J.K. Rowling and the Echo Chamber of Secrets

J.K. Rowling, the creative force behind the bestselling fictional series in history, seems happy to ignore Nietzsche’s dictum that whoever fights monsters should take care not to become a monster, and that, to paraphrase slightly, when you stare into the online abyss, it also stares into you.

As Britons go to the polls on July 4 to vote for Tory Rishi Sunak or Labor leader Keir Starmer, Rowling is in U.K. headlines once again, feuding with Starmer over gender politics. This furor comes hot on the heels of a vicious online campaign (not that most of them are civil) on the part of young readers taken aback at Rowling’s praise—24 years ago!—of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

The contempt and anger displayed by this self-described feminist when asked about the trivial matter of women’s rights is sadly predictable. (This is the bloke who thinks men can grow cervixes.) https://t.co/uWBzUwp9Qa

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 3, 2024

In a Free Press column, the astute Kat Rosenfield critiques tweets taking Rowling to task for admiring a book that depicts but in no way endorses pedophilia, a critical but increasingly overlooked distinction. Some of the tweets in question have racked up millions of views.

None of this is new. The Harry Potter author’s frequent salvos to her 14.1 million followers on X, and the untold number who are not official followers but read her tweets, are not masterpieces of subtlety or tact. Even in a forum whose structure precludes nuance and the mincing of words, Rowling gleefully indulges in provocation as she dives into the fray over transgender issues or Donald Trump’s oafish outbursts.

“She’s speaking more often and with increasing force. She swears. She criticizes,” James Kirkup wrote last week in the London Spectator. The phenomenon is the subject of a new audio series, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.

Does it bother Rowling that some of these tweets draw hate and threats and her enemies toss her books on bonfires? If so, she puts on a good show of insouciance. Rowling seems to love trading barbs with people who resent her iconoclasm and refusal to fall in line with ever-evolving notions of what is acceptable. (Her response to one commenter who asked how she sleeps at night, having alienated her entire book-buying audience: “I read my most recent royalty checks and find the pain goes away pretty quickly.”)

W.H. Auden famously said he had no idea why anyone would seek out writers’ opinions on the political and social issues of the day. You would not approach them for their views on structured finance, interest rates, and banking regulations, or on international treaties they have not read or diplomatic history in which they are unversed.

Even with topics not quite as specialized, it is still worth asking why a fiction writer, or an actor, pop musician, or athlete, would have more insight than the next person. Or why, having achieved massive success as an author of escapist fiction, she would turn to using an online bullhorn to blare her provocative ideas to the world.

Tison Pugh, a professor of literature at the University of Central Florida who has promoted the study of Rowling’s works, noted that angering a few fans will not bankrupt the author.

“With her works so embedded in popular culture, it likely makes little difference whether, at this point, Rowling alienates some of her fans with her posts,” Pugh told Book and Film Globe.

But that hardly makes Rowling immune to the danger that Nietzsche diagnosed in his famous aphorism.

“One might regret that, in adopting a rhetorical style more aligned with internet trolls than a beloved author of children’s literature, she abandons the possibility of modeling reasoned and respectful dissent and discourse for our society, and her readers, too,” Pugh stated.

So who, then, is J.K. Rowling? A provocateur who will say anything for attention? Actually, she is nobler than that. As noted above, the forum in which she writes does not encourage decorum, but there is a method to Rowling’s madness. It is even possible to discern a cultural conservatism, and a concern for decency, in no way at odds with her frequent criticisms of  Donald Trump.

Rowling’s praise for Nabokov much to her credit. In more recent days, Rowling has taken a bold public stand against the defacers of one of the most revered artifacts from her nation’s past. Her response presents a rare example of an author speaking up without fear of friends, colleagues, publishers, the press, or social media feeding frenzies.

On June 19, a pair of activists affiliated with the radical outfit Just Stop Oil ran up without warning to the historic site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, Great Britain, bearing canisters, and sprayed its ancient monoliths with orange cornflour.

