HARRY POTTER Star Paapa Essiedu Received Death Threats After Being Cast As HBO's Professor Snape

@Vigor - They're probably taking cues from you violent wackos.

@Vigor - I thought the same thing. Raise your hands folks if you got right up to the line without crossing it.

@JackDeth - Definitely racism. The 'shock value', drawing attention to themselves (ironically hiding behind avatars). And I'd say ignorance is endemic across all political extremes.

@Drace24 - Yep, this. Have you heard of the 'Horseshoe Theory?' It's the idea that the far-left and far-right are not really that far apart, and the further extreme they get, they 'lean back towards each other.'

@JackDeth - I agree with that

[frick] those people especially going after children

@BillyBatson1000 - I think it's more likely that most people don't understand what the extremes represent. Far right is Fascism and far left is anarchy.

@JackDeth - You're right, they don't. Nor how easily they're played by political influence. In my country, the UK, they just have to wail "immigrants" and the right get a vote. Yet immigrants are holding our national health service together and their young paying into the pay structure which supports our pension mechanism - as our older population ages out.

@Drace24 - Hell, we'll go with yours!

@Clintthahamster - But the guy on the left hasn't gone far enough ....

@Clintthahamster - it was a joke.

J O K E.

< -- Billy is a lefty.

All THAT good stuff.

@Clintthahamster - I hear you, especially in this format. The written word - no prisoners - literal expression.

@Drace24 - I'll grant you, that's a fine representation of the fact that there are Extremely Online Assholes™ from every walk of life, but please explain how the meme I posted was bad faith in terms of what it's actually about, far Left and far Right politics.

@Drace24 - Again, you're describing the behavior of extremely online assholes. Both sides engage in cancel culture, bullying, doxxing, misogyny, smear campaigns, etc. That's also not the behavior of the far Left. It's mostly moderates and libs getting caught up in the outrage of the week bullshit cycle.

If you're talking about the far Left (and, to be clear, I do not consider myself far Left) those folks couldn't be bothered with that petty bullshit.

It's been a while since I've posted this disclaimer, so in case you missed it: I sincerely don't give a shit about the race of actors playing roles in movies or shows. If this Harry Potter show's main cast was all white except for the five or six token characters Rowling threw in as an after thought, I wouldn't bat an eye. If the cast were all-POC, with only a few token white actors, I'd say "that's an interesting creative choice, I wonder if they'll pull it off." I don't give a shit. I just don't.

What I DO care about is the gradual rightward drift of culture in general and fandom in particular. And I'm sure most of the dudes on here complaining about "race swapping" or whatever are not, in fact, functionally racists in their day to day lives, but the ideas they're espousing originated with racists, and, at the moment, those [frick]s are winning, so I don't see any value in giving any of their ideas the time of day. That's it.

@Drace24 - "And you are just being defensive because...uh...uuuuh...."

Because I think objective truth matters.

"as soon as someone calls you out, you immediately flail and play the victim."

No one's calling me out, because I don't do that shit. Death threats are always wrong. Online bullying is always wrong. Those aren't ideological activities, they're personal behavior. It's not hard to understand, and yet here we are.

"Try not to be a grandstanding activist for five minutes and just be a person. Is that so hard?"

Oh, maybe I should try to explain where I'm coming from personally? I'll try that next time.

"Why do you think it's happening in the first place?"

The forty-five year project to systematically weaken regulations related to equal time on the airways, sow distrust in experts (doctors, scientists, universities) and journalists, and sabotage and defund public schools, coupled with the rise of algorithmically driven social media feeds and 24-hour news cycles, has had the net effect of producing the least media-literate voting populace in several generations.

Meanwhile FEC v Citizens United resulted in a political environment where the DNC cannot afford to alienate corporate donors, leaving the so-called "opposition party" with little recourse but to try to lure in a mythical "undecided voter" by shifting rightward with each subsequent election. And those self-same corporate donors have used their grip on both parties to force through unpopular, harmful mergers, resulting in the vast majority of media outlets being owned by a diminishing number of megacorporations who benefit from reduced regulations and have no interest in reporting that casts their corporate overlords in an appropriately negative light.

"They don't have any policies anymore."

Sure they do. Tax cuts for the mega rich and for corporations, deregulation of all industries, privatization of all government services, ethnic cleansing, and Christian theocracy.

"That's why they go all in on their culture war bullshit"

No, they go all in on culture war bullshit to distract from how terrible their actual policies are. And it's working great!

"show people how insane the far left has become and promise to reign it in."

Granting (for some reason) that there is probably at least one person on the "far Left" that holds each of the beliefs you're referring to, who was the last Far Left president, in your mind? Who was the last far left politician who held any national office, for that matter? To my knowledge, no one on the far left has EVER been in any position of political influence in the US.

"called racists or transphobe at the slightest disagreement with your pompous ego."

Running the risk of talking about myself again (sorry!) I haven't called you a racist or a transphobe, but you seem to think otherwise. Could it be that maybe you have your own irrational cognitive biases coming into play here?

"To me, and most people, this casting is not a matter of left vs right, but simply artistic integrity."

This isn't art at this point. It's product, designed to sell. It's a commodity. The fact is, they wanted to make more Harry Potter, but–oops!–the author only wrote one (one) adult Black person in seven books, so they made a couple of changes so that they wouldn't be making an all-white show in the year of our lord 2026 (much less 2036.)

And I agree that the decision was made at a board meeting, not at a casting call. Of course it's callow and superficial. Of course they don't give a shit about actual equity in the world. At the end of the day, your argument is "But he's supposed to be white!" and my argument is "who cares?" It's not that complex.

"you can't think in terms other than politicized culture war narratives anymore."

Sure I can. But, you know, when the narrative is about the culture war and politicized, it's hard not to talk in terms of politicized culture war narratives. At the end of the day, there's one set of moneyed interests trying to maintain political advantage so they can keep raping and pillaging, and another set of moneyed interests trying to make as much money as possible by groveling at the feet of whichever way the cultural wind happens to be blowing.

My question for you (and, if I'm being honest, myself) is why are we playing their game for them?

@rez4prez - You're right. J.K. Rowling constantly gets death threats. Gina Carano did too. Oddly enough I didn't see a single article about it. Just doubling down on calling the women controversial. But yeah, anyone who sends someone a death threat is sick in the head. Literally

@Truthteller - Yea, I blocked a lot of people that day.

@SuperiorHeckler - This site is full of blockers now who cant handle anyone who thinks differently than them.

@Vigor - If you mean nobody can effectively present an counter argument for blatant race swap changes for no reason, I agree with you.

@SuperiorHeckler