically support this evil.
“pick up a pen and write something for them!”
OK! What if have done that?
This is one of those responses that whenever I see it, I just think “You absolute bellend”
Sure, dude. As if there’s not a thousand people at any given point out there writing small-state perspective fiction didn’t happen to get picked up due to sheer luck like Rowling?
And there’s a bunch who did, but are being ignored. Like, Le Guin as already done this!
*heh*
I didn’t have to do a “captcha” before I mentioned Le Guin.
I did when I edited my reply to include her.
God bless free speech, I guess, but it’s worth noting that Samizdata requires a captcha for anarchists, but not others.
@neonsnake
It’s all *extremely* liberal, and overall, it’s pretty rubbish if one wants to make anything serious of it.
One of the major themes in the later books is that the government are idiotic buffoons, and some of them are positively evil. FWIW, I think Delores Umbridge is a perfect archetype for what I think most politicians are like. Sickly sweet on the outside, but deeply evil on the inside.
Rowling is no libertarian, she is a leftie from the days when “leftie” didn’t mean crazy, tyrannical narcissistic loon. More a Tony Blair or Joe Manchin than a Jeremy Corbin or Ocasio-Cortez. Not that I like any of them, but there are degrees of bad. And she is a friend to me on issues I care about, and so I hold her in very high regards.
There are many, many things I disagree with Donald Trump about, but I still voted for him.
Fraser, FWIW, you’re one only one of a couple of people that I even bother nowadays here checking in on, on here, because I think you’re a very decent guy, in my experience.
You’ll get no argument from me on Dolores Umbridge.
I’d argue, of course, that “leftie” means *less* government interference, not more, but I do appreciate (as a very extreme free-market anarchist) that some people think that’s not the case. I will, of courses, say that Blair interfered far more than Corbyn ever intended to, precisely because I’m a free-market anarchist.
For those of you here who question JK’s libertarian instincts: read The Order of the Phoenix and see if you can see the similarities to xxi century Britain, or other Western countries if you are sufficiently familiar with them.
There is an obvious difference: while Dolores is an idiot useful to Voldemort, Blair and most of his successors were/are not necessarily useful idiots for Islamism. Rather, they have been exploiting “”Islamophobia”” to expand the power of the State; that is to say, their own power.
— As for The Hunger Games, I have watched the movies, and in my opinion the premise is not believable. I cannot believe that a regime can survive for long by alienating the people to such an extent. Harry Potter is much more believable, once you grant the premise that there are wizards at large amongst us.
But i liked the plot twist at the end of the last movie: kind of like the plot twist at the end of the last season of Game of Thrones.
PS:
I meant: the last Hunger Games movie.
Rowling, her ilk, and her defenders, are not even vaguely close to being libertarian or defenders of freedom (I’m aware that now the word “libertarian” has been bastardised to a point where it has nothing to do with defence of liberty, but even so).
She’s not only anti-trans and anti-freedom, but she calls on her lawyers every time she gets called out on it.
She’s the equivalent of a playground bully with a rich dad, who cannot defend her principles in their own right, and has to call on daddy every time. She reminds me of when I ran a retail store: “If you have to resort to ‘It’s company policy’, then you’ve failed to explain why it’s wrong.”, which is basically her entire play.
@neonsnake
Fraser, FWIW, you’re one only one of a couple of people that I even bother nowadays here checking in on
Thanks. It really is nice to know that someone is listening!!
I’d argue, of course, that “leftie” means *less* government interference, not more
Yeah, it used to be. In fact as a libertarian I often found as much agreement with the “left” as I did with the “right”. Liberals used to really care about freedom of speech, they used to try everything to prevent the country going to war, they used to say things like “judge not by the color of your skin but the content of your character.” But those days are long gone. The “liberty” in “liberal” has been changed to mean the opposite, much as the “Open” in OpenAI has been changed to mean the opposite.
The left has been taken over by tyrants, and those people who care about things that we used to call liberal are often carried along on the coattails to the point of being stuck behind a label that eschews everything they believe in.
