Harry Potter and the eight stages of Genocide.

Upon re- reading the final Harry Potter novel, and with all this social psych stuff running around in my head i started thinking about how the Harry Potter novels (which are written for children) are based around genocide. So i decided to write a blog about how the eight stages of genocide relate to harry potter, and if nothing else but a bit of fun, this can maybe help us all gain a greater understanding of genocide and how it occurs.

STAGE ONE - CLASSIFICATION
The distinction between us and them. This happens early on in the novels, the 'muggles' (non-magical folk) are separated from the wizards, its an 'us and them' situation. This can further be broken down in to the 'pure bloods' (those who descend from a long lived wizarding family) 'half bloods, (those who had one parent who was a wizard and one a muggle) and 'mud blood' (horrible word for those whose parents are both muggles) In the novels, A group of extremist 'pure blood' wizards become a 'them' and the rest of the wizarding community become an 'us'. The extremist 'us' form a group called 'The order of the Phoenix', and plan to fight the Death eaters.


STAGE TWO - SYMBOLISATION
Giving names and symbols to the classifications. In this case the 'bad' group are called the 'Death Eaters' and are distinguished by a tattoo found on the inside of their arm. The names part was classified in the first stage.

STAGE THREE - DEHUMANIZATION
One group denies the humanity of another group. In this case it was the death eaters dening that all wizards that are not of pure blood decent were worthless.

STAGE FOUR - ORGANISATION
The death eaters were lead by a evil wizard called Voldermort (or He Who Must Not Be Named). They started as a small group and recruited more and more people and magical creatures, eventually they over throw the ministry of magic, taking control of the government and the country.

STAGE FIVE -POLARIZATION
Extremists drive the groups apart. The death eaters take over the country, forcing the members of The order of the Phoenix and other wizards of human decent into hiding, if they are found they will be tortured and killed.

STAGE SIX - PREPARATION
The death eaters start to attack and identify all members of the community who are not of 'pure blood', or who are 'blood traitors' (those who chose to help the general wizarding community, but are of pure blood) Lists are made of who should live, and if your name isn't on the list, you are to be killed on sight, or taken in as a hostage.

STAGE SEVEN - EXTERMINATION
Mass murders start to take place. Many wizards are murdered. (including some main characters!) A safe haven is set up in Hogworts (the wizard school) Eventually The Order of the Phoenix recruits enough members to take on the Death eaters and there is an epic battle (between good and evil)

STAGE EIGHT - DENIAL
This is an interesting stage in the book, the Minister for Magic denies that Voldermort is back (in short he kind of died but managed to come back to life) because of the fear and horrible things he did to people when he was in power last time, the minister thought it better to deny the obvious and tell the wizarding community that Voldermort was still 'dead'. This idea is presented to the wizarding community for about 2 books or so, (2 years) until its too late to stop the wizard genocide from happening.

I find that the denial that is shown in the book, as the minister can not deal with the horrible things that go along with admitting Voldermort is back, very similar to the US and UN not admitting what was happening in Rwanda as 'genocide'. It appears that by labelling and naming the horrible thing makes it more real, and if its real then the Governments have something incredibly horrible and serious to deal with. It seems that it is just easier to deny it, even when the evidence points to the complete opposite.

hmmmm anyway just something that was running through my head. Feel free to add comments!

Attempt at posting a concept map.

Not sure how big this is going to appear, but its a concept map on what, at this stage, i believe to be some of the contibuting factors to genocide. Most of it has come from the 'Eight stages of Genocide' which was posted on someones blog, from the website 'Genocide Watch'. Anyway, here goes!!!

Ghosts of Rwanda: an eye opener

Wow. That was an eye opener. Some of those images will haunt me. I found that dvd to be incredibly informative, and as i said before, and eye opener. I felt physically sick while watching some parts of that dvd, at the attitudes of people and what was going on. Its strange how that was such a graphic documentary, and yet the images that remain with me are not the ones of the mass graves, but that image of the single floating hand in the murky water, and the bodies floating in the river. Horrific. Killing, slaughtering people in the house of God, that just seems so immoral. It seems that Rwanda was the result of two enemy extremeist groups, and the scary thing is that it could very easily happen again. In answer to the question 'what would i do' id honestly have to say, with the skills we learn in psych, id have to do something. Even if thats debriefing and counselling the people who come back/escape from the country in trouble. Or something as small as protesting the governments decisions or signing a petition. I think i would have to do something.

Ive posted the link to the transcript of Ghotos of Rwanda below.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/etc/script.html

Article: Genocide as a Scientific Project.

I found this article titled 'Genocide as a Scientific Project' (Andrew S Winston, 1997). Its based on the Nazi Holocaust, but it reviews some of the litriture written in the 1930's-1940's and gives a bit of an understanding as to what the german people would have been exposed to in order for the Nazi holocaust to, for lack of a better word, 'work'. There were two quotes in particular that struck me as horrifing and interesting, but also somewhat hard to understand. Being part of the 'modern educated western world' its hard to comprehend how people took these 'articles' as serious and actually believed them. (To some extent) On the other hand, i suppose that at the time these sources were seen as repudable, they were written by doctors and scientists, whom i am sure at that time were deemed a crediable source. Below i have posted the two quotes, feel free to add your opinoins/comments on them, as i found them to be quite controversial.

• 
  'Jews were commonly understood to be a mixed race - part Negro and part Oriental - and therefore were genetically defective... Jews produced elevated incidents of diabtes, hemophilia, deafness, muscular tumors, manic depression, schizophrenia, suicide, mental retartation, glaucoma, myopia, gallstones, brain malfunction, criminality and moral depravity' (referenced by the author of the article as comming from Proctor, 1988)
• 'When a people wants, somehow or other, to preserve its own nature, it must refect alien racial elements, and when these have already insinuated themselves, it must supress and eliminate them. The Jew is such an alien and therefore, when he wants to insinuate himself, he must be warded off. This is self defence. In saying this, I do not characterise every Jew as inferior, as Negroes are...But i reject Jewry with every means in my power, and without reserve, in order to preserve the hereditary endowment of my people. (The author states 'as quoted in Muller-Hill, 1988, p. 12)

I found these quotes to be incredibly offensive, wrong and just plain horrible, and yet almost laughable because they are so extreme and inconsiveable, i guess that comes with the old saying when you don't know know whether to laugh or cry. Anyway, thats all from me for now, i just thought they were interesting, from someone who hasnt studied anysort of history since grade 8!

Genocide: A horrific, yet interesting subject

I have chosen to do the topic of genocide for my first blog. It is something that has always facinated me, but i have yet to have the opportunity to study it. Its funny, even though i was in primary school when the Rwanda genocide happened, i can remember it. Obviously not many of the details sunk in, but as i was attending a catholic school i can remember writting in a 'prayer book' or something. I am actually really looking foward to writting this essay, (i know a rare occurance!) the more research i do, the more interesting it gets, especially with all of the conflicting view points. Well thats all for now.

Thought this was funny!!!