Despite being largely built from real-world prototypes, the Death Eaters don't have any great real-world analogies that I'm very familiar with. As a violent political organization that gained substantial power and waged a full-blown civil war quite recently, they seem close to the IRA, but they don't have the historical context that colored that conflict; the strong blood-purity emphasis puts them close in some ways to Klansmen or neo-Nazis, or the early Nazi Party before it dropped its revolutionary angle, but there doesn't seem to be a strong nationalist component and the methodology is different.
Point is, I'd forbear from reasoning too far by analogy here; the situation's too unusual. About the best we can do is look at the in-universe consequences of various people's actions, and from that perspective the accusation looks pretty damned weighty. Especially for a schoolteacher.
It's worth noting that, in canon, Rita's writing results in Hermione receiving piles of hate mail including booby-trapped letters containing toxic chemicals. It also results in the Ministry, as represented by Fudge, taking a very dim view of Harry on the evidence of her articles alone ("having funny turns all over the place").
Given the apparent gullibility and quickness to violence of the general population in the Potterverse (with no comment on how this may or may not resemble the real world), it is entirely plausible that Rita's other victims w...
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This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
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