Jon Stewart Wants To Clarify His Comments About The Antisemitic Goblins Of “Harry Potter”

Last month Jon Stewart criticized Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling on an episode of his podcast, The Problem With Jon Stewart. And it has nothing to do with transphobia this time. Jon pointed out that the goblins who run Gringotts bank in the Harry Potter movies appear to be antisemitic caricatures. He compared the miserly, hook-nosed creatures to antisemitic illustrations included in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a famous anti-Jewish book from 1903. But once headlines proclaimed “Jon Stewart Accuses J.K. Rowling of Antisemitism,” Jon clarified his comments, insisting he loves Harry Potter and everybody needs to take a chill pill.

Here’s a picture of one of the goblins, for context:

I'm late on this but happy anniversary to the 1st Harry Potter movie 🥰 can't believe it's been 20 years since we all decided not to care about the Jewish money goblins pic.twitter.com/2Z4Rm5r52m

— a crumpled up piece of paper (@audgey_podgey) January 4, 2022

Here are Jon’s original comments, via Indiewire:

“Here’s how you know Jews are still where they are,” Stewart said on the episode. “Talking to people, here’s what I say: Have you ever seen a ‘Harry Potter’ movie? Have you ever seen the scenes in Gringotts Bank? Do you know what those folks who run the bank are? Jews! And they’re like, ‘Oh, [that illustration is] from ‘Harry Potter’! And you’re like, ‘No, that’s a caricature of a Jew from an anti-Semitic piece of literature.’”

He added, “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. But what if the teeth were sharper?”

He added:

“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 fucking underground bank,” Stewart continued. “And everybody was just like, ‘Wizards.’ It was so weird.”

Here’s a video of Jon talking about the Harry Potter goblins:

Even though this episode of Jon’s podcast came out last month, the conversation only went viral this week. Several Jewish groups and activists, including Dave Rich from the Jewish charity the Community Security Trust and Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons, defended J.K. Rowling, pointing out that she’s always supported the Jewish community. Dave Rich told the Hollywood Reporter that he believes, “her goblins are just goblins,” and maybe the real issue is that traditional European depictions of goblins have been “subliminally influenced by antisemitic depictions of Jews.”

Pete Davidson made similar comments on Saturday Night Live in 2020:

Here is Pete Davidson calling JK Rowling out for antisemitism in Harry Potter in 2020.

Thanks for the heads up @mcgarrygirl78 pic.twitter.com/kCEsmoO9hl

— raf (@rafaelshimunov) January 3, 2022

When Jon saw that his Harry Potter comments were making headlines, he clarified his opinions on another episode of his podcast. Jon says the goblin discussion was meant to be “a lighthearted conversation”, and he was merely pointing out that “some tropes are so embedded in society that they’re basically invisible, even in a considered process like movie-making, right?” Then he said, “Let me just say this, super clearly”, and got up real close to the camera:

Hello! My name is Jon Stewart. I do not think J.K. Rowling is anti-semitic. I did not accuse her of being anti-semitic. I do not think the Harry Potter movies are anti-semitic. I really love the Harry Potter movies, probably too much as a gentleman of my considerable age.

So I just wanna say that none of that is true, and not a reasonable person could not have looked at that conversation and found it lighthearted.

Here’s that video, in which he tells Newsweek to eat his ass:

Newsweek et al, may eat my ass. pic.twitter.com/eRoYYeNRi1

— Jon Stewart (@jonstewart) January 5, 2022

Newsweek has yet to respond to Jon Stewart’s invitation to eat his ass. Story developing, I guess….

Pic: Wenn.com