Goblin bankers from ‘Harry Potter’ deemed anti-Semitic

Jon Stewart, former ‘Daily Show’ host, calls out JK Rowling during a recent episode of his podcast

Criticising the characters of the goblin bankers working at Gringotts Bank in the Harry Potter books and films, former Daily Show host Jon Stewart has called out author JK Rowling for using anti-Semitic character tropes. Deeming the goblin character “a caricature of a Jew”, Stewart expressed his disappointment at the lack of backlash to the offensive depiction.

Speaking on a recent episode of his podcast The Problem with Jon Stewart, he said, “Here’s how you know Jews are still where they are,” continuing, “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!”

Highlighting the resemblance between Rowling’s goblin characters and offensive illustrations of Jews from the anti-Semitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he added, “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.’ JK 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?”

“It was one of those things where I saw it on the screen and I was expecting the crowd to be like, ‘Holy s***, [Rowling] did not, in a wizarding world, just throw Jews in there to run the... underground bank. And everybody was just like, ‘Wizards.’ It was so weird,” Stewart concluded.