A video of the incident quickly surfaced online. Watching it, you can see the spray going all over the hapless stones. You can hear the dismay and confusion of onlookers and watch their scattered, frenzied efforts to pull the perps, identified as Rajan Naidu and Niamh Lynch, away from the targets of this eco-terrorism.

Statements from Just Stop Oil set forth its rationale for defacing one of the world’s oldest, most cherished sites. A tweet sent out on the day of the crime does not apologize, but boldly proclaims, “The orange cornflour we used will soon wash away with the rain, but the urgent need for effective government action to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of the climate and ecological crisis will not.”

As part of its incoherent justification, the organization also quotes the young Lynch, identified in an article in The Independent as a student at Oxford University. The article notes that the attackers were keenly aware not only of the impending July 4 election, but of the June 21 solstice that would draw thousands to the site.

“Stonehenge at solstice is all about celebrating the natural world—but look at the state it’s in! We all have a right to live a life free from suffering, but continued burning of oil, coal and gas is leading to death and suffering on an unparalleled scale,” Lynch says.

JK Railing is the perfect title for the upcoming anthology of my angriest tweets. pic.twitter.com/gbUfQ9AQnY

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 3, 2024

The radicals want whichever party wins the July 4 contest to sign a treaty that will set forth far stricter environmental rules, standards, or protocols than those now in place. They see nothing wrong with defacing a site beloved to people around the world if that is what it takes to get attention.

Contrary to Just Stop Oil’s claims, experts with knowledge of the mineral composition of Stonehenge do not view the effects of the attack as ephemeral. The Daily Mail interviewed Tim Daw, a local farmer who has helped out with the maintenance of the site over the years. Daw said that the cornflour could easily get into the pores on Stonehenge’s rock surfaces and destroy the lichen, a type of plant that takes centuries to grow and form networks.

It may take months, or years, to gauge the full extent of the damage that the cavalier actions of Just Stop Now inflicted on some of the most beloved components of the world’s cultural heritage. But J.K. Rowling, who has fearlessly tempted the wolves of cancel culture with her politically incorrect tweets about gender and transgender issues and the rights of women to assert an intrinsically feminine identity without fear of censure, did not hesitate to weigh in.

In a June 19 tweet that quickly racked up 1.4 million views, Rowling addressed Just Stop Oil directly: “Public opinion’s definitely moving, mostly towards the conclusion that you’re funded by Big Oil.”

Public opinion's definitely moving, mostly towards the conclusion that you're funded by Big Oil. https://t.co/tZhOnsN2o0

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 19, 2024

In other words, the activists have angered and alienated the public to a degree that begs belief. They have harmed the ecological cause in a way that seems hard to believe unless they were acting at the behest of a special interest that wanted to humiliate and discredit that very cause.

Another ironic Rowling tweet states, “Let’s not target anyone or anything remotely responsible for climate change. Let’s attack a unique ancient monument to which everyone’s hugely attached, incidentally endangering rare lichen that only grows there.”

Rowling’s points are so well made that it seems almost an impertinence to wish she had gone just a bit further in dissecting the vandals’ hubris.

The unspoken rationale of Just Stop Oil’s fanatics goes like this: If there’s an issue or cause that I don’t feel is getting enough attention, then I can go out into the world and damage or deface an irreplaceable artifact, relic, monument, or treasure of incalculable value to millions of people, all in the interest of raising awareness in accordance with my own subjective criteria.

According to this twisted logic, maybe it’s time to go down to Easter Island and deface the Moai that have stood there for a millennium. Or head over to Africa and draw big phalluses on the eleventh-century ruins at Great Zimbabwe. Or go spray-paint Mont St. Michel, Our Lady of Chartres Cathedral, the Palace of Versailles, the Vatican, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Cloisters, or any of the timeless treasures on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Of course, no sane person would ever condone much less undertake such a course of action, but the Stonehenge defacers have raised progressive narcissism and hubris to levels once the domain of only the wildest dystopian visionaries. Maybe that is one reason it took none other than J.K. Rowling to come forward and denounce their actions in the strongest terms.