tobermoriansass:datvikingtho:datvikingtho:magelet-301:Here it is, canon evidence that Salazar Slythe

tobermoriansass:datvikingtho:datvikingtho:magelet-301:Here it is, canon evidence that Salazar Slytherin was NOT a racist bigot. He was concerned for the well-being and safety of the magical community, which could have been compromised by letting the “common people” know that wizards and witches existed.datvikingthoShoutout to this fine lady for bringing this to my attention. Let’s further the argument:Hogwarts was canonically founded around 990 A.D. - The Christians were finally taking hold of Scandinavia, meaning that all of Europe was now Christian. It was towards the end of the Dark Ages, or else the Early Medieval Period, which (In Europe) was famous for its intolerance of non-Christiandom, which included the teachings of Ancient Rome, Greece, and of course any Eastern countries. People were publicly defamed and in many cases killed for as much as considering these old ideas and teachings. These teachings really didn’t come back to light until the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century.So when people did things the Christians couldn’t explain, they blamed it on Witches; people they believed to be inhabited by the devil, sent to earth to wreak havoc on every God-fearing man, woman, and child. So what did they do? Imprison or kill those people.Now, here comes Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, who all agree to take pureblooded witches and wizards and teach them. But then they have to discuss magical folk who aren’t born from magic folk.Gryffindor is brave and brash, and imagines the glory of having an entire society of witches and wizards with great command of their powers.Hufflepuff is kind and loving, and wants to provide a sanctuary for all those who are under duress from the population at large.Ravenclaw sees the merit in bringing all these different people together - the amount of information regarding magic that can be shared is the stuff of her dreams.Slytherin is cautious. He recognizes that there is a great possibility for individuals to play spy for the Muggle community, in hopes to gain favor by outing them all the while hiding their own powers from muggles. He sees them as a potential threat, and instead of risking the safety of not only their own lives, but the countless volumes and tomes of ancient wizarding knowledge tucked away in their castle (see The Burning of the Great Library at Alexandria), Slytherin says “I really don’t think we should allow people with connections to Muggles in here. We could lost *everything.*Gryffindor calls Slytherin a coward, saying they would fight back and beat down any who try to oppose them. Slytherin suggests they do all they can to avoid confrontation. Hufflepuff can’t bring herself to deny that sanctuary she’s built. Ravenclaw sees endless potential in bridging that gap between worlds with learning. And this is what drives them apart. Future racists and pureblooded elitists will take and twist Slytherin’s words, having heard only the story that has been passed down for a thousand years. They use words of caution to justify their want for genocide. Slytherin isn’t the bad guy, here. And I am so down for clearing his name.To continue the crusade to clear the name of Salazar Slytherin, I have more evidence for your consideration. This is regarding the Chamber of Secrets.Now, the scene pictured above is one of Harry’s slightly less dull History of Magic classes, in which Professor Binns is asked to talk about the Chamber of Secrets. What we get from him is that the Chamber is a myth. There is legend surrounding it, no one is sure if it exists, etc etc etc.Here is the VERY NEXT PAGE in the book, in which Professor Binns again admits to the Chamber (as we know it today) to be a complete myth. We find out, obviously, that the chamber isn’t a myth, but I believe that the purpose of the chamber has been fabricated over a thousand years by misinformation and slander.Let’s check it out. Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Godric Gryffindor all know Salazar Slytherin and say “yep, he’s an upstanding man. Let’s start this school with him!” For a number of years, they had a school together and it worked out great. What we know is that there was a falling out, not Slytherin declaring they needed to murder muggle-borns! A disagreement that may have ruined friendships but did little else, I think.What we know is that one of Slytherin house’s key virtues is self-preservation. As I discussed earlier in the thread on this post is that Slytherin was afraid of muggle-born witches and wizards acting as spies for the larger muggle community during a time in which wizards and witches were killed for their “demon powers.”And so, when it comes to the Chamber of Secrets, I believe Slytherin built a Panic Room, not an Evil Lair.Think about it. Slytherin is horrified that any day there might be an attack on the school. So he builds a secret chamber that only he (or another parseltongue, an incredibly rare magical ability) can open. He doesn’t want any double agents or spies to know about it, so