Dutchman Dirk Willems was a religious prisoner who escaped in 1569, but when the guard pursuing him fell through the ice of a river, Willems turned around to save the guard. He was then recaptured and burned at stake.
Someone at work brought up Harry Potter, specifically the part where Hedwig gets killed. For the unfamiliar, there’s a part where the adults try to sneak Harry past the bad guys by using several decoys. It’s a broom chase through London. A character we met several books prior ends up trying to kill Harry with a wand blast, but misses and hits Harry’s pet owl. Before this, Harry tries to disarm rather than harm his attacker because he’s aware that the attacker is essentially a thrall, and used to be a “good guy”
I mentioned how he should have just smoked the guy trying to kill him no matter what the circumstances were, but worklib kept arguing he did the right thing even though he suffered a great personal loss, and enabled the bad guys (wizard Nazis) to escape unscathed.
This is why harry potter is the ultimate lib series. Bonus points because it was written by a bigot that they can’t disavow
It’s fucking insane actually, the fact that they won’t even lob killing spells at Voldemort. Bruh
reddit copy pasta
Ok, this has been driving me crazy for seven movies now, and I know you’re going to roll your eyes, but hear me out: Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
Here’s why:
Think about how quickly the entire WWWIII (Wizarding-World War III) would have ended if all of the good guys had simply armed up with good ol’ American hot lead.
Basilisk? Let’s see how tough it is when you shoot it with a .470 Nitro Express. Worried about its Medusa-gaze? Wear night vision goggles. The image is light-amplified and re-transmitted to your eyes. You aren’t looking at it–you’re looking at a picture of it.
Imagine how epic the first movie would be if Harry had put a breeching charge on the bathroom wall, flash-banged the hole, and then went in wearing NVGs and a Kevlar-weave stab-vest, carrying a SPAS-12.
And have you noticed that only Europe seems to a problem with Deatheaters? Maybe it’s because Americans have spent the last 200 years shooting deer, playing GTA: Vice City, and keeping an eye out for black helicopters over their compounds. Meanwhile, Brits have been cutting their steaks with spoons. Remember: gun-control means that Voldemort wins. God made wizards and God made muggles, but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Now I know what you’re going to say: “But a wizard could just disarm someone with a gun!” Yeah, well they can also disarm someone with a wand (as they do many times throughout the books/movies). But which is faster: saying a spell or pulling a trigger?
Avada Kedavra, meet Avtomat Kalashnikova.
Imagine Harry out in the woods, wearing his invisibility cloak, carrying a .50bmg Barrett, turning Deatheaters into pink mist, scratching a lightning bolt into his rifle stock for each kill. I don’t think Madam Pomfrey has any spells that can scrape your brains off of the trees and put you back together after something like that. Voldemort’s wand may be 13.5 inches with a Phoenix-feather core, but Harry’s would be 0.50 inches with a tungsten core. Let’s see Voldy wave his at 3,000 feet per second. Better hope you have some Essence of Dittany for that sucking chest wound.
I can see it now…Voldemort roaring with evil laughter and boasting to Harry that he can’t be killed, since he is protected by seven Horcruxes, only to have Harry give a crooked grin, flick his cigarette butt away, and deliver what would easily be the best one-liner in the entire series:
“Well then I guess it’s a good thing my 1911 holds 7+1.”
And that is why Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
If I remember right there’s a point in the third book where Harry has to explain what a gun is to the wizards and it’s something like “It’s like a wand that only casts kill”
Virgin JK Rowling vs Chad Bakshi
pretty sure they literally address this at one point, and the explanation is that the wizards are all such stupid incurious dickheads that not a single one of them really knows what a gun is. basically every technological advancement made after the 18th century is a complete mystery to them.
I think part of Potter lore is that you physically can’t cast killing spells unless you’re already ontologically evil somehow. Harry tries doing the torture curse a few times and it doesn’t work because his soul is too pure or whatever.
It’s so liberal. Good team and bad team.
if I recall, he does the imperious curse successfully a few times, so it’s not like he can’t or is even above using unforgivable curses.
Beyond Harry’s unwillingness to use the killing curse in that instance, what’s wild to me is that nobody that’s not ontologically evil uses the killing curse. Like, the adults are all mad at Harry’s stupidity for giving away his position by using a nonlethal spell, but all of those adults are also not using the killing curse. This suggests a hegemonic worldview where it’s obvious and sensible that you should want to kill your enemy, but it’s only acceptable if you do it in an indirect and roundabout way. It’s fine to stun or petrify them so they fall off a broom and die on impact with the ground, but it’s beyond the pale to kill them directly with a spell.
i’m aware i’m putting way too much thought into a work that does not merit it, but it’s interesting that the biggest source of internal conflict for harry is the question of whether he is, fundamentally, like Voldemort. Of course, the series being what it is, the conclusion Rowling reaches is “no, actually all the symbolism and the sorting hat and the scar and literally containing a part of voldemort’s soul was just a big misunderstanding. good boys love their mommy and voldemort is a bad boy and always has been.”
if you choose to read the whole series as a more-than-incidentally liberal psychodrama, with Harry the scion of the End of History and Voldemort the spectre of 20th century fascism, it’s all a bit too revealing.
He wasn’t a lib rather he was an Anabaptist, which from what I remember from long ago vlogs was one of the cooler versions of Christianity in that they sort of occupied a critical space that Lutheranism left open as Luther went against Catholicism and yet conformed to the emerging demands of capitalism.
They believed baptism as a baby made no sense since babies can’t believe anything, and that mankind should live communally as the first Christians did in order to enter heaven. They see themselves as citizens of the kingdom of God not any nation state, so they refuse things like military service, oaths, violence, espouse forgiveness etc. That being said they, like most Christians, were bad to women and apparently enforced polygamy in the Munster rebellion.
Just wanted to since I saw an annoying guy in that reddit link claiming that Anabaptists were crazy murderers wanting to establish a “theocratic dictatorship” (mf what do you think all European countries with a supposed god given royalty were?) when , according to the very wikipedia article he links, it was the armies of the aristocracy who did the killing and starving, not Anabaptists.
Also neglects to mention that a couple years before this rebellion was the Peasants’ War which was a rebellion supported by radical clergy and was also destroyed by the landowners, but much larger in bloodshed.
This is cool, you have any tips on where I can read more?
Also relevant: Acts 4:32-35
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
I don’t have any specific books that I could recommend unfortunately what I know is just gleaned from Christmans videos and the thirty years war series he did, I’m pretty sure they touch on some of this in the series as background info.
James Crossley is a Marxist religion scholar in the UK and has written about this here. He has a book about John Ball specifically that might be interesting
For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
the phrase “From each according their ability, to each according to their needs” is often traced back to this very verse.
Baptists in 1569: rescuing your jailer from certain death due to deeply held religious convictions knowing the King will certainly kill you for your good deed
Baptists in 2024: deeply held religious convictions are now just stand your ground laws, looking to kill anyone for their good deed
I just want to point out Anabaptists and Baptists are two separate groups. Dirk Willems is an Anabaptist martyr while Baptists came later and were more closely related to Calvinism iirc
True yeah, they’re most likely from the English separatists vs European anabaptists though they had very similar theological beliefs and politics at the time
edit: I didn’t know about the calvin influence (cursed be his name), but I found this article fascinating: Martin Davie, “Calvin’s Influence on the Theology of the English Reformation” which is only tangentially related
