A little while ago, I was watching Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire and couldn’t help but notice something that struck me as interesting. The robes that the Death Eaters are wearing during the attack at the Quidditch World Cup are eerily similar in design to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan’s robes. It made me stop and think that, wow, not only do they dress similarly, but you can definitely draw parallels between the two groups. Does the portrayal of Voldemort’s followers draw upon the example of the KKK?
They’ve Got The Look
What first set me onto the idea that the Death Eaters may be at least in part inspired by the KKK was the similarities between the way that they dress. We first see the Death Eaters introduced together as a group in The Goblet of Fire during the Quidditch World Cup and later during the graveyard scene where He Who Must Not Be Named is boiled like an evil pot of stew and returned to his full corporeal form. The pointed caps, masks and solid black robes echo the KKK uniform somewhat remarkably, minus the white part.
The resemblance is almost undeniable.
In later films, the Death Eaters’ robes were toned down a little bit when the removed the cap, opting instead for a generic black hood. Was this perhaps due to the striking similarities to the KKK. No official statements have ever been released in this regard, but Googling “Death Eaters and the KKK” and looking at the top hits tells me that I’m not the only one who has noticed the physical resemblance.
It’s All In The Ideology
It’s all fine and dandy to say that the picture painted by the Death Eaters is evocative of images of the Ku Klux Klan, but it goes a whole lot deeper than that. Both are supremacist groups whose central belief is that theirs is the one true race and that all others are inferior. While the KKK are known for their negative (to say the least) views on people of colour, especially African Americans, the Death Eaters have a similar opinion on Muggles, or non-magic folk. The terror that the the Death Eaters inflicted upon the magical community during Voldemort’s heyday can be seen as a microcosm of the KKK’s chokehold on the southern US. Both believed in ethnic cleansing and the inherent power of being a pure-blooded wizard/white, and used murder, riots and general evil to achieve their ends.
Many parallels can also be drawn with Nazism and WWII Germany; the goal of eliminating Muggle-borns and half-bloods from the wizarding community was ultimate, but the execution (pun intended) of this goal was undertaken gradually, somewhat like the Holocaust and the rampant antisemitism under Nazi Germany. It’s also not very difficult to compare Voldemort to Adolf Hitler.
At the very least, they have the expression in common.
The one difference between the Nazis and the KKK that I feel really draws more of a similarity to the Death Eaters is the use of masks. To me, this brands the KKK and the Death Eaters as more secretive and private in that as much as they may be fervent supporters of their cause, there is a clear line drawn between their private lives and public activities. A Nazi is a Nazi and the swastika was a symbol worn with pride, whereas the use of masks by Death Eaters and the KKK evokes a sort of cowardice, an aversion to the world being able to put a face to the acts they commit. Sure, you might know the names of every Death Eater or member of the KKK there ever was (or currently is), but what difference would it make if you walked past one in the street if you didn’t know their face? This distinction is vital.
What do you think? Could inspiration for Voldemort’s cult of followers have been drawn from the Ku Klux Klan or from Nazi Germany? For further reading about the Nazi influence, I would highly recommend checking out this article from The Leaky Cauldron. An interesting idea, and only further proof that there may indeed be more to the Death Eaters’ background and inspiration than meets the eye.