he tells no one. He hopes, of course, that he never has to use it, but in the event that there is an attack, he can get the school to safety while he sets the basilisk on the attackers.But I’m sure you’re looking at the basilisk and thinking “what sane man would put a monster in a panic room?” Glad you asked. I can consider two possibilities.1) Slytherin put a basilisk that was under his control in the chamber, a creature that he could set loose on his enemies, aka, anyone attacking the castle. The basilisk would annihilate any army of thousands just by looking at them, and what’s more, it could get almost anywhere in the castle through the goddamn walls! That kind of power is exactly what you need to defend your castle. And again, ONLY HE or an heir could control it. I’m sure at this point he was thinking about himself and his potential progeny, not Tom Riddle some thousand years later.2) Slytherin didn’t put the basilisk there, and it was instead placed there later by Tom Riddle while he was at school. I don’t have evidence supporting or disproving this.So how does this get so misconstrued to modern-day Hogwarts lore? Maybe toward the end, the founders did find out about the Chamber. Maybe Slytherin said something to them, maybe he let it slip…maybe as they were cleaning out his room after he left, they found some journal entries about it. It could have been anything. But perhaps, in their wisdom, seeing no way to access the chamber, felt it best that no one knew about the existence of a (now) useless panic room, nor did they want anyone to worry about the basilisk.Maybe word *did* get out, though. And not one of the founders wanted to admit that Slytherin didn’t trust their students, and so to most of the student body, Slytherin’s departure was suspect. And the moment they heard about a secret room that no one was quite sure about, they started inventing campfire stories about it. Fast forward ONE THOUSAND YEARS and now everyone assumes Slytherin was always evil (despite being a good friend and founder of Hogwarts with three other lovely people) and created a secret evil lair to murder muggle-borns, which he could have easily done without a lair if that was *ever* his intention.Okay. We’re going to do this now because I will probably notrest at ease until I’ve corrected the unholy mess that is this post. It’s long, I get angry, I’m sorry. So heregoes:1) A bigot is a bigot is a bigot. If a person is using the language of “threat”and “risk” to deny children - ELEVEN YEAR OLDS - an education becauseof the apparent risk they pose to adults in the community, then yes, they are abigot. It’s no different from white parents being antsy because there’s onemuslim kid in their child’s class. It’s the same principle.2) The witchhunts did not start in earnest till the 15th century. Please; even Wikipedia has extensively sourced material on how the witchhunts really only started in the fifteenth century, in the Early Modern periodin Europe.  The general entry onWitch-hunts (and I mean come on, all this shite is right here on Wikipedia foryou to read for yourselves, rather than relying on some ludicrously idea ofwhat the medieval period was like) on Wikipedia has this under its medievalperiod section:Early secular laws against witchcraft include thosepromulgated by King Athelstan (924–939 AD):“And we have ordained respecting witch-crafts, andlybacs [read lyblac “sorcery”], and morthdaeds [“murder, mortalsin”]: if any one should be thereby killed, and he could not deny it, thathe be liable in his life. But if he will deny it, and at threefold ordeal shallbe guilty; that he be 120 days in prison: and after that let kindred take himout, and give to the king 120 shillings, and pay the wer to his kindred, andenter into borh for him, that he evermore desist from the like.”(You can read the full text of Athelstan’s laws over here)Roughly this translates to:“We have decided, regarding witchcrafts, sorcery, andmurder, if anyone should thus be killed and it cannot be denied, they must paywith their life. However, if they deny it, and at a threehold ordeal (threeinnocence-tests e.g. drowning, fire, blessed-cake) be proven guilty they mustpay  for it with 120 days in prison, andtheir family must, after this time, pay to the king/government/tax collector 120shillings, and the individual must pay wereguild (blood-reparation) to the kinof the deceased and enter into a pledge with them that he evermore desists fromdoing so again” (shoutout to essayofthoughts for converting the language)Which in sum follows a pretty common cultural ruleconcerning magic in all cultures, throughout the ages – you hurt someoneand it is “proved” that this hurt is the result of witchcraft, then you pay forit. I think it’s a fairly reasonable kind of statement to make, given that it’snot all that different from our laws against murder. I’m not sure why “magic”,especially in the context of HPverse where magic does exist, is supposed to somehow preserve people from bearing theweight of any crimes exerted against non-magic neighbours… And given the waywix treat muggles in the books – obliviating them at will (hello yes, Goblet ofFire World Cup anyone?) down to torturing them for sport (also, Goblet of FireWorld Cup when the Death Eaters make an appearance) and someone once proposingto make muggle-hunting legal – it’s not an unreasonable sort of fear to haveimo.