:pit:s in the comments larping about the dark lord returning and making jokes about “just following orders”
OP did you really go back 5 years in time specifically to find someone in a Harry Potter subreddit for some users of an obscure podcast forum to laugh at?
There was a TikTok talking about how Jewish writers/directors depict Nazis vs how goy writers/directors depict Nazis. Basically claiming that Jews depict Nazis as foolish and pathetic whereas goys tend to create imagery that fascists enjoy. They mentioned people getting dark mark tattoos and I was like, “no fucking way”
Now, I’m not claiming to be a Nazi expert here, but I’m going to guess this is more just counter signaling their own cultural in group and instead of getting their house sign they are doing some symbol that shows they like this particular IP and at the same time “they are not like other fans.” Now if their is some neo-nazi Harry Potter cult on TERF island harassing trans people and people of color I apologize in advance but my read is that this is completely defanged.
One of the things that makers libs so bad at recognizing fascism is how effectively they utilize that plausible deniability but I think you’re right in this case.
The Reddit op is from what I can see pretty standard potentially-reactionary American, not overtly fash but does seem the type that would side with real fascists pretty quick, they seem pro-cop or at least have a copaganized view of the police and have some other kind of generally misanthropic “idiocracy was right” kind of views just from a cursory overview of their account
Yeah like I said I think you’re right they’re not a nazi. I’m just saying all it would take for it to be a fash symbol is 4chan deciding it’s sufficiently ironic to line up behind. They’ve done it with other innocuous shit before
Yeah looking through some profiles, I think you’re right. I guess when I see people saying “the dark lord will rise again” I read them as understanding the very clear political implications of that. But it looks like they mostly post about game of thrones and naruto
Yeah that person just seemed like an edgy teenager especially since his flair was
CW: Cringe ahead
Revere him, praise him, this noble & beautiful god
For those who don't know, this is the mark that the wizard nazis wear. :visible-disgust:
But Grindelwald was going to prevent the holocaust.
The evil wizards literally looked into the future and said “we have to prevent humanity from doing another world war by any means.”
Harry Potter lore gets dumber and worse every time a new bit comes out. In the latest one, the wizard president is chosen by a magical animal.
Imagine being wizard president because you wandered by with a bit of magic jerky in your pocket, amazing. What's better is that the actual process is probably much stupider than that
I think the point was that he was power hungry and lying about preventing the war. But like… the response to that is not continuing to do nothing.
wizard president is chosen by a magical animal.
Seems like a commonplace fantasy trope, tbh.
The Dark Mark is pretty cool-looking, shame that fascism kinda owns skull/skeleton symbolism ever since the ss.
TBF I'm pretty sure there were some early communist and anarchists groups in Eastern Europe that used skulls in their iconography.
If we ever take power, make a note to have but ONE Haye's code rule.
"Do NOT make the villains too cool."
The majority of pig-fascist logos are at least somewhat metal :shrug-outta-hecks:
Eh, the Swastika is kinda meh, the blue line pig worship America flags suck shit. I guess the black sun and that weird three triangles one looks kinda cool. The SS had some cool logos I'll give them that but otherwise I'd say most fash iconography is pretty bland. Fictional fash movements tend to have better marketing.
Oh yeah fully on board, American fascists are the worst at iconography, it'll be like a photographic image of Jesus's muscled hand, which you know is Jesus because theres a crown of thorns around the wrist for some reason, pulling back on the American flag to reveal a fucking pirated logo from a comic book, with crossed M-16s, and a circle of stars
And there's text
It’s does look kinda rad though. In a spooky occult way. It's a real shame that right-wing nerds steal the cool shit from video games, comics, books, etc. and use it for evil.
I mean I'll go a step beyond that, I don't have context for who this is or where it was posted but I doubt the person getting this is actually fash. They're probably just a big HP nerd who liked the logo. I've definitely consumed fictional media where there's some evil faction that none the less had really cool iconography, cool enough I'd maybe get like a bumper sticker or something of it. I was in a DnD game once with a bunch of art students and one of them made a real cool logo for the evil cult we were at war with and a couple of us ordered custom dice bags with the graphic on it, but none of us condoned the act of trying to summon a extra-dimensional demon to destroy the world.
This only really seems weird cuz HP is such a popular and politically charged work of fiction, if someone did this for a more obscure work of fantasy I probably wouldn't bat an eye at it.
No I totally get it and I did look through OP’s history after posting this and they’re not fash. Just a Redditor
I'd totally get a One Ring replica or something to be honest :side-eye-1:
“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”
Kinda dope.
The whole thing's feudalism vs theocracy, so it'd be hard to twist it that way. At least I think Mordor would be a theocracy, does it count if the leader's a god-king but no one really worships him?
That feels more like a reference to the plot of the Lord of the Rings, i.e. destroying the ring, rather than an explicit signifier that you think Sauron was based, actually
I've generally found villains in fiction to be more compelling, same with their openly hostile and grim iconography.
the COBRA and Hydra symbols/logos are tight.
if you believe the two hollywood writers on the West Wing Thing, leftish writers know they'll never be able to push explicit or even implicit left ideas as positive so they often sneak them in as the bad guys' motives. If it's true I'm not sure whether it helps or hurts.
honestly, is fascist iconography necessarily grim? certainly there's the loading of other cultural icons (the christian cross is a medieval torture/execution device, all the nazi obsession with the totenkopf, which was also used in piracy).
as i understand it, fascism's "true" aesthetic is a pastiche of whatever symbolism one can shoehorn in to give the perception of prestige and strength. skulls, sometimes, but also birds of prey, german fascists with their mystical runes, the italian fascists with their eagles, stick bundles and axes of imperial rome, etc. we may understand fascists to be grim as the standard bearers of vicious reaction and barbarism, but their symbols (rather, the symbols they co-opt) aren't always so.
what i find forceful about villain aesthetics, particularly the symbols of their organizations, is that the pretense of anything but "Fear Us" is dropped. like mac might say, they are "going for gasps." it's the opposite of the sanitizing/anesthetizing symbolism of imperialism bringing glory and advancement to the world by protecting US from THEM or even the rather pablum messaging of the ISIS flag. villain aesthetics overtly lean into "yes, we are the baddies", which the actual IRL baddies rarely--if ever--do.
