Googling around, I’ve seen a lot of users and journos claiming they are a jewish stereotype. I struggled to even compare them to what HP did. And as a partially jew, I’m really jealous of qualities these bigots paint and the thinking process Quark put to work. He’s probably my favorite character of the whole franchise.
Are goblins themselves historically a racist caricature? Because I can think of other instances of goblins depicted with big noses and being greedy money-misers as if they were Jewish stereotypes. World of Warcraft for one. Most fantasy games, really.
None of those also put them in a bank that had a huge star of David on the floor, tho.
Goblins don’t always look like that: https://www.britannica.com/art/goblin
But the art varies depending on the artist, and sometimes they are used like that. Just like tolkien apparently modeled his dwarves after Jews. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarves_in_Middle-earth#:~:text=Tolkien elaborated on Jewish influence,Tolkien said "The dwarves of
Here’s a racist cartoon from the 1940s to see how specifically HP lines up. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544586
Maybe they are. Recently it was found that the Japanese Tengu may have its origin in an encounter with Jewish travelers back in olden times.
And the bank having a Jewish symbol can be attributed to the movie director allowing it unchanged. Or that it went forgotten and undetected. Or that it was a magical symbol that the goblins used for their security. Can’t Jewish imagery have a place in a magical society? The goblins had curse breakers slumming it in the pyramids. They went around and took what was useful to them.
But none of that. It’s racism because tweet, tweet little Birdy.