The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling | 3. A New Pyre

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling - Episode 3: “A New Pyre”

The Free Press Investigates | Air Date: Feb 28, 2023
Host: Megan Phelps-Roper | Key Guests: J.K. Rowling, Helen Lewis, Angela Nagle, Katherine D ("Default Friend"), Natalie Wynn ("Contrapoints")

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Episode Overview

“A New Pyre” delves into the evolution of Harry Potter fandom, the rise of online communities, and the social and cultural dynamics that shaped—and later divided—those communities. The episode explores how these online spaces evolved into battlegrounds not only over the interpretation of Rowling’s work, but also over wider social justice and identity issues, eventually leading to conflicts now widely described as "cancel culture" and "culture wars." Through personal recollections, interviews, and internet history, the episode investigates how both adulation and backlash shaped the internet, fandom, and J.K. Rowling’s changing public reception.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Rowling and Early Internet Fandom

• Rowling describes the community’s positive beginnings: Harry Potter fans “found each other” online through message boards, fanfiction, and fan sites like Mugglenet.
• The books’ success aligned with the rise of the internet, making Harry Potter a central pillar of early online community for many.
• Fans credit formative friendships and sense of belonging to the fandom, creating lifelong bonds.
  • “My best friends in high school were a group of people I met because we loved talking about Harry Potter online.” (07:01)

2. Bullying & Trolling in the Fandom

• Rowling recalls venturing anonymously into a Harry Potter chatroom, only to be harshly rebuffed by other users:
  • “I got rounded on by users who told me in no uncertain terms just to get out...what if I’d been some twelve-year-old who’s excited to go into this room and is immediately caustically chastised for not belonging?” (09:11–09:46)
• Recognized the dual edge of these communities: great for outsiders, but could replicate the very bullying Harry faced in the books.

3. Harry Potter as Sanctuary for Outsiders

• Fans, including LGBTQ+ teens, gravitated toward the books for their themes of acceptance and chosen family.
• Rowling: “Many of the people that like Harry Potter tend to be the ones outside, especially if you’re a child that isn’t well loved. I felt protective of those people.” (12:06)

4. Rowling as Moral Authority and “Fandom Mom”

• Rowling became a “maternal figure” to many fans, which she relates is complex and sometimes burdensome.
• “To be idealized is not something I want. I am a human being...Idealization comes at a price.” (16:55–17:49)
• Her 2008 Harvard commencement speech solidified her status as a moral leader for a generation.

5. Rise of Social Media and Internet Subcultures

• Angela Nagle and Helen Lewis detail the explosion of social platforms post-2007 alongside the smartphone boom.
• Optimistic ideals about internet democracy gave way to culture clashes and polarization.

6. Tumblr & Identity Exploration

• Tumblr provided an environment for “playful self-discovery” and identity experimentation (think: gender, sexuality, otherkin).
• Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints): “For a lot of young queer people, engaging in this imaginative play about all the possibilities of gender was...a way for them to experiment with...what’s possible with gender.” (37:45)
• Katherine D: “They really embraced this idea of genderqueer...Tumblr was a place that was allowing people to explore these new forms of identification.” (36:56, 35:50)
• The “snowflake” culture and the rise of hypersensitivity towards identity and “microaggressions.”
• Many social justice concepts and language (e.g., “trigger warnings,” “Latinx,” “cis,” “privilege”) spread from Tumblr to mainstream discourse.

7. 4chan—Transgressive Antithesis to Tumblr

• 4chan culture thrived on anonymity, shock value, and deliberate offensiveness; users made it a game to one-up each other's outrageousness, including racist, sexist, and offensive jokes.
• Nagle: “A kind of reinforcing culture of ultra-sensitivity on one side [Tumblr] and this reinforcing culture of antisensitivity...on the other.” (41:30)

8. From “Call-out” to “Cancel” — The Roots of Cancel Culture

• Tumblr’s “Your Fave is Problematic” blog pioneered calling out creators for social justice "sins," fueling public apologies and backlash cycles.
• Rowling’s first backlash came in 2016 over Native American appropriation—a “very Tumblr concern.”
• Rowling: “I was seeing this happen across the board to artists. There was a kind of puritanism that was rising that...seemed very illiberal, very contrary to my values.” (47:03)

9. Fandom Warfare Goes Mainstream

• As Tumblr norms migrated to Twitter, the dynamic and reach of these call-outs exploded, making waves in journalism and pop culture; backlash from 4chan escalated in turn.
• Both communities became more extreme in reaction to each other, fueling what the episode terms a “witch hunt impulse.”
  • Natalie Wynn: “Morality can be sadistic...that punishing, shaming, moral condemnation...becomes an outlet for aggression in itself...it can become a way to attack someone while also kind of feeling good about themselves.” (53:06–53:36)

10. Real-World Consequences: Milo Yiannopoulos and Beyond

• Rowling alarmed by illiberalism on “her side,” cites Milo Yiannopoulos’s rise as emblematic of internet culture wars moving offline, with university protests and “deplatforming” backfiring strategically:
  • “My feeling was, you are giving this man way more power than he deserves by behaving in this way...you’ve given him so much power by refusing to talk.” (56:18–56:54)