(Keep in mind here, witches and wizards do have power that muggles don’thave access to and this, even though wix are a “minority” community does place wix higher on the power scalethan muggles. Muggles can retaliate only with weapons against a force whichthey know nothing about. Think aboutit. You’re living in a community with a bunch of people who have a kind ofpower you don’t know the extent of, besides that they can kill without eventouching you, and you have to trust them to be good to you, even if they thinkyou’re dirt and inferior to them. So yeah, this is a case where I’d argue thata minority community actually has more power than the majority community especially in the context of the medieval period.Unless you want to argue that all minority communities ever are persecuted,in which case CONGRATULATIONS! Rich people who control the vast majority of theworld’s resources are now a persecuted minority!)If you want more scholarly resources on the witch hunts,there’s Kors & Peter’s Witchcraft in Europe, 400 – 1700: A DocumentaryHistory, J B Russell’s Witchcraft in theMiddle Ages  and  Dissent & Order in the Middle Ages: The Search ForLegitimate Authority, this paper on the Medieval Origins of the Witch Huntsfrom Cambridge Quarterly, thissociology paper on the European witch hunt craze of the 14th -17th century fromthe American Journal of Sociology andthis paper from The Journal ofInterdisciplinary History on the Historiography of the European Witchcraft.This isn’t even like, 1/100th of the sources out there on the origins of thewitch-hunts/a survey of the scholarship on the matter. The consensus of all of them is that the witch hunts didn’t beginin earnest till the 15th century, though there might have been persecutionshere and there. In fact till the 14th century, belief in the very idea ofwitchcraft and that witches had the powers to do what some people claimed theydid was banned. To believe in the possibility of someone practicing witchcraftwas as much of a heresy as to practice witchcraft. It wasn’t until the 14thcentury that the Inquisitions were authorized to prosecute for witchcraft andeven then it seems to have only been investigated incidentally duringinvestigations for heterodoxy.TL;DR: You were more likely to get hauled up for hereticalbeliefs and getting your theology wrong than you were for practicing witchcraftin the medieval period. 3) The destruction oftexts on magic =/= persecution on the basis of witchcraft. The post mentions that a lot of the texts dealing withnative magic practices were destroyed during the spread of Christianity throughEurope and while that’s certainly true of Norse magic (I know, because tryingto find non-apocryphal information on historical practices of Seidr is impossibly hard) I don’t think itnecessarily holds true across all of Europe, or hell, Britain. There’s a fairbit of Irish and Welsh lore which survived, as well as Roman records on themagical practice (how much of it is true, we don’t know, but given that thedruids themselves passed their lore down mostly verbally this kind of is a mootpoint imo) and a decent chunk of folklore magic survived and passed down quiteintact… There’s a few points worth making here:A lot of texts were being destroyed and counter-destroyedas parts of various agendas during the medieval and early modern period. But Idon’t think that it necessarily means that allsecular texts were destroyed and abandoned during this period. Iirc, Latinwas introduced into the noble man’s curriculum via both the Bible as well as the Justinian Laws and theLatin classics – similarly so with Greek. Sure, not everyone could go toUniversity to be educated, but these texts were definitely being studied at theUniversities of the times and given that the Arthurania (and its variousvariations) became popular again in the 14th century or so, alongwith the rise of the codes of chivalry, and that the Canterbury Tales are definitelya thing which existed; it’s safe to say that the medieval period wasn’t just a bunch of people who suffered fromsome kind of religious mania and never read/wrote anything else ever. That’s how they’ve been construed in our popularimagination but it’s not necessarily an accurateimage.Given that in the course of my own research onnecromancy during the medieval period (because I needed information for ficpurposes, of course) I found several medieval codexes scanned on to online archives on how to summon demonsand other necromantic practices, I think it’s safe to say that not even writingon magic was entirely stamped out or completely destroyed irl, let alone in HPverse.A lot of folklore on magic & mythology wasincorporated into the church “lore” and survived albeit in syncretic form. Ithink that’s true of most things tbh, I don’t think you can for a minutepretend that any kind of belief/culture/cultural practice which exists todayexists in precisely the same form as it has