Harry Potter depicted how tyrannical regimes take over society. When Hogwarts fell under the grip of Dolores Umbridge, it wasn't through conquest or violence, it happened with paperwork, new titles, and a flood of rules from the Ministry. That's how authoritarianism actually shows up, not with tanks, but with memos, safety policies, and smiling officials including religious leaders who tell you it's all for your own good.
After her time at Hogwarts, Umbridge rises to prominent and
influential positions in the Ministry of Magic in the Improper Use of Magic
Office. After a while, Umbridge became the Senior Undersecretary to the
Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge. Umbridge used this position of power to
satisfy her hatred of part-humans, for example through new Anti-Werewolf
Legislation which made it nearly impossible for Remus Lupin to find a new job
after resigning his post as Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts
in 1994. This is an eerie parallel of all the liberal malcontents of the 1960’s
taking over judicial and institutional power in America.
JK Rowling's story reads less like fiction and more
like political propoganda and a warning of how our own American institutions have gone rogue. Umbridge
didn't arrive with soldiers, she walked in wearing a pink cardigan, has kitten
plates on the wall, and called herself High Inquisitor, a title invented by
decree. That's where real tyranny begins, in the administrative state where
power hides behind process.
Once inside, she did what bureaucrats do best: multiply the
rules. Enforce absurd degrees like forcing vaccination and accepting the lunacy
of the transgender movement. Accepting that biological women are men and men
are women. One decree after another turns normal behavior and normal people
into something punishable because they do not toe the line of the absurd laws and forced conversions. That is a two-tier justice system in practice.
Villains rule while everyone else chokes on unobeyable laws.
Umbridge like most politicians is depicted as being an evil,
cruel, authoritarian, power-hungry, bigoted and despicable woman who
represented the worst of political power, under a sweet image filled with
kittens, fluff, and girlishness. Strangely, just as we see in feminism,
transgenderism and a bevy of other ‘isms’ pushed by the progressive leftists.
In truth she is sadistic and overwhelmingly corrupt, to the point of finding
joy in torturing students like Harry.
Just as in the Hogwarts School, so too the American
political structure. We see mandates and paperwork for citizens, indulgence for
gangs, cartels, and well-connected insiders. The infiltration of education at
Hogwarts and in America were the opening salvo in this strategy. Defense against
the Dark Arts was neutered into theory only, stripping students of the skills
to defend themselves from the actual evil. Then the Carrows (Death Eaters or
pure-blood supremacists who use evil to enforce their ideology) turned
classrooms from the youngest to the oldest into indoctrination halls to push
their agendas.
This is how totalitarians operate: capture schools, rewrite curricula, and shape the next acolytes before seizing the true centers of power. Essentially, creating an army of indoctrinated mindless evil. It is the line often attributed to Lenin:
"Give me four years (college) to teach the children and the seed I
have sown will never be uprooted.”
We see the very same things in today's schools,
universities, and hiring offices of companies and gathering some of societies most confused malcontents where slogans and box-ticking beat actual intelligence, skill and courage.
“Free Palestine” …as if it wasn’t already. Their own
violence reaped violence upon themselves.
“Love is Love” …as if it is when in reality it destroys
life, spreads disease and sexually depraves minds.
“Defund the Police” …as if more disorder is going to quell
the chaos.
“No Human is Illegal” …except when they have in fact
violated longstanding laws.
“No One is Illegal on Stolen Land” …even though it was conquered land.
Propaganda then seals the fate of all those under these monsters at Hogwarts and in America. Daily Prophet denies Lord Voldemort's return, smears Harry, prints only the official line. Language becomes a weapon. Educational decree: Undesirable Number One or as in America...'Basket of Deplorables'. We could see this in the lead up to the murder of Charlie Kirk too. Charlie’s words were viewed as violence and as such justified a violent/deadly response. Euphemisms that soften reality while hardening control and them hardening hearts.
Surveillance and informants follow as the inquisitorial
squad deputizes students to police other students. The objective isn't truth,
it's fear, compliance, humiliation, silence, violence and then eventually...death. We saw this in the forced
masking and vaccination of Covid. Ironically, this would come full circle and
fall back on the diehard liberals who, to this day six years later, are mocked
for still wearing a mask.
Umbridge's blood quill makes Harry carve lies into his own
skin. Real regimes do the same with forced apologies, public shaming, and
required statements. In the 1960s Hannah Arendt coined the phrase, "The
banality of evil” referring to the takeover of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany by the likes of Adolf Eichmann.
She said this when she attended the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in
Jerusalem in 1961.
Arendt was one of the first to discover what was happening
in the camps in Nazi Germany and the first to study the new system of Concentration Camps or the “corpse factories”, as she called them. When she
watched the Nuremberg trials in the 1940s, she was aghast. She thought the
Nazis had, "exploded the limits of law". This changed
when she went to Jerusalem in 1961 to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann. What
she saw in Eichmann was an under-ordinary person who believed he was far more
important than he was. He was not a figure of radical, awful, evil, but a
small, pompous man – talking in cliches, self-important and radically unable to
think about where he was and who he was talking about. Eichmann was banal. Just
like liberals, educators and American politicians. Totally out of touch with reality.
Like Dolores Umbridge, not outwardly monsters with sharp
teeth, but regular people doing harm because that's the policy and those are
the rules. That's why the parallel should be so obvious to those of us who are
not brainwashed and swept into the insanity. Tyranny rarely marches in boots.
It comes with flowers, love and pleasant voices. The kittens on Umbridge’s wall
are the point. It's meant to feel normal. When in reality it is insanity and
evil directly below the facade.
Hogwarts wasn’t saved by more idiotic laws and a politician
(like Trump) coming to save the day. It was saved because students or the
plebians refused to bow like slaves. The answer to today’s societal ills lies
with the blue-collar everyman. The burden is on the common man and woman. The answer is to tell the
truth and be Biblical in our stance. We need to learn to defend, and push back
early. I’ve been doing this for two decades and only now are people starting to
see and understand the truth.