11. Rising Tensions Around Trans Activism

• Rowling becomes disturbed watching aggressive protest tactics against feminists by trans activists—“very threatening...they were masked...if you’re a good guy, you’re probably not going to be standing there in a black balaclava.” (59:08)
• Episode closes with a raw audio example of online abuse, illustrating the modern threat and hostility that once-nurturing online spaces can devolve into.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On receiving threats:
  “The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women...I have seen it used that way.” — J.K. Rowling (01:35)
• On early fandom community:
  “I watched it happening. I could see really beautiful interactions happening online. And, you know, in later years I’ve met people—‘I met my best friend on Mugglenet.’” — J.K. Rowling (07:53)
• On fandom as sanctuary:
  “Many of the people that like Harry Potter tend to be the ones outside, especially if you’re a child that isn’t well loved. I felt protective of those people.” — J.K. Rowling (12:06)
• On online identity culture:
  “I started to be intrigued by the use of the word identify...began to disturb me.” — J.K. Rowling (31:53)
• On cancel culture’s psychology:
  “Morality can be sadistic...it can become a way to attack someone while also kind of feeling good about themselves.” — Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints) (53:06)
• On fandom turning against creators:
  “There was a kind of puritanism that was rising that...seemed very illiberal, very contrary, I suppose, to my values, to my core values.” — J.K. Rowling (47:03)
• On the strategic error of no-platforming:
  “My feeling was, you are giving this man way more power than he deserves by behaving in this way.” — J.K. Rowling (56:18)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Threats & Warnings to Women: 00:46–02:28
• Fandom’s Early Internet Growth: 03:33–08:16
• Rowling as Idealized Mother Figure: 16:44–17:49
• Harvard Commencement Address Excerpts: 19:22–22:28
• Tumblr and Identity Culture: 31:34–38:46
• 4chan’s Transgressive Counter-Culture: 39:08–41:30
• Call-out & Cancel Culture Origins: 44:32–47:03
• Migration from Tumblr to Twitter/Mainstream: 48:23–49:36
• Witch-Hunt Impulse/Cruelty in Morality: 52:30–53:36
• Milo Yiannopoulos and Culture Wars Go Offline: 54:41–56:54
• Trans Activism and Growing Hostility: 58:09–59:48

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode is reflective, frank, and, at times, deeply personal as Rowling, internet historians, and thinkers try to piece together how online spaces that began as sanctuaries for outsiders became contested, volatile, and even dangerous. The conversation moves from nostalgia for the internet's promise to anxiety over its role in amplifying division, intolerance, and social puritanism. The discussion foreshadows the “witch hunt” atmosphere that would later engulf even its most beloved figures—including Rowling herself.

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Note:
Advertising breaks and sponsor messages have been omitted from this summary for brevity and focus.

Transcript

[Karamo Brown]

Hey, friends, it's Karamo, talk show host, life coach and your next best friend. You just don't know it yet. I'm hosting a new podcast called Started on Brotherhoods. We're going around the world to explore male friendships and all the wins, challenges and bonds that are made in WhatsApp group chats. And that's exactly where you can listen to it, right in the app. It's streaming on the official WhatsApp channel. Just open the app and go to the Updates tab to start listening. While you're at it, message your best friend and make sure they listen too. I'll see you there.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This episode contains language that might not be suitable for children. Can you talk to me about some of the threats that you've received over the past few years?

[J.K. Rowling]

There have been a lot. A huge amount, as every woman will know who speaks up on this issue. A huge amount of I want her to choke on my fat trans dick. You know, like very sexualized abuse. Well, I don't think all of them mean it literally, but attempts to degrade, to humiliate people might say, well, that's not really a threat. And you know what? Up to a point, you're probably right, though it's very unpleasant to be on the receiving end of it, particularly in the quantities I've had it then. I have had direct threats of violence and, and I have had people coming to my house where my kids live, and I've had my address posted online. I've had what the police anyway, would regard as credible threats. Yeah, the pushback is often you are wealthy, you can afford security, you haven't been silenced. All true, right, all of that's true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women. And I say that because I have seen it used that way. I have seen other women and other women have told me. I literally had someone say this to me the other day. I was told, look, look what happened to J.K. rowling. Watch your.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Chapter three a new pyre.

[J.K. Rowling]

I didn't have Internet at all when Philosopher's Stone came out, so around about 98, I did have Internet, but would use it to look stuff up like most of us do, and I would use it for email. But I have a. I think some sort of unconscious spirit of self preservation had stopped me going and looking at Harry Potter till the point where the Internet fandom cropped up in interviews. And I thought, well, I need to know about this because I can't be ignorant about this. I need to know. Well, I mean, I went online for the first time and I just had no idea. I just fell into this universe.

[Karamo Brown]

How deep into the fandom are you?

[Harry Potter Fan]

Very.

[Karamo Brown]

How many times do you think you've read the books?

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

10 to 15 times through the series.

[Karamo Brown]

The magic came from the first book and there was just no turning back.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

I'm Megan Phelps Roper and we begin today in Orlando, Florida at LeakyCon. LeakyCon is one of dozens of Harry Potter conventions that are held around the world every year.