always existed since the foundingof cultures. Cultures and societies are fluid and ever-changing, beliefs areassimilated and discarded. In this case, a fair bit of folklore made its wayinto shaping how the “commoners” practiced the formally introduced religion.Honestly all you have to do is watch a few episodes of Horrible Histories tofigure this out on your own.4) JKR on Salazar Slytherinand Pureblood Mania:Now that we’ve debunked the history parts of this post, let’smove on to what JKR herself has written at various point in her books and Pottermore,about the matter of witch hunts and pureblood mania.In the Pottermore article on Purebloods and to some extent,the article on the Malfoys, we’re explicitly told that prejudice againstmuggleborns and muggles rose drastically after the institution of the Statuteof Secrecy (pretty much expected given that places most likely to vote infavour of fascist & anti-immigration parties are also the places least incontact with people from other races, ethnicities & cultures) and the idea thatmuggleborns posed a threat because of the Statute only really came into its ownthere. I think I’ll let JKR’s own writingdo the talking here.Historically, the Malfoys drew a sharp distinction betweenpoor Muggles and those with wealth and authority. Until the imposition of theStatute of Secrecy in 1692, the Malfoy family was active within high-bornMuggle circles, and it is said that their fervent opposition to the impositionof the Statute was due, in part, to the fact that they would have to withdrawfrom this enjoyable sphere of social life. Though hotly denied by subsequentgenerations, there is ample evidence to suggest that the first Lucius Malfoywas an unsuccessful aspirant to the hand of Elizabeth I, and some wizardinghistorians allege that the Queen’s subsequent opposition to marriage was due toa jinx placed upon her by the thwarted Malfoy.With that healthy degree of self-preservation that hascharacterised most of their actions over the centuries, once the Statute ofSecrecy had passed into law the Malfoys ceased fraternising with Muggles,however well-born, and accepted that further opposition and protests could onlydistance them from the new heart of power: the newly created Ministry of Magic.They performed an abrupt volte-face, and became as vocally supportive of theStatute as any of those who had championed it from the beginning, hastening todeny that they had ever been on speaking (or marrying) terms with Muggles.- From The Malfoy Family on the Pottermore WikiMagical opinion underwent something of a shift after theInternational Statute of Secrecy became effective in 1692, when the magicalcommunity went into voluntary hiding following persecution by Muggles. This wasa traumatic time for witches and wizards, and marriages with Muggles dropped totheir lowest level ever known, mainly because of fears that intermarriage wouldlead inevitably to discovery, and, consequently, to a serious infraction ofwizarding law. Under such conditions of uncertainty, fear and resentment,the pure-blood doctrine began to gain followers. As a general rule, those whoadopted it were also those who had most strenuously opposed the InternationalStatute of Secrecy, advocating instead outright war on the Muggles. Increasingnumbers of wizards now preached that marriage with a Muggle did not merely riska possible breach of the new Statute, but that it was shameful, unnatural andwould lead to ‘contamination’ of magical blood. As Muggle/wizard marriage had been common for centuries,those now self-describing as pure-bloods were unlikely to have any higherproportion of wizarding ancestors than those who did not. To call oneself apure-blood was more accurately a declaration of political or social intent (‘Iwill not marry a Muggle and I consider Muggle/wizard marriage reprehensible’)than a statement of biological fact.- From the Purebloods page on the Pottermore WikiJKR furthermore completely debunks the idea that mugglebornswere viewed with anything approaching suspicion during the 10thcentury with this statement from the entry on Purebloods on Pottermore:Slytherin’s discrimination on the basis of parentage wasconsidered an unusual and misguided view by the majority of wizards at thetime. Contemporary literature suggests that Muggle-borns were not onlyaccepted, but often considered to be particularly gifted. They went by theaffectionate name of ‘Magbobs’ (there has been much debate about the origin ofthe term, but it seems most likely to be that in such a case, magic ‘bobbed up’out of nowhere).So let’s be very clear here. Slytherin’s views wereconsidered outliers at the time which certainly suggests that muggles were notthought of as posing anything approaching a significant threat to the magicalcommunity at all - which I think my write-up on the history of the witch-hunts + JKR’s own writing on the witch hunts amply explains. Muggleborns were considered unusually gifted because of theirability to perform magic instead, so it’s more likely that Hufflepuff,Ravenclaw and Gryffindor represented the mainstream views of their time andweren’t necessarily fighting for some kind of airy ideology ofbravery/acceptance/collecting knowledge that they’d attached themselves to.  