Potter is a leftist war machine, says French newspaper

Published on Saturday 27 October 2007 00:17

A FRENCH newspaper has declared Harry Potter a left-wing hero of the intellectual aristocracy.

To mark the French publication of the final insta-lment of the adventures of J K Rowling's boy magician, France's leading left-wing daily Liberation devoted yesterday's front page and two more pages to answering the question: "Why is Harry Potter of the Left?"

The paper invited philosopher Jean-Claude Milner to analyse Rowling's books. He identified a reaction to the free-market revolution instigated in Britain by Margaret Thatcher's governments.

He wrote: "One has the feeling J K Rowling feels, like many cultivated English people, that there was a real, catastrophic Thatcherite revolution, and that the only chance for culture now is to survive as an occult science."

He identified the "Muggles" - inhabitants of the ordinary, non-magical world - as the uncultured bourgeoisie who did well materially out of the Thatcher years and later under Tony Blair.

"In the world described by J K Rowling, there are the Muggles, who represent the Thatcher-Blairite middle class and then the others: the people, cultivated people and the penniless aristo-cracy, people you would expect to find in public schools or at Cambridge University."

Milner said Harry Potter and his friends represented a form of opposition to the values of the profit-seeking market economy. "As such, he is a war machine against a Thatcherite-Blairist world and 'American Way of Life'."