[Karamo Brown]

Okay, so we are at Leakycon 2022 and it is pretty packed.

[Harry Potter Fan]

I've been a fan since I think 1998, so I really grew up with Harry Potter.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And like many of these events, it takes place in a convention hall filled with a bunch of people who are dressed up as characters from the books. So I'm dressed up as Buckbeak today and I'm here with my husband who's serious playing. And then we have our witch hats and our wands.

[Karamo Brown]

I have my own prescription, Harry Potter round glasses.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

They sell handmade merchandise, they have meetups, and they even get tattoos.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

This is just like my first childhood memory.

[Karamo Brown]

And how many Harry Potter tattoos do you think you've done?

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

Way too many to count.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And when you ask them, a lot of these fans are quick to say that it wasn't just Harry Potter that brought them together. It was the community they found surrounding it.

[Harry Potter Fan]

A lot of the community here at LeakyCon, they were my friends growing up.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

We were all online, specifically on the Internet.

[Harry Potter Fan]

I think Harry Potter is so special because it was coming out right when everyone was getting online.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Harry Potter, which would go on to become the best selling book series of all time, just happened to be published right as many people were getting their first introduction to the Internet. And so there is a generation of people who grew up alongside both the characters in the books and the ever expanding power and influence of this new technology.

[Harry Potter Fan]

Pretty much as soon as I got on the Internet, somehow, you know, at age 12, I must have googled Harry Potter.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

In fact, for many fans, Harry Potter was their gateway to the Internet. It was the first thing they ever looked up on Yahoo or Google. It was their first email address.

[Angela Nagle]

We were able to talk to people.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

From around the world and meet people.

[Harry Potter Fan]

That have the same interests as us.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

It was their first time talking to another person online, the first time they made a screen name.

[Harry Potter Fan]

I was going to mugglenet.com every day to get the updates, talking on message boards writing fanfiction on fanfiction.net and it was just, it was such a special experience to get to connect with so many people who you didn't know necessarily, but who felt the same passion for Harry Potter.

[Helen Lewis]

One of the things that I think you have to understand about Harry Potter is it is one of the biggest fan experiences that modern culture has to offer.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This is Helen Lewis, staff writer at the Atlantic, where she writes and reports about politics and Internet culture.

[Helen Lewis]

You know, at its peak, there were people writing hundreds of thousands of Harry Potter fanfiction stories. So taking the characters from Harry Potter and writing your own stories for them.

[J.K. Rowling]

I was equally fascinated and alarmed, if I'm honest.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Rowling says that when she saw the way her books were colliding with the still quite new Internet, much like her reaction to the book's surprise success, she was taken aback, but also really intrigued. What connections did you see people specifically, you know, making with the books?

[J.K. Rowling]

Well, there was the really sweet sorting of yourself into houses, which I think speaks deeply to children and also to adolescents.

[Karamo Brown]

Are you wearing yellow because you identify as a Hufflepuff?

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

Yes, 100%.

[J.K. Rowling]

There was obviously the championing of different romantic combinations, which was very sweet.

[Karamo Brown]

Why Hermione and Draco, who did not.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Want the bad boy? We can change him.

[Helen Lewis]

Yes.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

That was everybody's fantasy, right?

[J.K. Rowling]

Little groups of mutual support were made. You know, real friendships were made.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

If you ever want to feel good about the world, go search the Internet for friendships forged by Harry Potter. There are so many places where fans are just gushing. Like one user says, my best friends in high school were a group of people I met because we loved talking about Harry Potter online. I'm so happy that I'm alive. At the same time as the Internet.

[J.K. Rowling]

I watched it happening. I could see really beautiful interactions happening online. And, you know, in later years I've met people. I met my best friend on Mugglenet. You know, my husband and I connected over Harry Potter.

[Karamo Brown]

We are wearing our matching shirts from when we got engaged and we had a complete Harry Potter wedding where we wore house robes instead of tuxes.

[J.K. Rowling]

That's happened time and time again and it's just a beautiful thing. So huge positives came out of that.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

The biggest of the early fan websites was called Mugglenet. It was set up in 1999 by a 12 year old homeschool kid in Indiana who could have had no idea how much this site was going to change his life. And that's partly because Rowling eventually embraced it. She was one of the first authors, the first creators of any kind really, to invest time and energy communicating directly with her fans online, doing interviews, answering fan questions, really catering to the community she saw forming there. But she also told me that on at least one occasion she went into one of these forums anonymously.

[J.K. Rowling]

So I chose a random name that was not a Potter related name. I was almost scared, even though they've all got Potter related names, that I would choose a name that was a little, I don't know, I was just scared I would somehow self reveal. So I go into this chat room and people are sharing some theories and I gave an opinion that was very bland. And I got rounded on by users who told me in no uncertain terms just to get out. I'm not familiar in that room. I'm clearly an idiot who doesn't know anything. I genuinely. And I left.

[Helen Lewis]

I left.

