Your latest reply is a masterclass in bourgeois respectability politics, neoliberal victim-blaming, and complete sociological illiteracy. You are attempting to weaponize superficial liberal buzzwords to mask a deeply conservative, reactionary argument: that victims of structural violence, poverty, and institutional failure are entirely responsible for their own destruction because they failed to "perform" middle-class morality.
"psychologically not. but materially? yes. and material poverty is what often drives people towards gangs or hate groups that offer them resources or help towards basic necessities... so what drove him there if not poverty?"
The fact that you think people only join extremist groups or gangs because they are physically starving for a sandwich proves you have never opened a single book on political sociology, criminology, or radicalization.
Fascist movements, hate groups, and radical organizations rarely recruit based on physical starvation alone. Sociologically, radicalization is driven by relative deprivation, social degradation, institutional betrayal, and the total breakdown of trust in authority. Extreme movements target young people who feel humiliated by the mainstream hierarchy, isolated from power, and physically unprotected. They do not offer bread; they offer an antidote to powerlessness, social status, and a weapon against their tormentors.
To ask "what drove him there if not poverty?" while ignoring chronic domestic violence, relentless public assault, social degradation, and systematic institutional abandonment is sociologically absurd. He wasn't looking for a meal ticket; he was looking for a shield.
"at hogwarts, he wasn't poor at all. then, he spent two months at spinner's end knowing he'd come back to a lucrative environment where he could work on a promising future. actually, since he was a child, he knew he would have this access. that's not the psychology of a real-life poor individual."
This is an economically embarrassing misunderstanding of class dynamics. In materialist sociology—specifically Pierre Bourdieu’s framework—class reality encompasses economic, social, and cultural capital, along with generational safety nets.
Snape entered Hogwarts wearing filthy, oversized hand-me-down clothes from his mother, coming from a dilapidated house in Spinner’s End—an impoverished, industrial mill town slum. Petunia Dursley’s immediate, classist reaction to him in canon ("He's that Snape boy from Spinner's End!") illustrates the deep social degradation and stigma attached to his material background from day one. Having zero gold in a Gringotts vault, zero family connections, and zero economic safety net means his material reality is one of perpetual precarity. When you are poor inside an elite institution, your poverty isn't "paused"—it is hyper-visible and weaponized against you.
Now, contrast his material reality with the Gryffindors you champion:
James Potter came from immense, old-money wealth (his father, Fleamont Potter, created Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion). James was so independently wealthy that he never had to work a single day in his life, financed the Order of the Phoenix out of his pocket, and privately funded Remus Lupin’s living expenses.
Sirius Black belonged to the ancient, aristocratic House of Black, living off generational wealth and inheriting a vast fortune from his uncle Alphard at age seventeen.
It is laughably easy to play the confident, chivalrous, "morally pure" hero when you are an independently wealthy aristocrat who knows the entire world and its institutions are built to serve you. To pretend an impoverished, abused child wearing rags inside an elite boarding school shared the same "material reality," "psychology," or "lucrative opportunities" as multi-generational aristocrats is economically illiterate.
"he wasn't poor at hogwarts and the institution itself was legally required to protect him, which it partially did, even if imperfectly."
In jurisprudence and legal theory, we draw a strict distinction between de jure (rights written on paper) and de facto (rights enforced in practice). An institution's duty of care means less than nothing when the power structure actively protects the perpetrators and suppresses the victim.
Look at the canon facts of the Shrieking Shack incident: Sirius Black lured a fifteen-year-old Snape into a tunnel with a fully transformed werewolf. In any functional legal system, this constitutes attempted murder or extreme reckless endangerment resulting in deadly force.
How did Dumbledore—the head of the state-sanctioned institution—respond?
Did he expel Sirius Black? No.
Did he report the crime to the Ministry of Magic or law enforcement? No.
Did he offer psychological support or protection to the traumatized victim? No.
Dumbledore swept the crime under the rug to protect Sirius’s reputation and Lupin's secret, and he slapped a binding gag order on Snape, threatening him with punishment if he spoke a word. This is textbook institutional betrayal (stated by Jennifer Freyd) and state-sanctioned corruption. When an authority figure demonstrates that your life is completely disposable compared to the privileged darlings of the ruling class, you stop trusting official channels. You realize the "legal framework" is a scam designed to keep you down, and you turn to fringe, radical elements that promise power and protection outside the system.