Speaking of which JKR is pretty damn clear that the foundersquarrelled over Slytherin’s views on muggleborns. Like, it’s not subtext orin-text propaganda. JKR’s outright written it as part of HPverse history. Where Slytherin’s views gain traction is after the institution of the Statute ofSecrecy following what I think was a particularly bad spate of persecution atthe hands of James II – under whom the witch hunt craze reached its zenith.William of Orange took over in 1688, but I’m guessing that by then the damagehad been done to the wizarding community and presumably also, William would havehad other struggles in consolidating his power before he could get to dealingwith the witch hunt business. It’s under this condition of fear and resentment followed by separation from the muggles thatthe ideology of pureblood supremacy really comes into its own and muggles gofrom being just odd and harmless weirdoes into the image of a villainous and dangerous Other. This is in 1692.That’s nearly 700 years after the founding of Hogwarts. That’s whenmuggles really started to be viewed as a threat to the wizarding world. Notduring the early medieval period. Not even under the rule of Queen Elizabeththe First. In 1692 during the reign of William of Orange.5) JKR on thewitch-hunts:The irony of this whole post is that you’re citing a lecturethat Cuthbert Binns gave in the kids’ second year, but in their third year heasks them to write an essay on the topic: WitchBurning in the Fourteenth Century was completely pointless – discuss.In the essay Harry mentions Wendelin the Weird, who actuallyenjoyed being burnt at the stake so much, she allowed herself to be captured indisguise forty-seven times andescaped each time using flame-freezingcharms. The Fat Friar was executed because church members grew suspicious ofhis ability to cure the plague by poking people with a stick and because he pulled rabbits out of a wine cup so it’snot exactly like the dude was exercising caution over here or even trying to becircumspect. Nearly Headless Nick enjoyed what seemed to have been apleasant life until he somehow cocked up fixing Lady Grieve’s (lady-in-waitingto Henry VII) teeth and made her grow a tusk (like holy shitballs how bad do you have to be at magic to do that)instead, after which he was imprisoned and executed the next morning in anobvious parody of Tudor justice.(The Tudors were a whimsical bunch to live under.) There’s a few lessons/inferences we can make here: The probability that actual wix were affected bythe witch-hunts is probably much less than we imagine they are or indeed, themagical community imagines they are. Wix had a whole variety of charms to keeptheir neighbours from ever really getting on to them – muggle repelling charms,which we know is a thing given that Hogwarts was concealed by them all the wayback in the 10th century (besides being Unplottable and therefore,  not-findable by wizards as well, so please don’t trot out their muggle repelling charms asincontrovertible proof that they were afraid of muggle persecution; in alllikelihood they wanted to keep the castle out of any conflicts and to keep thechildren in an environment where they could safely practice their magic withoutaccidentally hurting some random wanderers), anti-flame freezing charms to savethem from being burnt, Obliviates to make sure your neighbour never rememberswhat happened to them and so on and so forth. You would probably have to havebeen really daft (Sir Nick) or really obvious and careless (the Fat Friar) orsome kind of weirdo (Wendelin) to get caught for actually doing magic onmuggles. I mean ffs, the magical world can cover up a huge war during theseventies in Britain where muggles are being killed in addition to magical folkand you want to talk about how they were terrified of exposing the Statute?Hon, that’s your answer right there.The community probably most at risk for beingpersecuted for magic is DING DING DING YOU GUESSED IT: MUGGLEBORNS. Guess why?Because the kids actually live with muggles and are less able to control theirmagic in their childhood and are actually at risk of exposing their magic (andprobably putting their families in danger from society) to people at large. notyourexrotic expresses this much better over here in this post. Hogwartswould have been protection for these people, but no, what we’re doing here iswhat literally every anti-immigration politician fuck has done in the past fewyears and talked about how muggleborns would pose a “threat” to the stabilityof magical society because of the risk they posed in exposing their society tothe muggle world. Yeah, maybe if you gavethem the support they needed they wouldn’t be at risk of doing so.Leading off from this, it’s also likely that ahigh proportion of muggles were impacted by this as well, especially if theyhad muggleborn kids.Where I imagine the witch hunts really wouldhave an impact on pureblood wix/wix communities proper is when whole villages werebeing investigated for witchcraft which honestly was something which onlyreally started happening