[J.K. Rowling]

And I was thinking, do you know what? I promise you, this is what I thought. I thought, I've written three and a half books. I think it would have been at that time where bullying is such a theme from the very first page, where bullying and authoritarian behavior is held to be one of the worst of human ills. And look what just happened. And these people who call themselves such fans of this franchise. What if I'd been a 12 year old? I didn't care, you know, I was pretty robust person. But what if I'd been some 12 year old who's excited to go into this room and is immediately caustically chastised for not belonging. Just kick someone out cause they're new. And I thought that was so interesting that you're passionate about these books and yet in the course of living you are behaving in a way that I depict as one of the worst and most dubious human behaviors.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This being the early days of the Internet, it was also the early days of a kind of social behavior that we now generally know as trolling.

[J.K. Rowling]

There were definitely individual trolls on the Mugglenet forums, purely there to be objectionable.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And even though they were just this small part of the community, it was.

[J.K. Rowling]

A fringe, but it was definitely there.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Rowling noticed that they did seem to have outsized power.

[J.K. Rowling]

At first I thought it's kind of amusing that this is how you're spending your time. But as time went on, I started to really see it as bullying. There was an edge of picking off vulnerable people. And I was very aware by that time, early 2000s, that a lot of kids who felt themselves to be outsiders, who were vulnerable were finding themselves in Potter.

[Karamo Brown]

Why do you like Harry Potter?

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

He felt like an outsider and he felt like he didn't belong. And I really, that really resonated with me.

[Karamo Brown]

Like I had not such a great childhood. And I think a kid with not such a great childhood actually escape to something else in a book.

[J.K. Rowling]

Many of the people that like Harry Potter tend to be the ones outside, especially if you're a child that isn't well loved. I felt protective of those people. So watching trolls operate in those spaces increasingly did not amuse me. It began to concern me.

[Karamo Brown]

Both of us had challenging, crappy upbringing and childhoods. And when you talk to people that are like, the really crazy fans, I feel like that's something that comes up more often than not.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And I think Harry Potter was one of the things that was just always there for people.

[J.K. Rowling]

You grow up feeling like the weird one of the bunch, but then you realize there's so many other people out there like you, and then you don't feel so alone anymore.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

You.

[J.K. Rowling]

So that's the best part about Harry Potter and indeed actually ended up in long term pen pal relationships with some of those people. You know, I can remember a situation where a young person had written a letter that resulted in my then assistant and I calling that child school. We were very, very concerned that this child might be about to kill themselves. I just was hyper aware, and I remain hyper aware, that the Potter books were a refuge for some people who were, for very different reasons, very vulnerable.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

One of the groups that really gravitated both to the Harry Potter books and to the online fandom were gay teenagers. The president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights lobbying organization in the US Was once referred to. Rowling. As a writer whose work has inspired countless LGBTQ young people to imagine a world of acceptance and inclusivity. Were you surprised by the way that gay teenagers in particular, like, really started to connect with the books? Did that surprise you at all?

[J.K. Rowling]

Honestly, it didn't. Because the amazing thing about the wizarding world is you walk through that wall in Diagon Alley, and while human nature remains the same, and that's something that I was setting out to depict, human nature remains the same. If you can do magic, the ludicrous things that we discriminate about in the Muggle world really are utterly immaterial.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

What do you think were the messages in your book that misfits people who felt like outsiders, what messages were they connecting with?

[J.K. Rowling]

I think that some of the most sympathetic characters, like Lupin, for example, who, you know, stigmatized through something that he can't help, can't control. Some of the most sympathetic characters are people who are grappling with things that may be stigmatized. And they're all imperfect. Harry has anger issues. Ron can be. I think I call him a git quite a lot in the books. But together, they are more than the sum of their parts. Together, they grow. Together they find family in each other. And there's real human beauty in that, I suppose. The Dursleys are my epitome of a very authoritarian and conformist world that demands absolute obedience. And that's not the world you enter when you go to Hogwarts.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Our grade in school was the same year each book came out. So my exact class almost grew up with Harry.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

Like we were 11 when Harry was 11.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

As each book came out, these characters figured out a lot of normal life things right along with us. Many fans credit the morals of the books with helping shape their morals growing up.

[J.K. Rowling]

Friendship and loyalty and bravery and doing the right thing when the right thing is hard to do.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

The way people pull together, they're different.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

They don't all exactly agree with one another, but they can say, okay, this is the common good and this is.

[J.K. Rowling]

What we're gonna work for.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

We need a whole lot more of that. And as they got older and went from middle schoolers lined up at the midnight release parties to young adults heading off to college, some of those morals also became more mature.

[Harry Potter Fan]

Things like media literacy, understanding when maybe the media is lying to you, and having to really think critically.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

To many of these fans, Rowling became something of a moral authority in their lives, giving them this series to grow up with and being this figure that they could look up to. I idolized her for a really long time. She was a great feminist icon online.

[Harry Potter Fan]

We called her Jo because we felt like we were on a first name based on. I think a lot of us actually kind of feel like she was our mom. In some ways, she was just the mom of the Harry Potter fandom.

[J.K. Rowling]

I became aware that I was, to an extent, becoming an idealized figure and probably an idealized mother figure. And that is a complex position to find yourself in. And for me particularly, it's complex because I am a maternal person. It's not that they're seeing something in me that isn't there. And I have had quite maternal relationships with some individual fans who have been going through bad times. But to be idealized is not something I want. I am a human being. I couldn't have written these books if I weren't a human being and aware of human frailty and human imperfection. And I'm very aware that idealization comes at a price.

