This commentary was written by David Lines of Burlington.
I don’t mean to diminish the cruelty and terror the people of Ukraine have suffered for an unrelenting six months or compare it to a fantasy series that has come to define the 21st century so far.
But for those raised in the Harry Potter era whose allegory about “might makes right” fortold the rise of white Christian nationalism, the latest advances in this faraway nation are a wake-up call of the MAGA crowd here full of grievance, venom, small arms and fury.
Much like Vladimir Putin’s Russia with its bully swagger and toxic masculinity brand, the Republican Party has become little more than a crime syndicate animated by a Trumpian revenge fantasy. Putin is a real Voldemort (the beady-eyed, snake-like villain of the series); a cold-blooded killer to instill fear in a population for power, control and subjugation. And the MAGA cult reveres him.
Of all the hundreds of things that might finally shake a good chunk of this country bent on reclaiming a myth, I thought the image of a dead family would rattle them once and for all. But no, the cruelty is the point, and much as everyone wants to get along, this crew does not.
After an attempted coup with real dead cops, an almost public lynching of a vice president and the stockpiling of classified information (hello Russian/Saudi billions!) the grift only grows and MAGAs are sweeping Republican primaries everywhere.
As absurdly malevolent as the hordes of Death Eaters bowing to this twisted figure in Voldemort is, there’s a ongoing race to be the top cartoon villain in our world, where misogyny/racism isn’t the dog whistle anymore of American political rage and social dysfunction but the spoken word and sadistic action.
Just since the televised insurrection…
- A Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, a 50-year precedent with the words now in modern law of a 17th-century jurist (Matthew Hale) that encouraged witch burning.
- Laws in southern states incentivize vigilante gangs to go after women seeking abortions or teachers “grooming” a so-called “woke ideology.”
- The Florida governor’s use of the state to punish businesses and impose a reactionary cultural and religious worldview while launching a human trafficking scheme to ship off vulnerable migrants from one state to another at immense taxpayer expense.
- Instigating the mob to denigrate and attack health officials in the face of a difficult and complex public health disaster.
All of this echoes the arc in those fantasy novels with a painfully insecure protagonist out to purify their world with pure blood (read white) supremacy against inferior wizards and the muggle (human) world. A form of destruction constituted by the use of fear, loathing and violence to achieve power and control over governing and decency. Sound familiar?
One of the challenges in modern America is that people are extremely well insulated from the consequences of their decisions or beliefs. In a spring issue of the Atlantic, George Packer noted that in a 2019 survey, “only 40% of Americans were able to pass the test that all applicants for U.S. citizenship must take… The only state in which a majority passed was in Vermont.”
So I feel as though Vermonters are especially tuned to the task at hand and the road ahead. And our own hot culture war against the Take Back Vermont crowd at the beginning of the millennium was also a harbinger or another Potter allegory, love can conquer hate.
The courage of Ukraine to fight for its young freedom in the face of what appeared to be an unstoppable force is genuinely uplifting just like the wizard boy taking on the Dark Lord in the face of an abject failure of adults to fix shit. It’s as vivid and true a fight for freedom and the rule of law in a courageous refusal to accept a future of lies and brutality.
When Harry Potter (a child still) and Voldemort (a grown man) face off at the end of the series in the middle of the rubble left behind from an unprovoked attack of aggression, it had striking parallels to the current face-off (nuclear threats aside) of Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There had been torture and mass indiscriminate death leading up to the face-off at the legendary wizard school of Hogwarts as there has been throughout Ukraine.
With authoritarian strongmen (and women) on the march throughout the world, it’s become essential to see a small nation beat back a supposedly unbeatable foe seeking to beat it into submission. It also shows what happens in the real world when so-called “strong men” rule through mendacity and are given a constant stream of “alternative facts” by subservient hacks. Turns out there may be no there there, and lo and behold, true forces of good can prevail over terrible things and the people who inspire them.