this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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Harry Potter and the Military Industrial Complex

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 3 months ago (3 children)

This is explored at length in the books. The wizard supremacists are an allegory for race supremacists, and it’s pointed out repeatedly that they’re delusional, broadly impotent, and small-minded. The death eaters believe so completely in their godhead and his divine right to rule that they neglect to consider even the most basic countermeasures or alternatives. There’s some “death of Stalin” paranoia but it’s overwhelmingly unforced incompetence.

Voldemort, likewise, blocks out even the potential for his lessers to outdo him. He is utterly infallible and his insecurities as an incest orphan to a fallen house will not allow him to feel any differently. Meanwhile, he’s been repeatedly circumvented and beaten by a group of teenagers, and his brewing plans will lead to the complete genocide of wizardkind upon reaching the world stage. It perfectly encapsulates the way race supremacists view the world and why they fail so frequently. The enemy is both strong and weak.

Darn shame rowling’s turned into what she hates. She wasn’t terrible at writing populism 101.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

She just wrote what she actually believes and it ended up being biting satire by accident.

Fun fact: Rowling thinks Lolita is a beautiful and tragic love story

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wizards would be rounded up and experimented on to try and find out how to make it an injection to make super soldiers. There's absolutely no way wizards and magical beings wouldn't end up in test tubes.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Well this was oddly nostalgic for me to read. You immediately reminded of FFVI

[–] [email protected] 52 points 3 months ago (13 children)

I had trouble believing Harry Potter as a kid. The whole house elf thing seemed unrealistic. Then when I grew up, I realised English people really are that racist.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember seeing a meme of Harry Potter, but I can't find it anymore. Basically a conversation between Harry and dumbledore.

Harry says to dumbledore:

We are wizards, we could cure cancer. Fix world hunger and end all wars. Why we don't do it?

Dumbledore says:

Harry you forgot the most important reason: we are British

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (4 children)

you don't enjoy a little decorating decapitated slave heads for some wholesome Christmas joy?

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago

Harry Potter and the poorly-constructed magic ruleset.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Sound

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

Harry Potter and the infrared Laser designator spot

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Imagine the IRA, except they can fly, go invisible, or simply step into a phone booth or fireplace and vanish, and had an entire other dimension they could disappear into where they could be self sufficient.

Technology means nothing if you don't even know who you enemy is.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Heck, they can mind control people, wipe their memories, or take a potion and assume their identity. It would be like fighting the Face Dancers from Dune if they were all trained in The Voice.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (7 children)

That's one of many many plot holes in Harry Potter.

There's really no depth to the world building beyond, "What if British public schools taught magic?"

It doesn't make sense in any context beyond that because the author never considered it from any context beyond that. Whenever you run into some crazy crap in HP and wonder, "Why TF would anyone do it that way?" The answer is almost always, "Because that's how they do it in British public schools.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It's also a bit odd that the spell so dangerous it was the absolute peak of the Dark Arts was a spell that just killed one person, and not even reliably. Where are the spells to call down meteors and cause earthquakes?

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago

The reason Hermione is sworn to secrecy about the wizarding world is that they know if muggles found out there was a deep state, the revolution would be swift.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Honestly, I only really see wizards losing immediately in England, lol. It's canon that many wizards can use spells silently and/or without a wand, and some even create their own spells; they could likely incapacitate a soldier (or many soldiers, depending on the spell) without raising suspicion by having to aim a wand or gun.

I dunno, Magneto gives the US Army a run for their money in X-Men - I would think a similarly talented or experienced wizard would have comparable powers.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (2 children)

True enough, the capabilities of Magic haven’t been explored enough canonically to disprove that - but if the government learned of Magic, the first thing they’d do is subvert some wizards to their side, who might be able to counteract them - in many ways, it’s a battle of statecraft as it is of actual power.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Magneto is uniquely capable of stoping most weapons. I don’t think that is a good comparison.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Magnetism’s just magic anyway. Who can explain that shit?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Easy. Just imagine a ball of uniform charge distribution that's spinning, and add relativity. Except it's not a ball, isn't spinning, and doesn't really have a defined location or speed so good luck with the relativity bit.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It comes down to how powerful static wards are, and how much technology just gets corrupted by magic. The real power of the wizards is memory and time manipulation. Close range is definitely in favor of wizards, you can't surprise them unless they are intentionally careless. They can always go back a few hours and ambush you back. Chaos would ensue if they deleted every memory before 5 of a handful of leaders.

The tech killing thing is poorly defined, but hogwarts seems to disable electronic devices within a radius. If it's similar to an emp, it may have countermeasures, but it's hard to say they also work on magic. Operating within the radius of somewhere like that would be difficult.

