An interesting take on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Back when I first learned of the ridiculous "Republicans for Voldemort" T-shirt, I thought about it, and realized how foolish the comparison was. Voldemort's planned overthrow of the wizarding world isn't conservative in the least. My thought was that Voldemort was much more like Stalin.

Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard put much more thought into it than I had, and reached a brilliant conclusion: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was an allegory to the English response to the rise of Adolph Hitler. Albus Dumbledore is Winston Churchill, one of the few to immediately recognize the danger of the new Voldemort. Cornelius Fudge is Neville Chamberlain, more concerned about Dumbledore's threat to his position as Minister of Magic than to the threat of Voldemort to the entire wizarding world. He concludes Harry Potter is like America, which will rise to the challenge and tilt the balance in this war.

Interestingly, do you remember the (as of Book 5 seemingly) ineffective character in House Gryffindor? Neville is his name.

Voldemort is a good stand-in for either Hitler or Stalin, and though I still like my comment that he's like Stalin because of all of his followers that later claimed, no, we didn't really support him, Mr. Last's argument is better in whole.

Read it all!

Update: Galley Slaves, the blog of three members of the Weekly Standard staff (including Last), linked to the post, and said "I'm just waiting for the hate mail."

Harry Potter