One of the greatest exponents of the uses and abuses of the media and the gullibility it thrives on was the late, great Malcolm Muggeridge. Here, in an essay on the “death-wish of liberalism’ he puts in a nutshell the mindset of the liberal “success-at-any-cost-to-others’ that is the basis of the Harry Potter plagiarisms.

Nobody dares question the mythic Rowling or her assertions any more than they once questioned the tyrannical oligarchy of the USSR. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose. But it is a salutary exercise to reflect on Rowling’s ‘idea-on-a-train’ nonsense not to mention her immaculate public image and indeed those of her elusive mentors and accomplices in light of the following:

I recall in their yellow jackets a famous collection in England called the Left Book Club. You would be amazed at the gullibility that’s expressed. We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most outrageous fantasy. We would tell them, for instance, that the shortage of milk in Moscow was entirely due to the fact that all milk was given nursing mothers – things like that. If they put it in the articles they subsequently wrote, then you’d score a point. One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldn’t rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant. I never got over that; it always remained in my mind as something that could never be erased. I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the media’s prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still. That’s when I began to think seriously about the great liberal death wish.

Way back in 2005 Sir Terry Pratchett observed the following in a letter concerning a BBC interview with Rowling which he considered suspect;

“And then there’s my question. Why didn’t the interviewer ask it? Here’s the world’s best-selling fantasy writer who has just said she hadn’t thought she was writing fantasy and also that she doesn’t really like the stuff. She goes on to say that she didn’t finish TLOTR or the Narnia series and has issues with Lewis. No problem there, but all this revelatory stuff just floated past, apparently unexamined. I’d like to know how an author can write in a genre she doesn’t like– really. I’d like to know what she thinks she *is* writing. “ (Terry Pratchett Published August 2, 2005.)  Sir Terence Pratchett is an extremely successful fantasy fiction writer.

NB; Without having heard of Pratchett we ourselves made exactly the same observation that you will find in one or several posts on this blog.

Pratchett who suffers from Alzheimer’s was royally pilloried for his intelligence. Pilloried let it be said from two sources – Rowling’s Private Army of bloggers and the establishment that, representing bourgeois interests in the publishing and media industries protect their ‘golden cow’ with a viciousness that would put the three-headed Cerberus to shame. Nobody of any note, to our knowledge, came out in Pratchett’s defense. (http://www.sfsignal.com). They attacked the man and ignored what he had said by means of what we have christened the “BLOGASMEAR”. (The blogasmear is a blog comment whose singular purpose is to discredit the commentator and his usually rational argument by discrediting him as a person. The devil’s work in other words.)  He was ‘jealous’. It was a case of “sour grapes”. And so on. Some of these were pitched in by the usual congregation of the Potter-Gullible who figure success is the only criterion of worth; and, of course, by the juvenile fantasists who have been told by Rowling-Little in so many words - “All you need my child is a good idea to come into your head, a pen and a jotter, and abracadabra! off you go to the land of wealth unimaginable.”  You have to pity parents who have to talk their kids out of this nonsense as much as you have to pity anyone who has bought into it.

Sadly, Pratchett like so many others has accepted much of the other drivel put out by Rowling’s PR men or he would have taken his observation to its logical conclusion viz; reason has clearly established that this woman Rowling is telling lies. Why would she do that? If she has told lies about her ignorance of what genre she was writing in, a lie that insults anyone with an IQ of three or under, just how many other lies has she told? Did she even write the stuff all by herself? And finally; …. where the hell did she steal it all from? Or how about…. Who is in it with her? Her pet hate is bigotry she informs us, to give one little instance, but that devoutly held principle clearly did not stop her insisting that nobody who was not a Brit was to work on her films. Indeed contradictions abound in Rowling’s remarks even those she scripted all by herself that make Pratchett’s sane remark wilt like a rose in methane by comparison. There are answers to all of these questions in existence if you are brave enough to step out of the ranks of the iconolaters to find them… and many of them are answered right here. Fans of Pratchett should at least give that author the respect of listening to him because his question remains hanging in the clouds for all to see.

Pratchett seems to have had about as much affect on the sane wing of British journalism as Moses had on the revelers cavorting around the Golden Calf. What deliberately obscures the whole issue of course is the belated doctrine of precedents that has been used by Rowling’s army to smokescreen the real issue – Plagiarism. “Belated’ is the key word in that sentence. Why prattle about precedents now? Why not way back then, say around book Two? Might it have something to do with the Willy The Wizard case that currently seeks a hearing in the High Court? 

Those who support plagiarism on principle would find it intolerable in practice if it happened to them that is; that’s if any of them was even capable of producing something good enough to be filched. None of them are although most of them we may assume believe they are. Or are they really so magnanimous in their views that they would happily send a congratulatory note to the burglar who ransacked their house commending him on his skill and knowledge of locks and praising his profound knowledge of lock precedents? Incredibly, among their ranks you will find respected journalists to whose deluded brains both Pratchett’s comments and our own have failed to gain admittance. Meanwhile, the great authoress who wrote diddly-squat prior to her magical visitation by an ‘idea’ if you please (indeed the first volume of Potter is a blatant attempt to present the hero as a mere ‘idea”), has her private army of bloggers to keep her safe from all menacing scrutiny. They have their lairs all over the net where they invite comments in order to filter out the enemies of Rowling-Little. Interpol has become Interpotter whose mission it is to hoodwink the public and protect Rowling from scrutiny by the use of fallacious argument, misinformation and downright lies. These manipulated idiots, paid and unpaid, have no problem coming out to bat for Rowling,… for Queen and Country? or have they simply sold their souls? Place your bets.

