Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has compared the current climate of fear surrounding the discussion of transgender issues to the Soviet Union, quoting an anti-communist hero and leader of the Velvet Revolution.
“A spectre is haunting Eastern Europe: the spectre of what in the West is called dissent.”
These words were penned by playwright and Czechoslovakian President Václav Havel in his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless to describe the brutal drive for conformity in all things enforced by the communist Soviet Union in his homeland, and elsewhere across the Soviet bloc.
Now, it seems, Havel’s words are being once again used by dissenters, but this time against the modern woke push for conformity in the ostensibly liberal West.
In a Twitter thread responding to a post declaring that the statement “trans women are women” is being used to force biological women into bowing before the woke mob, author J.K. Rowling shared Havel’s parable of a greengrocer who hung up the Marxist creed “Workers of the World Unite” in his shop window in order to passively conform with the groupthink of the Soviet Union.
Quoting from The Power of the Powerless, Rowling went on to post: “Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them… it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves.
“Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it.”
“The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’ Why does he do it?…Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? 1/12 https://t.co/VbwqBtKbvQ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 20, 2022
Though Rowling was previously celebrated by the left for her unparalleled success as a female writer — and as a single mother on state handouts while writing her first novel — during her career, penning one of the most successful book series in history, she has run afoul of the woke mob over the past two years for questioning LGBT gender ideology.
Despite still maintaining to be on the left politically, the Harry Potter author has expressed credulity over terms such as “people who menstruate” and has warned that biological women will lose some of their hard-won rights should transgenderism dismantle the idea of being a woman.
For this, Rowling has been branded as a “Terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and has been condemned by many whose careers she has helped build, including several Harry Potter actors and was whitewashed from a 20th-anniversary programme celebrating the films based on her book series.
She has also reported “many death threats” after leftist activists doxxed her family address on social media late last year.
Even still, it is worth noting that Rowling has not faced the same level of persecution that befell Václav Havel under the yoke of the Soviet regime, at least for now.
Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright waves 10 December 1989 to the crowd on Prague’s Wenceslas Square. Havel was elected the first president of Czechoslovakia when the state-communist system crumbled in the Velvet Revolution. LUBOMIR KOTEK/AFP via Getty Images
Less than one year after the publication of the essay, Havel was arrested by the regime and spent four years in prison for his thought crimes, for his “dissent”. The Power of the Powerless was not as easy for the Soviet state to imprison, and it would go on to become a chief rallying cry for the anti-communist movement throughout Eastern Europe.
The famed essay, his celebrated work as a playwright, and his steadfast refusal to cow to the regime saw Havel become a national hero of Czechoslovakia — a status which was further cemented during his role in 1989’s Velvet Revolution (named after Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground) in which over 40 years of communist rule in the country was brought to an end peacefully in part due to his leadership.
Václav Havel would go on to serve as the country’s president until 1992 when the country was divided into two separate states, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Though effectively ousted from frontline politics following the dissolution of the country, the revolutionary leader and playwright would continue to serve as a statesman and a moral arbiter of sorts, trying to spread the values of the Velvet Revolution throughout the world.
Rowling compared far-left YouTuber Ian ‘Vaush’ Kochinski to her bullying ex-husband https://t.co/rUbW9WDWBq
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 11, 2022
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