[Karamo Brown]

Last summer, in a grand celebration of literature, Harvard Square and Harvard Yard was transformed into Hogwarts Square. This summer festival celebrated the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

I want to talk about your 2008 commencement address at Harvard.

[Angela Nagle]

Mm.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

At this point, you are about 10 years since the days you were struggling in that small flat. You had become one of the most beloved authors of all time, and you're speaking at the most prestigious school in America, arguably the world.

[Karamo Brown]

Her books have set sales records and have won many awards, probably because the Harry Potter stories provide a familiar backdrop for readers who can empathize with the young protagonist adrift in a sometimes cruel and challenging world.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And so, at this point, for better or for worse, you do seem to be seen as a moral leader. And the person who introduces you says this, Actually.

[Karamo Brown]

In addition to her vast contributions to literature, she is also noted for the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. A notable philanthropist.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And it's a remarkable thing to go back and watch.

[Karamo Brown]

And now I give you Ms. J.K. rowling.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

You're up there dressed in robes, standing in front of this generation that grew up alongside Harry Potter, and you're talking to them as they are launching into the world.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

The first thing I would like to say is thank you. Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured.

[J.K. Rowling]

At the.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

Thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called real life, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And your speech is very personal and vulnerable.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

Now, I'm not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive. And I still had a daughter whom I adored. And I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

But you also challenged them.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

Now, you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense, in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity. It is the power that enables us to empathize with humans, whose experiences we have never shared.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

You tell them that they need to be empathetic to people who are not like them.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves.

[J.K. Rowling]

Already.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

We have the power to imagine better.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And the crowd just goes wild. They love it and they love you. But at this point, it's really hard to imagine that you would be welcome at Harvard at all or that you'd get that kind of reception from that crowd.

[J.K. Rowling]

From that crowd.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And. And what I want to understand from your point of view is what changed? And maybe when did you start to notice it changing?

[J.K. Rowling]

I would say about a decade ago. I started to become very interested in what was going on online. And concerned about what was going on online. I noticed a real shift.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

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[Angela Nagle]

So in the early days of the Internet, by definition, the people who were on there were going to be people who are really passionate about the future of computers.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This is writer and Internet historian Angela Nagel.

[Angela Nagle]

People with a lot of imagination and maybe tendency towards utopian thinking.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

The Internet is, for me, the hope of, for humanity.

[J.K. Rowling]

The Internet provides everybody a voice and.

[Angela Nagle]

The chance to be heard, which is.

[J.K. Rowling]

The whole point about democracy.

[Angela Nagle]

They had an idea that the Internet would bring democracy and freedom to the world and that it would be impossible for dictatorships and tyranny to coexist with the Internet.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

In 2007, when Rowling released the final installment in the Harry Potter series, and in 2008, when she gave that address at Harvard, this was a time when Internet usage around the world was exploding, both in terms of how many people were gaining access to the Internet and in terms of how much we used it, especially because it coincided with the invention of the smartphone. And Nagel says that it was also a time when it seemed like some of those optimistic dreams of what the Internet could usher in were coming true.

[Angela Nagle]

I guess the first manifestation that maybe proved to those utopians that they could be right is that you saw things like the Arab Spring, where protesters used social media to gather in public squares and protest dictatorships. And you also had the election of Barack Obama, which was very much seen as the Internet generation's president.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

I never thought in my lifetime that.

[Karamo Brown]

It would happen, but it happened.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Today it's a reality, and we did it.

[Karamo Brown]

America is now more united.

[J.K. Rowling]

We did it.

[Angela Nagle]

People were becoming more progressive and more multicultural. Also, there was this very powerful idea of the global village, all humanity as one, sort of in this one collective consciousness on the Internet. But then, then, of course, inevitably, things started to go a little bit weird.

[Karamo Brown]

Nearly half of Americans say they feel more and more like a stranger in their own country. Politics has, over the last few decades, increasingly empowered the extremes of political parties traced back to the rise of online extremism. Elected officials have been shot at community meeting. This increasing habit of demonizing political opponents creates a dangerous climate. Is the Internet killing democracy?

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

So what happened? Many people blame this disruptive technology that we call social media, which over the last two decades, went from something that barely existed at all to the single most powerful tool for communication in history, shaping our politics, our societies, and our sense of reality. Now it is undeniable that social media has done tangible good, helping people like me expand our moral circle and find our partners and friends. Just a brief homage to social media from me. It was conversations on Twitter that helped me leave what many describe as a religious cult. And it also introduced me to my husband, the father of my two children. However, over the past few years, many, including some of the very optimists who helped design the Internet as we know it today, have been outspoken in saying that social media has corrupted the dream of what the Internet could do for the world. Like computer scientist Jaron Lanier, who argues that social media poses a real threat to a pluralistic society.

[Karamo Brown]

Society has been gradually darkened by this scheme in which everyone is under surveillance all the time, and everyone is under this mild version of behavior modification all the time. It's made people jittery and cranky. It's made teens especially depressed, which can be quite severe. But it's made our politics kind of unreal.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And he, along with former Google engineer Tristan Harris, have focused a lot of their concern around social media on the algorithms and the profit motives of big tech.