I mean look at the ACLU. A once great organization that now is a disgrace.
I find her to be a centrist.
“Centrist” doesn’t necessarily mean “neutral in all respects.” It can also mean “willing to take ideas from all offerings.”
I see conservative/libertarian themes in her writing. I also see woke themes, progressive themes. I’d guess she picks and chooses ideas that appeal to her in their own right, that resonate with her, and that she doesn’t feel pressure to stick with one side or the other.
Besides, I don’t read her for political support. She’s a hell of a great storyteller.
There’s no need to be a dick, Neonsnake; send me your manuscript, and I’ll let you know if it’s any good.
Is it possible we might be over-analysing fairly-simple young adult literature, and seeking deep meaning where none exists or was intended? J. K. Rowling is an entirely-different person than any character in her books, none of which (it seems to me) was penned with the slightest social significance in mind. It’s like trying to find libertarian ideas in The Famois Five. Let’s not get all up inside ourselves, shall we?
As to her politics, seems to me that she’s right on the fundamentals – free speech, reality around things like ‘trans’ – and for the rest, she’s welcome to her opinions, and good for her for using her bully pulpit to spread messages that others might feel inhibited from expressing.
llater,
llamas
J.K. Rowling has always been a moderate Collectivist – a person of the moderate left, a life long supporter of the Labour Party.
But the left “eats its own” – because J.K. Rowling is not barking-mad, and is not prepared to pretend to be barking mad, as she refuses to go along with the “Trans” cult for children, and with the general “Critical Theory” Marxist DEI-EDI agenda, the left have a fanatical hatred for her.
They hate, fanatically hate, anyone who does not submit to all (all) of their agenda – total and absolute submission is the demand of the left, anyone who does not submit, does not show total and absolute submission, they seek to destroy.
And remember – the left now have great influence in the courts in the United Kingdom and in some States in the United States.
Recent court cases make this is horribly obvious.
Pratchett was writing much better fiction triggering millions of young people to pick up books decades before Rowling sat down in her cafe. JKR’s fiction reads as though Pratchett continued writing after he’d died of dementia.
jgh – there’s many a way to learn to read. During WWII there were special editions of Superman with the dialog in Basic English. Some recruits to our armed forces weren’t as literate as they’d like, so they used Superman to get them up to speed. (I have this direct from Mort Weisinger, who was the editor of Superman when we spoke.) The habit of reading should start young. The ability to recognize good literature (and the opinions on what’s good) can come later.
That is saying that “leftie” does not mean what people mean when they utter the word, it means something else.
This position is, of course, nothing new: it is the position of Ayn Rand wrt “egoism”, and Paul Marks wrt … well, “leftie”; and other words.
The reality is that ***in the US of A*** the word “leftie” has always meant more government interference, since it came into common use after ww2.
In Britain, the picture is more complicated — and in continental Europe, the picture is even more complicated, since the word has been used for over a couple of centuries.
Endorsed.
As i previously remarked on Samizdata, i despise snobbery when it comes to literature.
The Harry Potter series presents capital-L “Liberal” ideas of Enlightenment thought in an appealing way. More particularly, it presents positive models of the traditional Western value system largely supplanted in the media by identity politics. And it provides a precis of the Nazi era and other recent history that has been dropped/distorted in most modern PC educational curricula.
And she created a island of engaging entertainment without gratuitous sex to make it “modern”.
Potter gained Rowling the affection, trust, and gratitude of tens of millions of kids and parents.
… Then Rowling betrayed that trust by announcing that Dumbledore was gay, and by allowing the whole sleaze agenda into the more recent prequels. Which caused all those prequels to (deservedly) sink like stones.
… So there is delicious karma in Rowling now being hoisted on the Tranny petard after her betrayal of her young audience. I agree with her opinion on that trans nonsense, but as a reader and parent who felt betrayed by her grab at PC popularity, I have little sympathy for her.
Even in the 19th century socialists were considered on the left – and their flag was the Red Flag.
