Pan-Germanism (the ultra-nationalist, far right, insanely racist) made the Holocaust possible, the Nazi were just the most sucessful of the bunch. What Taure is arguing is that Nazism and Voldemort's Radicalism is a product of the 20th century, which isn't wrong. Go read Richard Evans "Coming of the Third Reich" for a much, much better understanding of that.

Witches were scapegoats, just like the jews and armenians. They wre different/not normal, or any other arbitrary motive people made up. Bad ecnomy, crop, lost the war... Blame them. That was in RL, but HP canon never said anything to directly contradict that (or any other historical event that I can remember), so like Taure, Cheddar and Sesc said, stop shoe-horning your fanon and just write an AU story.

 

Imo, witch hunts were a real problem before Hogwarts was founded.

Then every witch and every wizard knew the flame-freezing charm with muggle repellant wards and stuff following soon after.

And a couple of hundred years after, the times when muggles could be an actual threat were conveniently forgotten.

@OP
They didn't care. Hagrid even says it in the first book. Wizards don't like to solve muggle problems with magic.

 

That will fit my concept very well. Wizards trying to claim persecution in the past when it was actually inept investigation of crimes (though in some cases at least the crime was not magical in nature, or just a natural occurence).

With regards to my not-use of "muggle": In my planned story, only wizards use that term. Normal people do not call themselves or think of themselves as muggles. A story centered on those and those raised by them and using their point of view therefore will not use "muggle" in the descriptions, unless the POV switches to a wizard.

 

Someone's been reading The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and doesn't want to own up to it.

 

Don't worry, Starfox. This is a safe space. You can tell us anything and we won't judge you.

Legal Disclaimer: DLP is not a safe space.

 

Why would anyone take pride in a Scarlet Letter? Sometimes people wear titles of disdain as a point of pride. Although, in general, you're absolutely right.

 

I prefer "normal people" myself. Mundane is used to describe non magicals in Shadowrun, so I am used to that as an alternative.

 

So you're telling me, well, what I'm getting from this is that you seem to take personal offense at the term muggle. Also, just in general, you're getting very worked up about an argument that can't be won because there are no real terms to it.

You know that this whole discussion is about a work of fiction, yes?

 

From the wizards perspective being a normal person involves telling the laws of physics to sit down and shut the fuck up, to wizards muggles are what starving Ethiopians are to rich Americans, poor, uneducated
(Can't think of a good metaphor)

 

You're right. That's really not a good metaphor.

 

Star Trek technology and people compared to 1990's(?) Technology or people
(These metaphors/analogys suck)

 

Edit: Just saw I replied to the last post form page 1. sorry, didn't read the rest before, maybe some of these things were already said.
Answer to the question in post 20 if it would help to create a distinction between dark wizards and light wizards.

How would the muggles know which wizards they should hunt, how would they distinguish dark wizards from light wizards? What would the knowledge that there are good and bad wizards help the victims?

And even if they could distinguish between light and dark wizards I don't think that would solve the problem.

In reality the witch hunters didn't care whether the accused used 'magic' for good or evil reasons. At the time of the witch hunts a healer suspected of using magic was just as readily burned as somebody suspected of bringing about the plague. From the Middle Ages onwards the witch hunts in Europe were lead by the Catholic church. And the church proclaimed that everybody using magic had a deal with the devil.

Also fear of magic was nothing new at the time of the witch hunts. Even in Babylonia and in Ancient Egypt magicians were punished.

So I don't know how far back you want to go with your story but saying that in HP the European witch-hunts were solely caused by dark wizards torturing muggles would simplify matters a lot and not be very believable.

Taking into account that most people thought witches were using satanic powers I don't think muggles and wizards could coexist peacefully out in the open at a time like that.

In general I think a well researched HP story taking place at the time of the witch hunts could be interesting.

 

It's not going to be set at the time, but the reassons for the witch hunts will play a role. And since magic does exist in the HP verse, it's not really far fetched for the normal people, who at the time knew about magic, to see the difference between magic used for good or ill. They did try to prosecute the criminals among them, after all, and not just kill everyone with a sword once a victim was found with a sword wound.

But the main point is that in the HP verse, the magic crimes were not imagined. The witch hunts were not started out of unjustified fear of magic, but out of fear of dark wizards who did torment, kill and oppress non magicals. It did spread to encompass all magicals after the light wizards were unable or unwilling to stop such crimes, or wipe the evidence from the minds of the victims (since obliviation wasn't invited yet).

That magicians were feared and punished at other times won't Change anything, there have been good and bad mages all the time, and since Magic was known, it was just another tool for criminals. I also assume the old god-kings and priest kings were magicians themselves.

 

1.What Canon evidence do you have?
2.Witch's were mystical Doctors, powerful and respected, you don't think some people went around claiming to be witch's to get perks and when they couldn't heal people it gave witch's a bad name just as Christianity swept Europe and the U.K.

 

It is far fetched if you consider that muggles at that time thought that magic was gifted to its users by the devil. Devil = source of evil
A sword on the contrary is an accepted weapon muggles understand and use themselves, it's not viewed as inherently evil. In my opinion that makes an important difference.

If your story is not set in that time then why is it important if muggles back then would have been able to accept that there is good and bad magic? Or do you only want a justification for saying that the wizards should have dealt with the situation differently?

As far as I can remember we don't know if real magic had anything to do with the witch hunts in the Harry Potter world. Rowling took our world with all its history and only added the magical world, so as far as we know even in the Harry Potter world the witch hunts could have happened for the same reasons they did in reality, without influence of real wizards.

If you want dark wizards to be responsible for them then do it, it's your story and everybody makes up stuff all the time, but I don't think that this is the way it was in canon. Rowling included the witch hunts in her story but never even once mentioned that the wizards were actually to blame for them.

 

Christianity is mostly against witch's, Pagans however weren't

 

:facepalm

Do I even bother . . . nope.

 

I'm guessing because Apparition wasn't so widespread, the Imperio curse hadn't been invented yet and before the age of the machine gun wasn't quite as directly devastating.

In fact, I'm guessing that Floo transportation and Portkeys along with Apparition are inventions of the last 500 years. Which would mean prior to say 1500 AD, Muggles in fact could force battle upon magicals, could in fact ambush them, and it meant that individual witches and wizards relied upon their own combat skills and such to prevail in ambush scenarios. And I'm guessing that "Muh Morals" witches and wizards got pissy when someone attempted to respond with Giants and Dragons, if they even could. Frankly, Giants should have been and probably were all but invincible to pre-firearm Muggle weapons.

Couple that with low numbers and general selfish self-preservation, and the Witch Hunts can happen. With magicals being less organized, less dangerous, and most witches and wizards left to fend for themselves, and many of them being trusted and beloved members of the community one day, and hated devil worshipers the next, and you have the recipe for disasters.

Especially those skilled in making healing potions and such, who go from being the town/village doctor and then surprise ambushed the next day. Such incidences of utter betrayal would do more to motivate magicals of the necessity of an apartheid existence than anything else.

Then Obliviation is invented. And all of a sudden it becomes possible to relegate much of the magical world to the realms of myth and legend instead of simply folklore and wives tales.

Except, and here is the problem, its the Jews wanting to do the extermination with most of the world not believing they even exist in the first place.

Comparing the Voldemort's followers to Nazi's, when including Muggles, runs into that sort of problem.