J.K. Rowling accused of ‘anti-Semitic’ imagery in Harry Potter

Former US talk show host Jon Stewart has slammed J.K. Rowling for her use of imagery he says is “anti-Semitic,” claiming the Harry Potter franchise’s goblin banker characters resemble Jewish caricatures.

In a recent edition of his podcast ‘The Problem with Jon Stewart’, the comedian claimed it was “so weird” that people had not realized and reacted to J.K. Rowling’s use of “anti-Semitic” imagery in her characterization of Harry Potter’s bankers.

Stewart suggested that the goblins who run the underground Gringotts bank resemble an illustration in an anti-Semitic book from 1903, entitled ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.

In a rambling monologue, the American comedian appeared to suggest that Rowling was probably aware of the 1903 work and wanted to incorporate the “anti-Semitic” imagery into her children’s book.

“J.K. Rowling was like, ‘Can we get these guys to run our bank?’ It’s a wizarding world… we can ride dragons, you can have a pet owl… but who should run the bank? Jews,” he said. 

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Stewart said he was surprised that no one else had thought the same when watching the movies.

“It was one of those things where I saw it on the screen and I was expecting the crowd to be like, ‘Holy shit, [Rowling] did not, in a wizarding world, just throw Jews in there to run the f**king underground bank,” he continued.

The former TV host is not the first person to liken the Gringotts bankers to anti-Semitics works. Children’s author Marianne Levy, writing for the Jewish Chronicle in 2019, claimed Gringotts screenshots would not appear out of place among a series of cartoons from Nazi Germany’s Der Sturmer.

Rowling herself has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past, with some claiming the pure-blood world of magic is clearly inspired by the Nazis.

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