There's also the animagus issue. Every dog, cat, bird, or bug is a potential spy or assassin that is practically undetectable.

The big question is can spells stop a large bomb/nuke. Even if they couldn't, it would be possible for wizards to escape the blast zone pretty easily, unless they couldn't detect the attack.

I think the big weakness would be sniper fire that may be fast enough to prevent reactions at the borders of wards.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Ah yes, the good old solution of every contemporary fantasy world.

"modern technology just doesn't work"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, depending on the book, you have already accepted a number of ridiculous premises by real-world standards. It's surprising to me that "and by the way, it interferes with or can be used to disable various kinds of technology" is where you would decide to roll your eyes.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Because it's a cop out. You're not putting any thought into how your systems would interact with modern tech. Even if you really need a modern setting with no technology, at least be imaginative with why that happens and maybe let that reason affect your setting in some other ways as well. It's the difference between a world that feels real, messy and casual, and some hypothetical scenario you made to tell your story.

Harry potter isn't the worst world for sure. Like Rowling does a pretty good job in explaining how wizards stay invisible from regular society, with the ministry of magic, their memory erasing and multiple incidents that all make it feel very real. But for technology we get little beyond Arthur weasly having a interest in collecting electric plugs or something.

There's also no good logic or intuition about what technology does or doesn't work. An electric kettle won't work but a whole ass car will? It prevents any conflict that has technology involved from having stakes because you don't have limits or an idea of what's dangerous/important

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

of course muggles would win a war against wizarding folk, that is why they made the international statue of secrecy (also cause jkr is a hack who never wants to bother extrapolating from the consequences of her own worldbuilding)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

This is not clear cut. One teleport into a nuke silo + a brainwash spell = big problems

Edit (yes maybe one or two other brainwashes to get the proper codes forwarded)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Who’s to say some governments aren’t keenly aware of the wizarding world and they have their own protections and wizards

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If wizards were incapable of shielding against fast moving projectiles, they would have more spells dedicated to creating fast moving projectiles against their opponents.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think part of the subtext of the wizarding world is its parallels to British sensibility. You do things the way they've always been done because that's just the way of it. You don't come up with new spells, you rely on the tried and true spells that have been around for centuries.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not much of a harry potter fan but wasn't that the whole point of being in hiding

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They were being killed by muggles left and right, and this was way before the invention of guns, so, yeah, they weren't winning that war in any case.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (4 children)

There’s a WP. Voldemort succeeds and then gets drunk on his own power and attempts to take over the muggle world (pure blood and all that) and he promptly gets his ass handed to him by the military.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nah he opens a portal that goes directly to Skid Row, he is instantly stabbed, robed and killed.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Expecto AGM-114

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (9 children)

As nonsensical as it is, giving the limit of the suspension of believe necessary to keep the world reasonably coherent, the wizard world has a solid grasp on the non-magical world while it's a given (literally a given, it makes no sense otherwise) that the people from the normal world have no idea magic exists, other than what is leaked and relegated to fairy tales (it's our world).

Wizards, their institution and governments, their own citizen are aware of what weapons are. Harry himself of course knows what a gun is and could potentially grab a number of them to prepare for war.

So it's an implied obvious implicit answer that even a limited mastery of magic vastly overpowers weapons. Which is obvious if you consider that in the magical world they are aware of the "laws" of physics AND the extra laws of magic.

They just know more about how the world works, how to inflict death and how to protect against harm.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

But IIRC that is never implied in the books and it is shown a couple of times that they know very little about technology and being very surprised by stuff like television. Which is very weird given that a non insignificant part of the wizards are from muggle families and lives among muggles.

Whilst I loved the books, as I read I always had this question in my mind about what if the wizards approached magic with a more scientific method and if they integrated with the scientific advancements of the human world.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I cast "A belly full of lead".

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

I think the guns would help against wizards as much as they help against oppression. They are a helpful tool, for sure, but the ability to communicate and form plans is massively superior. And wizards, like modern tech giants, can impede that.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

*most powerful spell kills upon striking

*is also clearly visible, dodgeable, and deflectable

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Three words: Close Air Support.

1 GBU-39 would dust that steam engine wiping out whole generations of wizards. AIM-9 Sidewinders piloted by someone with confirmed kills for those weird skeleton death birds. Ezpz.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

First, they'd have to find the steam engine, though. Seems like it's hidden even from radar.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I've never read the books, but I'm curious what the point even is of going to Hogwarts to hone your magic in secrecy. What is the magic applied to long-term? What do you do with it after you've graduated?

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