As for the French Revolution – it meant the mass theft of land and other property, fiat money (government money rather than gold), mass conscription, and the death penalty for violating price controls and for saying anything the regime did not like. Often the death penalty for people who had NOT said anything the regime disliked – basically killing people for fun.
Vast numbers of people – mostly ordinary people in the provinces.
See the works of William Doyle on the French Revolution – which give the hard facts rather than the, absurd, nonsense about the French Revolution being about liberty.
The left celebrate the French Revolution on the 14th of July every year – they do so by killing a pig, the animal being a symbol of the Governor of the Bastille (in which there were no political prisoners in 1789) who surrendered the fortress (it was not “stormed”) on a promise of safe conduct – and then was savagely murdered by
leftists.
I hope we have nothing in common with leftists who, for example, gang raped and mutilated a women, got her hairdresser to do the hair of the decapitated head and put it on a pole – with which they taunted another women – who was later, herself, murdered.
Neither of these women had committed any crime. And the murders were committed with the support of the regime.
“But they were aristocrats” – not relevant (to any decent human being), and, I repeat, must of the murder victims of the French Revolution (murdered with the full support of the regime) were quite ordinary people (men, woman and children) in the Provinces.
The left did not become evil in America or recently – the left have always been evil, the Red Flag is the flag of blood – of robbery and murder. They are travelers on the left hand path – the broad and easy road. Rather than the right hand path – the hard and difficult road on which human beings use their moral reason to resist their passions (to resist the evil we all have within ourselves – and should struggle against every day, for we all fall to the passions, to evil, sometimes).
That a few Classical Liberals (such as Bastiat) choose to sit on the left hand side of the National Assembly (surrounded by various forms of socialist) does not alter the above.
Don’t know about libertarian ideas, but having read a lot of Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter to my kid in the past few years, it was clear they were a lot more based than most contemporary so-called conservatives, let alone a wet drip liberal like JK Rowling.
Snorri
“Leftie” has become, indeed, short-hand for “liberal” (in the US sense of the word), which is – to my mind, utterly incorrect.
The bare minimum to qualify for being “left” is to wish to remove the state privileges granted to owners of capital (ie. to be anti-capitalist). From there, whether you’re a free-market advocate like me, or an anarcho-communist, or a syndicalist, I don’t really care. You are – of course – free to try any of the above, or a mixture, or move from one to the other. I don’t care.
If all you want is the current system, but with a bigger welfare state, then you’re a liberal (or centrist). And, in all honesty, I don’t have a whole lot of time for that.
It’s endlessly frustrating that I know people who passionately voted for Starmer’s Labour who believe that they’re on “the left” (they’re not), and on the other hand that I know conservatives that believe that Starmer is on “the left” (he’s not) – just an example, but a telling one, I think.
It sort of goes back to Fraser’s note that around “the left”; essentially there’s a huge conflation now between “liberal centrists” and “the left” which I myself disagree with vehemently.
(I *suspect* it’s because some liberals make a song and dance about supporting more marginalised communities, which a principled libertarian/anarchist would also support, and so those two things are becoming conflated, even though I believe that the liberals would drop that support immediately if it caused them any discomfort)
Neonsnake: Thank you for your reply — but, ironically, your reply confirms my thesis about X saying that words do not mean what people mean when they use them, they mean what X means when using them. (And by X, i do not mean Twitter. In this case, it means neonsnake.)
Specifically, you write:
You state this without presenting any evidence that anybody, at any point in spacetime, ever used the word “left” in this sense.
At least Paul Marks gives the example of the French Revolution; which, however, is only one point (make it a blob) in spacetime.
Fair enough! My bad, I was not aware that I needed to provide a history lesson in where the terms “left” and “right” came into use.
Apologies, I thought you knew where the terms originally came from.
Uh, without having to write an entire essay (I really don’t have time today 🙂 ), essentially they came from the French Revolution whereby “the Right” supported the old Aristocracy who ruled by “might is right” and conquest – their lands and wealth came about by theft and violence – and “the Left” was composed of people who felt that conquest by violence was, shall we say, somewhat unreasonable.
