Jon Stewart has accused J.K. Rowling of allegedly using antisemitic caricatures in Harry Potter.
During an episode of his The Problem with Jon Stewart podcast, the 59-year-old comedian, who is Jewish, called out similarities between the goblin characters who run Gringotts Bank in the fantasy series with illustrations in the 1903 antisemitic book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
"Here's how you know Jews are still where they are. Talking to people, what I say is, have you ever seen a Harry Potter movie? And people are like 'I love the Harry Potter movies!'" The Daily Show alum began. "I'm like, 'You ever seen the scenes in Gringotts Bank?' They're like, 'I love the scenes in Gringotts Bank!' Like, 'do you know what those folks that run the bank are?' And they're like, 'what?' and then like I'm like 'Jews.'
"Let me show you this, it's from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I just want to show you a caricature. And they're like, 'Oh, look at that, that's from Harry Potter!' And you're like, 'No, that's a caricature of a Jew from an antisemitic piece of literature.' J.K. Rowling was like, 'Can we get these guys to run our bank?'"
The comedian joked that the author could imagine a world with dragons and pet owls, "but who should run the bank? Jews." He said that when he saw the films he expected audiences to pick up on the author's choice to "just throw Jews in there to run the f**king underground bank".
Fellow comedian Sarah Silverman, who is also Jewish, responded to the now-viral clip on Twitter, writing, "I've actually never seen Harry Potter and after watching the below and then seeing the clip in the thread I am just kind of stunned. You know when you giggle but it's really more fear than joy?"