[Karamo Brown]

There's a tendency to think here that.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This is just human nature. That's just people are polarized and this is just playing out. It's a mirror. It's holding up a mirror to society.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

But what it's really doing is it's.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

An amplifier for the worst parts of us. But far less attention has been paid to the question of where certain polarizing beliefs and norms began to gain a foothold online. And the answer turns out to be, in part, these small, strange and fascinating corners of the Internet. When you started writing and doing PhD research into these smaller, peculiar online subcultures, did people think you'd lost your mind?

[Angela Nagle]

Yeah, definitely. I had many, many arguments with people where they said, oh, what does this matter? It's just some obscure, some people on the Internet. It's not real life. And I kept telling people, no, you're getting this wrong. This is going to change the world. This is hugely important, and it's going to be massively impacting your life in a few years from now.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

In 2017, Angela Nagle published a book called Kill All Normies, which helped explain the rise of the alt right. But it also revealed, in a powerful way, this handful of online forums and websites, places on the Internet that most people had never even heard of or spent any real time on, and how they've come to have a profound impact on almost every aspect of our politics and society.

[Angela Nagle]

So in my book, I focused on two main Forums because I felt that they were possibly the most influential and they also represented very politically different groups.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

The first of these two forums was Tumblr.

[J.K. Rowling]

I was fascinated by Tumblr culture, and for those who don't know, Tumblr is a microblogging website and is very popular with young women, which was also one.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Of the key places where Rowling says she started to notice these changes online.

[J.K. Rowling]

I started to be intrigued by the use of the word identify. This was something I was seeing rising in culture, particularly from a younger generation. And I don't see that as necessarily a malign thing, because I think we all have an identity, and identity is important to all of us for a stable sense of self. But I was noticing something that I thought was interesting, and then that began to disturb me.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Tumblr went live in 2007, and it gained some popularity in the early 2010s. The whole idea of the site was built off of the popularity of blogging or online journaling. But unlike other blogging sites, Tumblr tapped into what would eventually make social media so addictive.

[Helen Lewis]

Tumblr is like Twitter, but longer, so you can reblog people's content again.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Helen Lewis, staff writer at the Atlantic.

[Helen Lewis]

So it has a kind of viral element to it, but it was also very image based.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Tumblr was kind of a cross between Instagram and Twitter, and for early Tumblr users, it was just as addictive as those apps would eventually become. And these people on Tumblr largely fit into a few different groups. One of them was fans. Fans of Twilight and Doctor who, and of course, a ton of Harry Potter fans. But here they no longer had to log into chat rooms or poke around message boards to connect with other fans, because on Tumblr it was all in one big scrollable feed.

[Helen Lewis]

And it became a big place for teenagers to hang out, to draw their own comics, to write their own fan fiction, to engage in all kinds of fandom essentially around these big properties.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

It's also important to know that a lot of the people on Tumblr were anonymous. And over time, the site became inundated with porn.

[Helen Lewis]

The other big group that was on Tumblr were masturbators.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

It's a very sexual environment because the moderation was like, super loose. So that obviously is going to attract the attention of many different groups.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This is Katherine D, AKA Default Friend, writer, Internet historian, and admitted former Tumblr addiction.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

A lot of, like, fetishists and pornographers and sex workers. And you also have a lot of teenagers you know, it was a very.

[Helen Lewis]

Odd place to be sometimes Tumblr, because you would have this just endless porn interspersed with very cute kawaii comics and anime and very kind of infantilized cultures.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

And you have a lot of like horny teenagers who are exploring their sexuality and they're drawing erotic fan art, or they're even posting photos of themselves.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Years later, Tumblr would be singled out by law enforcement for being a major source of child pornography online. And that ultimately forced them to moderate their content. But back in the early 2010s, it was pretty much a free for all.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

And then finally, you have the activists who are giving you new language to describe your experience, potentially giving you a.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Sense of meaning like other social media sites eventually would. Tumblr attracted a lot of activists, and in Tumblr's case, it was activism, particularly around sex positivity and gender identity.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

These groups had a huge influence on a lot of different subcultures that ended up forming on Tumblr. And all of that together really creates a tinderbox.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And so this place full of teenagers and activists and fans and fetishists and porn, it wasn't just a place where you could invent a new character in your Harry Potter fanfiction. It ultimately became a place where users could create and experiment with new identities for themselves.

[Helen Lewis]

The thing I remember thinking about it most is it was almost like a huge live action role playing game.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

Tumblr was a place that was allowing people to explore the these new forms of identification.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

I would say that Tumblr is probably most notorious for generating, you know, hundreds of gender identities.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

This is Natalie Nguyen, a popular online commentator better known as Contrapoints.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

I am a YouTuber, that is, I guess, a profession. And my videos are about social issues or politics or media. A lot of it has been focused on gender because I'm a transgender woman. I transitioned in 2017 and have been doing videos pretty consistently ever since. People still talk about, quote, Tumblr genders sometimes. This is, it's, oh, there's 76 genders. That was a meme from, you could.