in the 16th-17th century(especially under James II).Also spies, really? An eleven year old is goingto want to be a spy on people who do magic because??? ????? ????????? I canthink of scenarios where a seventeen year old might agree to do something likethat but the only scenario where I can imagine such a thing happening iswhen the seventeen year old has been isolated and injured and hurt by magicalsociety enough that they think it’s worth betraying them to find some kind ofhome for themselves among a society which has promised to reward it, in thiscase, muggle society. Like. In which case, the people clearly at fault here would be MAGICALSOCIETY. For injuring a muggleborn on the principle that they were amuggleborn.Salazar Slytherin has nothing to stand on concerning his prejudice. Nothing to legitimate it at all.6) Cuthbert Binns.Now that we’ve covered the historical accuracy of witchhunts,  who they would have been mostlikely to have affected and how this fear of muggles is directly connected tothe institution of the Statute of Secrecy, I think it’s safe to say that we canmake this inference about wizarding history: it’s not objective.I mean, history in general is not objective.  What you have is multiple perspectives about aseries of events. In this instance, we get Cuthbert Binns’ version of historywhich as we’ve seen over here, has little to no basis in history – either inreal life, or in the context of HPverse. We know that the curriculum atHogwarts is overseen by the Board of Governors, who consist of men like LuciusMalfoy, as well as the Ministry of Magic – which happens to be in the pockets ofmen like Lucius Malfoy. We also know that Cuthbert Binns has been around for along long time, so it’s safe to say that he hasn’t really acquired any newperspectives on history or on muggles or muggle-wizard history/relationshipsfor a long long time. In which case, it all begs the question: just how accurateis Binns’ narrative of witch burnings? Is he simply reproducing a version ofhistory which has been produced and reproduced over and over again since theinstitution of the Statute of Secrecy, to justify the actions of wix and moreover,to justify their hatred of muggles?Is he a reliable narrator here, or is JKR employing an unreliable narrator totell us how wizards think of their history – supplying ample information on theside to show us just how imbued with propaganda and pureblood ideology thisversion of history is?I think that this is verymuch what JKR is doing here and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. IfCuthbert Binns is a reliable mouthpiece, then so too is Severus Snape, BartyCrouch as Mad Eye, Dolores Umbridge, Gilderoy Lockhart, Quirinius Quirrell –any teacher, for that matter, at Hogwarts.  But I think the books spent enough timeshowing us just why this is not so forus to not fall into the same trap here!7) The Chamber ofSecrets.A few things. JKR has toldus explicitly that Salazar put a basilisk in there. JKR has also told usexplicitly on Pottermore and in the books as well, that Slytherin and theothers quarrelled over the matter of letting in students of different bloodpurity. We’ve also seen JKR’s own writing on the prevalent views on Mugglebornsat the time, so it’s clear that Slytherin was a statistical outlier.Look at the structure of the Chamber of Secrets and tell mewhat about it suggests that it is a “panic” room. Here are quotes from Chapter 17, Slytherin’s Heir, from The Chamber of Secrets:And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, hesaw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyesset with great, glinting emeralds.He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly litchamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose tosupport a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long,black shadows through the odd,greenish gloom that filled the place.He pulled out his wand and moved forward between theserpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls.He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign ofmovement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be followinghim. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir.Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, astatue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the backwall.Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant faceabove: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost tothe bottom of the wizard’s sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feetstood on the smooth Chamber floor.… watched Riddle stop between the high pillars and look upinto the stone face of Slytherin, high above him in the half-darkness. Riddleopened his mouth wide and hissed — but Harry understood what he was saying…. “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”Harry wheeled around to look up at the statue, Fawkesswaying on his shoulder. Slytherin’s gigantic stone face was moving.  