You ignored my most essential point. The death eaters do not follow the NATO definition of terrorism. They are fighting a civil war to make their own perverted form of Wizarding Britain where muggleborns are inferior; they are not trying to coerce government through acts of terror. I understand that Hitler was a foreign leader trying to invade, but the agenda's sound remarkably similar. Hitler wanted to make a society where Jews are inferior, while Voldemort wanted to do this with muggleborns. The only difference is that Voldemort is fighting a civil war, while Hitler is invading foreign countries. No, Voldemort's only goal was not immortality, because if that was his only aim he would never piss anybody off by being Voldemort. One of his goals was to remake the ministry in his image.

 

I ignored your cited definition of terrorism because it is not germane to the point. Whether you want to call the Klan and organizations like it(consider the ETA) terrorists or not(the reason they're called that is because it's part of what they do), my point is that the Death Eaters more closely resemble the KKK than Hitler any day of the week and the HP universe already has a German wizard gunning for world domination- Grindelwald. The pointy hats in the movies represented a deliberate choice by Warner brothers to appeal to memories of the Klan in American audiences(generally, the movies were bent toward the US).
Hitler had a society in which he discriminated against Jews before the war began. Discriminating against Jews and becoming the head of state in Germany did not require a war. Expanding into Poland was a matter of reclaiming territory Germany had lost in the treaty of Versailles; following that the Allies decided to declare war on him. Voldemort did not invade foreign countries and the Death Eaters cannot be called an army; they were few in number and lacked the discipline and command structure an army usually has. The conflict between the forces of good and Voldemort cannot be called a civil war; there were no battles, there were duels, the main objective for the Order was killing or imprisoning all the Death Eaters (what you do with terrorists) rather than taking their capital or having them surrender. The Death Eaters were not a state or a substate, they were an organization with a leader they owed a cult-like reverence. For this reason the argument can be made that all they really have to do is not quit and they can't lose.

 

Can we agree to disagree on whether it was a civil war or not? It seems remarkably like a civil war to me; the old order feels like the old ways are better, and the fight to force the old ways on wizarding Britain.

 

Civil wars have similarities to wars on terror(consider the war with the IRA, which had roughly the same timeline as the wizarding war). I would argue Voldemort and company don't really represent the old ways; there was never a time when their beliefs were dominant, not even as far back as Salazar Slytherin, who is supposed to be pre-Merlin. Blood purism has existed for a long time, but it's always been a minority of people who believe it, largely the result of not much of the wizarding world being pure blood. In this respect the Death Eaters weren't really an ancient regime, they were a club Riddle started as a boy. You'll notice in DH they don't really try to destroy the government of magical Britain, or force it to surrender, they just install their people and hunt down those who disagree with them. This was likely their objective in the previous conflict as well.

 

The government a group is fighting against calls them terrorists fighting a terror war, while the group calls themselves rebels fighting a justified civil war. It depends on perspective. And yes, they take over the government; thats my whole point. They don't have to tear it down to change the policy drastically as Remus remarks in DH.

 

There's truth to the expression that terrorists are just what the big army calls the little army, but whether or not it's a legitimate descriptor largely depends on methodology- the repeated misuse of terms does not require changing the definitions when there are etymological explanations for what the definition should be. The objective of a terrorist is to motivate the enemy with fear, hence the name. The Death Eaters and the Klan wear masks when they're meeting and when they're attacking targets. Partially this is motivated by practicality, terrorists are almost always vastly outnumbered and as a result can't afford to broadcast their identities, partially this is a way of generating fear. When the men in the streets are wearing masks, one of them might be your neighbor and you would never know the difference. I would argue that the Death Eaters and their leader were rebels in the sense that their ideology was not the dominant one at the time, but that does not mean they were not terrorists.

Yes, this is what insidious groups like the Klan do. Taking over the government in DH is not the result of a military victory- there were no military forces involved, no generals; no rank and file soldiers. The entire time it was just police/CIA/vigilantes against masked terrorists.

 

I think we're getting out of topic no?

Anyway, personally the Death Eaters remind me of ISIS.

 

Out of curiosity how is it off topic?

 

Well, the topic is the symbolism of Slytherin , not what the Death Eaters were like.

 

Most of slytherin grew up to be death eaters, and supporters of Voldemort.

 

Yes, but the point is that the details of the DE movements are largely irrelevant here. We're talking about the House as a whole. It doesn't matter what the DE were beyond the point that they were really bad guys.

 

This isn't a theory, rather more of a comment on this thread, but it seems to always be assumed that Slytherin in itself is dark, evil, etc., whereas I believe that Slytherin represents ambition to the extent that somebody would be willing to commit actions regarded as "dark" or "evil". To support this ambition is a degree of self-preservation, which could be interpreted as cowardice, or being sneaky or sly.
Even characters who do mot appear to be at all ambitious despite being in Slytherin could have ambitions that would not be noticed, or even misunderstood. For example, Crabbe and Goyle seem to be not at all ambitious to some, but I could see them being so dedicated to assisting Malfoy that they are willing to disregard their own academic development, and the only time they show self-preservation instinct is in the Room of Requirement, while the Fiendfire is destroying the room. This, to me, could be seen as a less obvious method of retaining the characteristics associated with Slytherin Houseb.

 

I believe I have thought of one more clue about why Slytherin was obviously meant to be a symbol for evil: Do you really think that the symbols of Gryffindor and Slytherin are coincidental? We know that Rowling uses a lot of Christian symbolism.

Jesus is often compared to a lion. The snake on the other hand as we all know symbolizes the temptation and eventual fall of Adam and Eve. According to some, the snake in the garden is even meant to be the devil.

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/christ-the-lion-and-the-lamb

https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-stories/adam-and-eve-in-the-garden.html

TL;DR Harry is a lion, like Jesus. Voldemort is a snake, like...the snake from the garden of Eden.

 

Wrong. Voldemort can't be that snake because everyone knows the snake from the Garden of Eden isn't an evuuulz villain, he just sauntered vaguely downwards from grace because he hung out with the wrong crowd.

 

Seriously?

Seriously?!

Fuck me.

Edit for content: No-one thinks the symbols of Gryffindor and Slytherin are coincidental cus they even bloody expound on the virtues of the houses and the animals that represent those virtues in the Sorting Song. I mean Christ, well done.

The mascots of the house are literal symbols for their house. What's your insight.

 

Oh come on. Everyone knows that Rowling uses a lot of Christian symbolism and that there are a lot of parallels between Harry and Jesus. I doubt that it's a coincidence that the bad guys use snakes as their symbols.

 

That's exactly the point