There’s a bit more to it than that, obviously, but I have other stuff to do today and can’t necessarily expand.
Point being, and notwithstanding any changes in tone over the past two centuries, the “right” in the sense of the original term, were in favour of serfdom, aristocracy, and taking stuff by violence. The “left” was the wing that believed that people should have the right to their own product of their own labour.
I agree that JK did not insert herself in disguise into her books.
However, The Order of the Phoenix seems to have been intended by JK as a warning against the appeasement in the run-up to ww2.
But that is of little relevance: what is relevant to me (and you might disagree) is that i could not watch the movie, or read the book, without being disturbed by the strong similarities to what is going on in Britain today. Not in the 1930s: today.
But it is a mark of great literature that it is open to different interpretations.
Ehhh, also, with the best will in the world, Paul isn’t tall enough to get on this ride.
When someone is going “What the lefts do, is they go and they kill a pig! Every year! On the 14th July! They goes and they gets themselves a pig, and they kill it! Every year! Because of the French! On the 14th July! There was a hairdresser!” it’s probably not *enormously wise* to take them seriously.
But fair play to those who do.
Neonsnake:
No, you misunderstand: that is not what you need to do. What you need to do is
* either to show that the terms have been used consistently since then (an impossible task; so, let’s say mostly consistently);
* or else to specify a point in spacetime where the terms have been used as you use them, AND convince me that that is the usage most appropriate now.
I have sympathy with the view that Trump’s party is the “real Left”, however, since it is the party of the middle & working classes. Trump’s party, please note; and also Reagan’s party. But not Romney’s party, and not the Bushes’ party.
Snorri, I’m not clear on what it is that you’re after, my friend?
I certainly don’t *think* you need me to clarify my point that the “left” is inherently “anti-capitalist” – I 100% believe that you think so too.
I’ve already said that the term “left” has been and is used very, very loosely indeed, by people who don’t know the history or origin of the term; I would very much *like* people to be clearer on whether they mean “left” or whether they mean “liberal (US sense)”, but I’m aware that the two have become conflated – very much to my annoyance, although there’s not much I can do about it other than question it when I see it and ask for clarity on what people mean!
I’m simply offering a differing view on what the “left” can mean – and it ain’t the caricature version that’s often posited here – vs what people assume it means (mostly riffing off of Frazer’s comment earlier, but also knowing a few of the other commentators on this thread and how they once felt they could make at least some common cause with the left, but no longer feel that they can; which I feel is a shame)
“Left” is a chameleon. it can do lots of colors, but at base, it’s a lizard. There’s a lot of wasted time arguing about the color, though. I called somebody out on being “woke”, who then said I first had to define the characteristics of “woke” before I could use the word.
Many useful words are that way. Define “good” and “evil” if you will? For me, far left is madness, and far right is rigidity. The center is more sensible than either. “Liberal” is a word once used to denote a stance near the center, with a bit of a tendency to the left. It’s been invaded and colonized by the far left these days, and has a hard time finding a home.
Your dictionary may be different. That’s why there are so many people trying to enforce their meaning of words to the exclusion of all others.
Yeah, I’m not enormously surprised. I played a game some years ago where the main complaint was that it had “an inordinately unrealistic amount of females in it, I think I bought the girls’ version”.
The amount was 50/50. Literally, the writer made sure it was 50/50, so as not to be accused of pandering.
(it wasn’t anything like Call Of Duty or a wargame or anything like that. There was literally no reason, in context, why it wouldn’t be 50/50, and yet you still had these muppets going “It’s WOKE!” because it was literally representative across demographics)
Sorry you went through that.
You just don’t get it.
“The left” does not mean anything, except what people mean by the word at a specific point in spacetime.
There are Platonic concepts such as natural number, prime number, triangle, circle, derivative, average, etc.
Then there are Aristotelian concepts such as oxygen, iron, water, C.elegans, D.melanogaster, H.sapiens, etc.
And then there are words that do not correspond to any one concept, such as “left” and “right”. (In politics.)