Horrorstruck, Harry saw his mouth opening,wider and wider, to make a huge black hole. And something was stirring insidethe statue’s mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.Something huge hit the stone floor of the Chamber. Harryfelt it shudder — he knew what was happening, he could sense it, could almostsee the giant serpent uncoiling itself from Slytherin’s mouth.Everything about the structure, from the snakes twinedaround the pillars and the doors with emeralds,mind you, in the snakes eyes, to the giant statute of Salazar Slytherin,suggests less place to retreat to in time of emergency and more “shrine toSalzar Slytherin”.Here’s an excerpt from another meta I wrote a little whileago:The Chamber of Secrets itself is such an interesting roombecause like. If ever there was a room as steeped in pure ideology, it’s thechamber? The whole structure revolves around Salazar Slytherin; it’s aself-glorificatory room and tbh that’s always what I’ve wondered a little aboutSlytherin and its obsession with blood purity – if it was not a kind ofnarcissistic self-worship that became reified into this idea that blood reallywas the source of magical power and virtue in the wizarding world.  Theflip side to murdering people for their supposed inferiority is theglorification of the self – which is something you see a lot in fascist art andpropaganda; all based around either a single glorious figure, or an idealizedfigure that people are meant to aspire to. I think that’s very much somethingthat’s going on in the Chamber of Secrets and the entrance being situated inthe girl’s toilet is something which amused me no end because again, JKRstrikes with a visual pun, but also again we get the “submerged in ideology”image, because descending down this path gives you people willing to murder children forbeing ‘inferior’ and having the wrong kind of blood and posing a ‘threat’ to thesuperiority of pureblood society.… the Chamber of Secrets is pure fascist ideology embodied,it is not a panic room. Everything about its architecture isreminiscent of the kind of architecture you’d get in a totalitarian fasciststate and it has a fucking living declaration of war and genocide (thebasilisk) living inside it, put over there by the man who created the room.I think the description of the room speaks for itself andthe fact that JKR has independently confirmed that Slytherin did put the basilisk in there, it’s safeto assume that Slytherin also set the code that would make his statue releasethe basilisk from within its depths – which imo, I think is pretty tellingabout the kind of person Salazar Slytherin was. I don’t think he really caredabout the wizarding world at all, I think he care more for his idea of it and for him, it was importantto preserve that idea and that ideal which he had conceived of – a typicaltenet of fascist ideology – and to do so, he actually hid a goddamn weapon of war inside a school full of childrenwith the intent that some day one of his heirs would continue his genocide onhis behalf.WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY LAST POINT8) All of thisreminds me disturbingly of the kind of rhetoric used to defend fascists,racists and people who have committed genocide and large scale ethniccleansings.Sure, Salazar could have killed muggleborns in any number ofdifferent ways if he wanted to. But the thing about ethnic cleansings andgenocides is that the violence is rarely clinical or efficient. There is a huge symbolic element to violence.  Arjun Appadurai more or less expresses thisidea in his paper Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era ofGlobalization. The gist of his analysis, based on the ethnic cleansing ofTutsis during the Rwandan Genocide of 1995, states that the violence enacted onthe bodies of those being killed was never justabout killing them, but was performed in such a way as to symbolize their “different-ness”from Hutu bodies – even though it is nearly impossible to distinguish betweenwho is and who isn’t. The form of violence enacted on their bodies serves as amarker and a distinguisher. I think it’s a point worth bringing into thediscussion here because it’s exactly whatBellatrix does when she carves the word mudblood into Hermione’s arm. There isno difference, magically, between her and Hermione – carving that word theremakes all the difference.I just want this quote here to illustrate why this kind of violenceis never satisfying and why it continues and moreover, why it continues to justify itself as “rational” and “acceptable”:“Of course the violent epistemology of bodily violence, the`theatre of the body’ on which this violence is performed, is never trulycathartic, satisfying, or terminal. It only leads to a deepening of socialwounds, an epidemic of shame, a collusion of silence, and a violent need forforgetting. All these [acts] add fresh underground fuel for new episodes ofviolence. This is also partly a matter of the pre-emptive quality of suchviolence: let me kill you before you kill me. Uncertainty about identificationand violence can lead to actions, reactions, complicities, and anticipationsthat multiply the pre-existing uncertainty about labels. Together, these formsof uncertainty call for the worst kind of certainty: dead certainty.”Everything about the Chamber of Secrets and the basiliskbeing placed there to