[Helen Lewis]

Be lumigender, that is, having a gender that was, you know, illuminating, like a light or ambigender, pangender, xenogender.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

They really embraced this idea of genderqueer, which is, you know, a word that was used before non binary.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

There was also a lot of talk about otherkin.

[Helen Lewis]

So otherkin were people who said that although they looked like they were human, they were actually white wolves or dragons. And they were quite insistent about this that this was an identity that you could adopt.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

This is where you get people who say things like, my gender is a cloud.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

How much of it was just playfulness and how much appeared to be like sincere self discovery?

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

Well, I think that playfulness is part of self discovery.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Natalie Wynn appreciated this aspect of Tumblr and. And she says that it's exactly why some people like her were drawn to the site.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

For a lot of young queer people, engaging in this imaginative play about all the possibilities of gender was like a way for them to experiment with different imaginative possibilities or what's possible with gender.

[Angela Nagle]

There was a culture that was encouraged on Tumblr which was to be able to describe your unique non normative self.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Again, Angela NAGLE.

[Angela Nagle]

And that's to some extent a feature of modern society anyway. But it was taken to such an extreme that people began to describe this as the snowflake, the person who constructs a totally kind of boutique and unique identity for themselves and then guards that identity in a very, very sensitive way and reacts in an enraged way when anyone does not respect the uniqueness of their identity.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And Nagel says that these norms around identity and this increased sensitivity to identities of all kinds, it spread across huge swaths of Tumblr.

[Angela Nagle]

So that was very much the culture of Tumblr. And at the same time, you had, on the other side of the political spectrum, you could say, the most insensitive culture imaginable, which was the culture of.

[Karamo Brown]

Four chan dicks out for Harambe. You know what the fuck it is.

[Angela Nagle]

And the culture of 4chan was really based around transgression and offensiveness and the kind of fun of being offensive.

[Karamo Brown]

About like 30 to 45 minutes ago, I beat the out of my dick so goddamn hard that I can't even feel my left leg. My left leg.

[Angela Nagle]

You know, the entire culture became a sort of a one upmanship of who can post the most outrageous or offensive thing imaginable. And so they're going to make Holocaust jokes and they're going to make Anne Frank jokes.

[Karamo Brown]

Making an ethnostate is hard work.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

I mean, you really gotta ask yourself what eugenics programs are you going to.

[Karamo Brown]

Use, what type of plumbing to use in your internment camps.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

So 4chan, if you'd never heard of it, it was actually somewhat similar to Tumblr in that it was largely anonymous and text and image based. There were a lot of fans there, especially anime, and it had lots of porn and lots of young people. But where Tumblr attracted a lot of girls and women, 4chan skewed way more male. Back in 2014, 4chan made headlines after users there pulled this stunt that generated some panic about how hackers were able to access people's private photos in the cloud.

[Karamo Brown]

Several A list stars are the target of what appears to be one of the biggest celebrity hacking leaks. Dozens of private nude photographs were apparently accessed from phones and leaked online.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Jennifer Lawrence and several other celebrities had their personal nude photos stolen out of the cloud and leaked on 4chan.

[Angela Nagle]

Do we even know who is this 4chan person or website?

[Karamo Brown]

He may, and I'm sure we're going.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

To where users shared and sold the nudes, made gifs and memes out of them, and celebrated how much attention this got. So in a lot of ways, the norms and mores of Tumblr and 4chan end up being these kind of mirror images of one another.

[Angela Nagle]

You have this kind of reinforcing culture of ultra sensitivity on one side and this reinforcing culture of antisensitivity on the other side. And both of these cultures are growing at the same time.

[Helen Lewis]

If you've ever heard a kind of right wing activist railing against woke culture, then you'll be hearing them condemning phrases that were popularized on Tumblr.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

Microaggression trigger warnings. Latinx, non binary, two spirit, transgender.

[Helen Lewis]

You know, even the idea of being CIS as opposed to being trans. The idea that everybody was one of those two things.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

If you dig through the Wayback Machine or Google Analytics, you can see that many of these words and phrases that have become pretty mainstream on the political left and have become the focus of a lot of backlash from the political right, many of them can be traced back to their increased use on Tumblr.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

People start Googling them between 2011 and 2014. That's when you see the first spike.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And this is also the same period when the use of social media in general was exploding. So more and more people were spending more and more of their time on these platforms. And you can go back and kind of watch how these ideas start to migrate outward from Tumblr.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

So a good example of this is the word latinx, right? If you look at early articles about the word Latinx. So these are articles that are coming out between 2013 and 2015. A lot of them reference Tumblr. Gabby Rivera of Autostraddle wrote, the word Latinx has been appearing on my Tumblr dashboard for the last year. The website latinorebels also ran an article about the term and they were like, this word comes from Tumblr and we don't like it. It's from the American blogosphere, and nobody in Latin America uses it.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Even though some of these ideas were openly mocked by many people, others became quite mainstream quite quickly. So, like, when Facebook announced, it was suddenly offering, like, 40 different gender identities, and a lot of people were confused. Do you think it's right to say that essentially they catching up to what Tumblr had been doing for years at that point?

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

Oh, of course. Facebook was definitely playing catch up.

