Book series by JK Rowling: the goblins are portrayed as fairly neutral and alien rather than evil. They run a bank but otherwise have no antisemitic imagery associated with them. An ill-conceived use of the “race of X’ fantasy trope. The series is very anti-Nazi but doesn’t go too in depth. Rowling describes herself as a leftist with socialist leanings.
Movie adaptations: the goblins now have big hooked noses and they’re evil. The nose thing could potentially be chalked up to fantasy makeup tropes but someone decided to put a big star of David in the bank so that was a whole thing. JK Rowling had no direct involvement in production design but she did approve it, most likely out of ignorance but come on, Joanne. It was a big star of David. Hard to miss.
The greedy hook-nosed goblin trope enters the cultural zeitgeist, showing up in other media like BBC’s Merlin and the Warcraft games.
In spite of her obvious blind spots, JK Rowling maintains progressive public image and becomes known for slamdunking bigots on Twitter.
Fantastic Beasts movies, again written by JK Rowling: a goblin with a massive hooked nose and stereotypical Jewish New Yorker mannerism is played by Jewish actor Ron Perlman. The bad guy’s evil plan includes averting world war II and stopping the holocaust. He is aided by ambiguously Jewish character Tina Goldstein. Getting harder to give JK Rowling the benefit of doubt. If not actively malicious, she’s incredibly insensitive. Around this time, she starts posting terf shit on Twitter, killing what was left of her progressive image. The series ends unfinished and in disgrace.
Hogwarts Legacy: Straight up Nazi propaganda. Developed by an alt right YouTuber. Goblins now kidnap children and blow shofars while trying to fight back against their oppressors. And that’s terrible! JK Rowling has no direct involvement but still makes money off of it, showing how far down the right wing pipeline she’s gone and how shallow and performative her progressive leftist platitudes were this whole time.
“The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.”
— Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (via philosophybits)
