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In the history of the Harry Potter setting, goblins are second-class citizens. They have hunched backs and long noses and guard the wizards' gold in one central bank. Some centuries ago the goblins staged an uprising in order to become equals within the wizarding community and were violently suppressed.
This new Harry Potter game features the goblin rebellion, with the protagonist on the side of the wizards' violently oppressing the goblins. Who are absolutely blanketed in antisemitic stereotypes. It's rough.
and it's mentioned they have 'different beliefs about ownership' which feels kind of close to the whole judeo-bolshevic trope. and they like the taste of blood, which when combined with them kidnapping children as part of their evil plan in this upcoming game is pretty sus. AND they're portrayed as evil for backstabbing the main characters even though the main characters had already planned out an agreement to betray the goblins first
different beliefs about ownership
This concept was fairly fleshed out in the seventh HP book. Potterverse Goblins believe that ownership is established by creation of an object, which lead to a historic misunderstanding where Godric Griffindor believed that his sword was "sold" to him and the Goblin who made it believed it had only been rented.
You might think that this was set up so that the hero could resolve an old tension between the two groups and make justice, but actually the plot thread was left unresolved. A Goblin tried to steal the sword back as soon as Harry's back was turned, but then later it got re-summoned to Hogwarts by a spell that had been placed on it.
yeah, the book/the characters go "they have different beliefs. and those beliefs are objectively wrong making it totally ok for us to do whatever we want to them"
I'm not defending this, but don't like 99% of video games have bad politics?
Yeah, but not generally so overtly racist, and JK Rowling has earned a lot of animosity for being queen of the terfs, so this one's getting much more critique than other games do. Which is really a sign that most games need to be critiqued harder if they express any kind of politics.
On top of this, Rowling is also an outspoken Blairite who hates Jeremy Corbyn almost as much as she hates trans women - to the point that surprisingly horny Corbyn expies have appeared in two of her novels now. And a large part of Corbyn's purging from Labour leadership (and a large part of the negative portrayal of JKs first Corbynesque fictional character) was about allegations of antisemitism that were founded on his support for Palestinians. Not his extreme fondness for making up wizard stories about gold-hoarding, blood-drinking, scheming, greedy, long-nosed, big-eared, hand-wringing banker pariahs that are a pain in the ass to negotiate with. And that have the star of david as a floor ornament in their bank in case somebody missed that they are every single antisemitic stereotype combined.
Seriously, it's quite something to see how such a prominent Corbyn hater shows her entire antisemitic ass over and over again. It's really always projection with these people.