kill muggleborns is symbolic. Salazar is the one whocares about protecting blood purity, it is hisface that the wizarding world must look to when the time comes to ridthemselves of “the threat within”. He chooses a serpent to symbolize himself –and tbh, if I wanted to there’s probably a whole level of Freudian analysis wecan make here, but lbr, the Chamber of Secrets is pretty much a kind ofhypermasculine fantasy without even getting into talking about how Salazarchooses a snake; a symbol not only ofcunning, but of fertility, luck and protection – and to enact violence uponmuggleborns & muggles. It’s almost too obviousin its symbolism, but here we are with a very clear message being sent out:that muggles and muggleborns do not deserve protection, they are not the kind of population that is to beprotected and they will be murdered by this symbol of all of these thingsbecause they are less than human and the “evil within”.Speaking of which, so much of the rhetoric in this postfocuses around muggleborns as the “evil within” or the “threat within”. I’mgenuinely curious here, does no one see the parallels between this kind oflanguage and the language used to justify the persecution of immigrants,minorities and for fuck’s sake, used to justify the Holocaust? I think tumblruser brotheralyosha puts it best here in this reblog of a post I made:The idea that “foreigners” in a community are really spiesfor outside powers who might destroy the community from the inside, and thattherefore need to be kept separate and defended against, is a fundamentalideological component of fascism and white supremacy. Here’s a poster, by the way, from the films which more orless centre around the whole crux of this post – muggleborns posing a threat towizarding society from inside. It’s Death Eater propaganda, for the record:The reason I’ve sat down to write a 5k word rant about thispost, with links to sources and stuff, is because I am genuinely disturbed that these are things we can say and endorseunironically in fandom because they formthe crux of real world ideologies that have been used to murder people on thebasis of race, religion, ethnicity and sexuality. This is exactly the kind of defence that hasbeen used to bolster their arguments. You know what I find invariably when people mention a “threat”to their societies? It’s the powerful majority speaking about aminority they have been made aware of, which pose a threat to the social normsand structures they have imposed on themselves to govern their lives.There is almost never any actual threat, beyond a hysterically exaggerated one –remember what I said earlier about the places most willing to vote in rightwing fascists being the ones with the least diverse populations, repeat thatagain over and over again to yourself – which focuses on the idea of a “pure”society which must be preserved. Societies are not pure, cultures are not pure;they have always been syncretic, they have always been changing, they havealways been fluid and dynamic and anyone who tells you otherwise islying.I’m sorry but J K Rowling did not write  seven books of what amounts to a war againstthis kind of ideological defence – Salzar Slytherin actually had the rightidea, he was the only founder who cared about the wizarding world but historypilloried him as “paranoid” and “evil” because he chose to take “precautions”against the “danger within” (honestly, do you think there aren’t actualNazis and Neo-Nazis and Anti-Semitists and racists and fascists who are spoutingthis shit in defence of Hitler right now? Let me tell you, thereprobably are!) – to have fandom spout it back in defence of a characterin the name of redeeming Slytherin house from its tarnished and “false” imagein the books. She deconstructed the whole mythos of muggleborns being a threat,both historically and in the present day to show just how wrong Salazar Slytherin, Voldemort and the Death Eaters werein their beliefs. Congratulations!You have missed a crucial point of the Harry Potter books in favour ofredeeming a character because you want to give kids who are sorted intoSlytherin “representation”. Redeem Slytherin house as muchas you want. But don’t you dare use the defensive language of racists,fascists and neo-nazis in your posts in an effort to “redeem” a character in abid for whatever twisted-ass idea of “representation” you’ve conjured up forkids who are scared of being sorted into Slytherin on Pottermore. There is aline and that line has been fucking crossed here and I am furious, but evenmore I am frightened because this is thesort of language that has been employed to tell me, an Indian immigrant livingabroad, that I am a threat to all that is good and noble about UK society and here we are, with fandom using it unironically indefence of a character that JKR left noambiguity whatsoever over concerning their bigotry. Please please be critical of the ways in which you choose to headcanon and defend characters who are clearly portrayed as bigots in the text!It’s shit like this which makes me want to leave fandom.Feel free to reblog this. -- source link

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