Jon Stewart says 'Harry Potter' is antisemitic, then claims he didn't

A Jewish charity is defending Harry Potter writer JK Rowling after comedian Jon Stewart accused the writer of antisemitism in a YouTube video. After the backlash, Stewart went into damage control, changed his YouTube thumbnail, and denied that he made the claim.

On his podcast The Problem with Jon Stewart, Stewart slammed the author for the appearance of the goblins that run Gringotts bank in the Harry Potter series.

Stewart said that in the world of Harry Potter, people "can ride dragons and someone can own a 'pet owl,'" yet he wondered: "Who should run the bank? Jews."

"It was one of those things where I saw it on the screen and I was expecting the crowd to be like, 'Holy sh*t, she [Rowling] did not, in a wizarding world, just throw Jews in there to run the f*cking underground bank,'" the comedian continued. "And everybody was just like, 'Wizards.' It was so weird."

Dave Rich, director of policy at the Jewish charity the Community Security Trust, told the Daily Mail that Rowling has been "very supportive" of the Jewish community.

"JK Rowling has been very supportive of the Jewish community in recent years and tweeted repeatedly against antisemitism, so it is hard to imagine that she used anti-semitic caricatures in her books. Sometimes a goblin is just a goblin," said Rich.

"Mr Rich did note, however, that there might be something 'subliminal' in her depiction, suggesting that 'subconscious anti-Semitism' in society over the years may have led to characters like goblins taking on 'anti-Semitic caricatures' in their appearance," the Daily Mail wrote.

Others came to Rowling's aid as well, with author and literature expert Nicholas Jubber noting that Rowling's depiction of the creatures falls in line with traditions in British fantasy literature.

"Rowling appears to have followed traditions in British fantasy literature. The old German word, 'kobold', gave us the word 'cobalt', signaling the association of these creatures with mining for precious ores. So it makes sense that goblins would be linked with vaults and underground storage," said Jubber.

Some fans suggested that if people had issues with the depiction of goblins in Harry Potter, they should take issue with other fantasy genre books as well.

"Goblins were described and depicted like that decades before Rowling. So if those activists have problems with how goblins are depicted - they should cancel fantasy books and mythos that existed before," one fan said.

"You would have to tar all fantasy writers such as Tolkien and artists, who have portrayed goblins in exactly the same light since the 19th Century. In most fantasy and children's writings they are almost always portrayed as mean, hoarders of gold and jewels with the same features," another added.

Rowling has criticized antisemitism on a number of occasions. In 2018, her criticisms prompted one Jewish journalist to tweet: "There's a strong case that no single person has done more to raise international awareness of the anti-Semitism faced today by British Jews from the far-left than @jk_rowling. She's not only spotlighted it, but used her skills to explain it to 14 million followers. Remarkable."

"Here's how you know Jews are still where they are," Stewart said. "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.' JK Rowling was like, 'Can we get these guys to run our bank?'"

Stewart responded to the criticism by posting a Twitter video in which he says "I do not think JK Rowling is antisemitic. I did not accuse her of being antisemitic. I do not think the Harry Potter movies are antisemitic."

He then went on to attack Newsweek for having a "business model" that was "arson".

However, Stewart changed the thumbnail on his original video. It now reads "'Antisemitic' tropes" as opposed to "The Antisemitism of Harry Potter."