Dumbledore’s Army – How Mega-Liberal J.K. Rowling Accidentally Created A Conservative Fable

 

In literary circles there has been a longstanding debate between two philosophies when it comes to how we view the relationship between a work and its author: Authorial Intentionalism vs Death of the Author. Proponents of Authorial Intentionalism argue that a work should be understood within the confines of how the author originally intended it to be viewed, and that the author’s intent is the correct and true meaning. Death of the Author argues the opposite: the author and the work are entirely separate and that interpretations of the work that are different from or even contradictory to what the author intended can be just as valid.

 

Why did I start this essay about Harry Potter with a paragraph of barely related intellectual wankery? Just to say that I am a strong proponent of “Death of the Author”, and that way I can make it clear to anyone who may suggest “But that’s not how Rowling intended the work to be read!” that my response is simple: I don’t care. The Harry Potter novels exist as a cohesive entity outside of Rowling and are open to analysis from every direction and viewpoint. If Rowling has a problem with that, then she should have kept the stories in her head.

I’m going to summarize a story from the books in the most generic way possible. I am going to remove all references to character names, places, magic, or anything that might identify its origin. I want to strip down the story I’m about to repeat to its bare bones in hope that we may understand its message. Here we go:

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A grave and deadly threat has come to the land in the form of bad people with bad intentions. These bad people have caused great death and destruction in the past and memories of those hard times are still a trauma on those old enough to remember. Our protagonist knows first-hand that the threat is real–he encountered these bad men and was lucky to escape with his life.

However, the government of the land not only refuses to acknowledge the threat, but in fact denies the threat is real and suppresses and slanders all those who talk about it. So severe is the government’s suppression that they actually manipulate the school curriculum to promote a passive response to aggression. The students potentially have access to powerful weapons, but are deliberately not taught how to use them. When our protagonist speaks out about this and tells the truth about the threat facing his people, he is branded a liar and severely punished.

At a certain point he decides enough is enough and he takes matters into his own hands. If the government was not going to teach them how to defend themselves than he was going to teach himself and his friends. Rounding up as many friends and like-minded people, he essentially forms his own militia and trains them in secret. He names his militia after his mentor, who is also the leader of another secretive group that has fought these bad men before.

Eventually they are caught but the training stays with the students. When the bad men eventually overthrow the government and occupy the land this militia is a great thorn in their side, and when the final confrontation happens they are instrumental in defeating and overthrowing the bad men.

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What I have just told you is the story of Dumbledore’s Army from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the 5th book in the series. It’s hard to believe that an arch-liberal like Rowling could have written a story with such a conservative message. Let’s just recap what this story contained:

• A clearly defined threat pained as unambiguously evil.
• A corrupt government that denies the threat exists.
• Fake News that holds up the government narrative and slanders anyone who deviates from it.
• An attempt is made to disarm the population (in this case, not teach the students defensive magic)
• The very essence of liberalism boiled down into a single character: the loathsome Dolores Umbridge.
• Our hero, Harry Potter, getting his friends to form a Well Regulated Milita, all but waving the Gadsden Flag and screaming “from my cold dead hands!” as he teaches them to fight.

It is one of the strongest pro-gun, pro-liberty, and pro-conservative messages I’ve ever seen in a children’s novel. I fully expect that this never occurred to Rowling while writing the novel, but as Bill Whittle is fond of saying: Storytelling is Conservative. No matter how much you try to push a narrative (Rowling tries very hard to draw parallels between the villains of her novels and “White Supremacists”), by the simple process of telling a story the golden nugget of truth will fall out from between the lines.

Not only is the story of Dumbledore’s Army extremely conservative, it is my favorite thing that happens in the entire series. For most of the Potter novels, Harry himself is a pinball protagonist being bounced around the story by events largely beyond his control. Things happen to him, people seek him out for reasons, and he is largely reactive. But in this fifth book Harry truly takes his destiny in his hands for the first time. Although the idea for the group was originally suggested by his friend Hermione, Harry leads the group and it is under his direction that his friends become stronger and tougher. Now Harry is the one who is acting, and his adversaries have to react to him for a change.

I can tell you that reading this for the first time as a teenager I felt a thrill of excitement every time I read about Dumbledore’s Army in the book. Looking back on it now, I believe it was because Harry exercising his personal will and taking on personal responsibility. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what Conservatism is about?

If Harry Potter was a real man, he’d be a ruby-red Republican in a Maga hat. He loves fast cars (his racing broom), loud guns (his wand), and hot women (he eventually bags the highly desirable Ginny Weasley at the end of the story). He fights for liberty, his friends, and all the good people out there. Though written by a liberal and portrayed by a liberal actor in the movie, there is no doubt that Harry Potter would be on the stump for Trump in 2020 if he had any time or patience for politics, which he absolutely does not, like all the good conservatives out there. I salute you Harry, and I don’t care what that real-life witch Jo Rowling has to say about you.