"extremist recruitment works well when a person lacks resources and is isolated from other people who could help them. not much of a snape case... he willingly chose the extremists because of his ego."
Again, you demonstrate a total ignorance of how extremist recruitment and grooming dynamics operate in real life.
When an eleven-year-old, abused, impoverished Snape arrived at Hogwarts, canon explicitly shows that Lucius Malfoy—a wealthy, high-status, influential pure-blood Prefect—welcomed Snape at the Slytherin table, patting him on the back. To an isolated, traumatized child who was being mocked for his clothes and targeted by wealthy bullies, an elder, high-status figure offering validation, protection, and prestige is a classic grooming dynamic.
Proto-Death Eaters offered Snape what Hogwarts denied him: physical safety, social status, and an ideology that allowed him to project power instead of feeling perpetually helpless. Look at Peter Pettigrew: he attached himself to the Marauders—and later Voldemort—for the exact same reason (seeking safety under the wing of the strongest predator). Joining a radical group in an environment where you are relentlessly hunted while teachers look away is the survival logic of an alienated child aligning himself with the biggest gang on the block so people will stop beating him up.
"he actually had many of them and was systematically highly privileged compared to a working-class muggle, a squib, or the average werewolf, for example."
This is a textbook invocation of the Fallacy of Relative Privation, what is commonly known as the "Privilege Olympics."
Pointing to a more severely oppressed group (werewolves) in order to invalidate the systemic abuse, domestic violence, and poverty of another is a classic reactionary tactic. It is the exact same argument nineteenth-century factory owners used when telling impoverished child laborers that they shouldn't complain about fourteen-hour workdays because "at least they weren't slaves." Showing that werewolf legislation in the wizarding world is draconian does not magically erase the material precarity, severe domestic abuse, or class degradation experienced by an impoverished child. Using the existence of margin-of-society groups to demand that a traumatized kid feel "grateful" for his abuse is intellectually bankrupt.
"there is simply no proof he did not have this opportunity and psychologically, i struggle to see how every kid would reject a friendship with him. that seems socially and statistically implausible. he could have worked on how he came across as well."
This is pure, unadulterated respectability politics: the reactionary idea that victims of abuse, poverty, and social degradation deserve their mistreatment unless they perform polite, middle-class etiquette to make privileged people comfortable.
Demanding that a traumatized, neglected adolescent living in rags display polished social charm, emotional regulation, and bourgeois grace just to be treated with basic human dignity is grotesque. You are literally arguing that a child deserved to be publicly stripped and assaulted because he didn't "present himself" nicely enough for his wealthy peers.
Furthermore, your claim that it’s "statistically implausible" for him to be socially isolated ignores basic peer dynamics in institutions. Social integration is not a purely voluntary choice when you are at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy. When the popular, wealthy, charismatic golden boys of a school mark an impoverished, strange kid as an acceptable target for sport, the rest of the student body falls in line or looks away to avoid becoming targets themselves. Lily Evans was a single friend; she was not a structural shield against systemic mobbing.
"i don't see total powerlessness. i see a talented white boy with privileges who chose to live in a constant victim mindset and rejected all the opportunities society offered him simply by being born a wizard."
Calling a child who suffered severe domestic violence, chronic physical neglect, and relentless public assault a "talented white boy with privileges who chose a victim mindset" is a total bastardization of intersectionality.
Intersectionality was created to analyze how complex, overlapping systems of oppression intersect; it was never intended to be used as a cheap "Privilege Olympics" scorecard to erase child abuse and extreme class precarity. You are taking conservative, right-wing "bootstrap theory"—the idea that poor, traumatized people just need to stop having a "victim mindset" and pull themselves up by their bootstraps—slapping liberal terminology on it, and pretending it’s a progressive critique.
In conclusion, your entire stance relies on the myth of pure voluntarism: demanding that an abused, impoverished teenager act with the flawless moral purity, political foresight, and emotional maturity of an educated, middle-class adult, while granting total structural absolution to the corrupt institution and the wealthy bullies who drove him into the hands of extremists.
It is classist, victim-blaming drivel masquerading as morality. Until you actually understand how class habitus, institutional complicity, grooming, and structural violence shape human behavior, you have zero business lecturing anyone on sociology, law, or politics. I sugest you to educate yourself in those matters before trying to debate with me. I have a double degree in Law and Political Science and the only thing you have is basically a classist burgueoise mindset.