The Bogside Artists in any case will go on telling it as it is as we have been doing in paint and word for many years in dedicated protection of the one right that alone matters to any artist worth his or her salt…..FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Long may it be kept safe from the likes of Rowling-Little-Blair-Schillings et al.

POTTER … OF LIES, DAMN LIES AND ‘PRECEDENTS’.

What is truly astonishing to us is the sight of supposedly ‘intelligent’ people such as editors, journalists, broadcasting people in general accepting unquestioningly the promotional pabulum dished out by Rowling’s media friends, bloggers et al. They have no problem whatever with that revolting hooey about “an idea on a train” or the carefully crafted myth of St. Rowling suffering for her art in the lonely streets of Edinburgh despite the fact that she had written nothing we know of and published nothing prior to Potter and, by her own admission, was no more interested in fantasy writing as a genre than Little her agent (who wrote to Will to tell him there was “no money in children’s fiction”) was in publishing it. You have to wonder who put who up to what?

            People, especially the English, WANT to believe it all. She’s their baby… hands off! That’s the problem. So, they swallow the bait, hook and all… and get to keep it. Nobody dare doubt that The Chosen One was born to the task. Who could? Nobody, that is, except us who know better.

            And if this article succeeds in any purpose may it be to make it abundantly clear to you the total contempt we have for the moral redundancy of Rowling-Little and all who support them, paid and unpaid. The mindset behind it is that of The Gadarene Swine not J.R.Tolkien.

             When news broke of the impending case of Willy The Wizard, Rowling’s bloggers and article peddlers got up an argument of ‘precedents’ that was distributed widely. Young people especially warmed to it as it put the cause within their reach and eased their consciences about copying eachother’s homework. The disseminators have since cooled off, perhaps because this blog made short work of it. The fact that they tried it on in the first place spells GUILT all by itself. A big mistake.

Ask yourself….why would you need to cite precedents if  your work is so genuinely original? What need would you have to convince anyone? Who would need to argue from Mozart’s Mass to precedents in Bach or Hayden by way vindicating that great work? Does it need vindicating? Mozart’s Mass stands by itself and is taken on its own merits. To put forward an argument of precedents in support of what you want people to believe to be simultaneously original creation, in defense of which you have brought many fellow ‘precedent harvesters’ to court is subterfuge and hypocrisy.

            Precedents are all very well if you arguing from the GIVEN. But Potter is NOT the GIVEN and never was. HE IS THE RIP-OFF. You can no more argue ‘precedents’ for him than you can argue ‘precedents’ for Sir Christopher Wren’s cathedral when it is common knowledge (now, that is) that he replicated the dome of St. Paul’s from Donato Bramante’s model for St. Peter’s in Rome. He thought he was safe because travel in the 1670s was difficult and for the well-heeled and Rome was way over there somewhere and London was way over here. Who would get to know? Wren basked in his ‘borrowed’ glory.

             Conversely, would anyone cite precedents in support of Van Meegeren’s delectable forgeries of Vermeer? They certainly would if they were sure you knew nothing of the existence of Vermeer’s paintings and they wanted you to believe their man Van Meegeren was the soul and brains of Vermeer - that unknown ‘also-ran’ he had, without scruple or conscience, forged.

            Now, at least, you know why precedents were hastily put forward in support of the central thrust of the Potter campaign viz; to reinforce the forger as the original creator, to make of Rowling what she never was and indeed never could be or could have been. The cap does not fit. Where did she get it from anyway? And I am not referring to the cap that she allegedly plagiarised with the rest. And if you are a journalist who has fallen for it all you might consider another profession where you will have the luxury of thinking for yourself and where you will be allowed to question consensus beliefs.

            Great works of art do not come from mere “ideas”, however wonderful: publishers’ slush piles are teeming with ‘wonderful ideas’. They come from an artist’s intellectual and spiritual confrontation with the reality and needs of his times. From the “Eroica” to “The Gulag Archipelago” this is the case and will always be the case. No amount of grafting ‘spiritual depth’ onto Rowling is going to convince anybody with half a brain that she was in the fray of the spiritual-politico maelstrom of the nineties that alone could have given birth to the series. She was in a flat in peaceful Clapham (we are told) and further from the action than the ducks in Clapham pond. By the time she was born, the sixties with their world-changing spiritual focus, were half-way to finishing.

             From the start then, what the Rowling team knew they had to do therefore was convince us all that such spiritual grapplings, frought with neglect and hardship, constituted her pre-Potter life. With the myth already established, this is much easier for them these days. But they are still at it. Lately, they have had to tweak it a little, show a fervent political bent on the part of the esteemed authoress. Rowling, of late, supports the Labour Party and makes profoundly informed political speeches in support of the poor one-parented Muggles who did not quite make it to the winner’s enclosure. It all helps. Later on, they may have to dole out some inventive romantic lore about her political engagement and ardent passion for justice while a humble college student, or anything else you can think of that nobody can prove ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. A mandatory stop at Africa maybe? There’d be ‘depth’ a là Jolie for sure, to authenticate her moral mission at Amnesty. Or maybe, she was just happy to find a job there? We pause to bite our tongues. 

           Indeed, we  shouldn’t put it beyond them to consult this blog to tell them what to do next. Why stop now? They may even dig out ideas from the preface of Travels with Li Po if they have not already done so. The mystical marriage maybe? Look out for them to appear in the next Potter movie. Our mentioning it or not mentioning it is not going to stop them by the way. So, tediously, it goes on. But the dough keeps trundling in.. and that is all that really matters and all it was ever about. The court cases surrounding the fiasco should tell you that much at least!

The truth is… Vermeer will go on being Vermeer and Ven Meegeren…..? Who is he? It will be interesting to see how long Rowling will get to go on being whoever she claims to be.