[Helen Lewis]

The idea of privilege was very big. You know, the idea that you have white privilege, male privilege, CIS privilege, that really came from Tumblr and has had a sort of odd effect on discourse ever since.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

And things that we wouldn't have recognized as being offensive suddenly were considered offensive. There's a real culture of calling not only people, but media properties and the creators of those media properties problematic on Tumblr.

[Angela Nagle]

And so that's really where you get cancel culture, in a sense, which takes sensitivity and the strengthening of taboos to such a point that anyone who transgresses them should be just totally removed from the conversation.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

People online did discover that there is a kind of clout to be gained from discovering what is problematic about a popular figure. So there used to be a Tumblr blog called you'd fave is problematic.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Your fave is problematic was a Tumblr account created in 2013 by an anonymous American high school student. Initially, it was just a place where she would call out celebrities and artists as well as their hardcore fans on Tumblr.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

It was just like a list of celebrities or popular figures and all of their sort of social justice sins.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

There'd be a call out of Jennifer Lawrence, who wore fake dreads for a photo shoot, or Tina Fey for a rape joke on 30 Rock.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

You know, Justin Bieber did cultural appropriation and this and Miley Cyrus did that. And so if you like them, you're a terrible person.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

But quickly, and to this high school Tumblr user's surprise, the account grew massively popular on Tumblr. And it started to create these real backlashes, leading to big stars issuing apologies. And these fandoms that were such a big presence on Tumblr, they were increasingly turning on the very creators of the books and films and television shows that they were such big fans of, whether it was Stephenie Meyer, who wrote the Twilight series and was accused of being racist, or Anne Rice, who was accused of sexism.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

So if this is happening over and over and over again, and people are on other parts of the Internet are making fun of Tumblr constantly about it.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And J.K. rowling was not immune.

[Helen Lewis]

First Rowling backlash was in 2016 when she wrote about Native American wizards and she wrote about skinwalkers, this idea of malevolent wizards who disguise themselves as animals. And the outcry then was about cultural appropriation, which is a very Tumblr concern. Cultural appropriation, the idea that, you know, you're borrowing bits and pieces from other cultures. You know, you're going to a music festival and you're wearing a Native American headdress or whatever it might be. And so in 2016, J.K. rowling was accused of Native American appropriation of appropriating another culture. And that was the first time I thought, ah, she is no longer left wing enough for her fans. That's interesting.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Do you remember how it felt when you first started to see those things?

[J.K. Rowling]

I definitely saw it in the context of this is happening everywhere. So I didn't take it super personally, but I was seeing this happen across the board to artists, and there was a kind of puritanism that was rising. That to me seemed very illiberal, so very contrary, I suppose, to my values, to my core values. So, yeah, it happened to me. I was watching it happening to other artists. I was watching it happening to other sort of properties, creative properties, and it was inevitable. I was gonna be hit with it too. I. Was it enjoyable? No. Did I take it really personally? No. That's the honest answer.

[Angela Nagle]

Cancel Culture is probably as old as humanity in a way, but in the style of the Internet, I think Tumblr was very, very central to that.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Your fave is problematic. Even at the peak of its popularity, only had around 50,000 followers. The fans who turned on these different creators, they didn't represent anything close to the majority view of the artists in the hot se or even the average fan's views. But then when the battles on Tumblr became enmeshed on another platform, its effects became much more far reaching.

[Katherine D (Default Friend)]

It's only when it gets to Twitter that it's this monster that is, you know, complete runaway train.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

Twitter is like, I don't know, it's like being on the National Mall. It's like being in Times Square. That's where you're having these fights, right? Like the biggest public forum. You know, every journalist in the world is on Twitter, practically, and politicians are on it, public figures are on it. So that really changes the dynamic. When it's not fandom wars, it's like Twitter is politics, full stop.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Twitter had two things that Tumblr lacked. One was a Much larger user base. And the other was the presence of a huge number of journalists from around the world. Those journalists began to pick up these stories, publishing them in mainstream media outlets. And so this small group of people shaped by the norms of Tumblr, appeared to have a much bigger presence in society than it actually did. That gave them more of an ability to influence politics. And it also fueled an aggressive backlash from places like 4chan.

[Karamo Brown]

No social justice warrior.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

4Chan users delighted in developing new ways to inflict reputational damage on people who they saw as embodying these values from Tumblr.

[Angela Nagle]

A very common thing, for example, was raiding a person's Wikipedia page and filling it up with negative material, or putting out, like, fake revenge pornography, spirit spreading outrageous lies about people.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

They made fake accounts and photoshopped pictures and videos. They targeted people in the media who they saw as perpetuating the culture of sensitivity. Tumblr giving more and more power to that side of the debate. Users on 4chan started doxxing them, swatting their houses, and sending them death threats.

[Angela Nagle]

That was sort of very common from the, let's say, anti political correctness side. But then on the other side, you also had things like getting people fired for a joke that was a bit off color. You know, publicly shaming people for something that they said many years previous that has since become politically incorrect.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Is this like the phenomenon of digging up old tweets?

[Angela Nagle]

Yes, digging up old tweets. Or one example would be something like, you find a picture of somebody and they're white, and they're wearing a traditional Chinese dress, right, at an event, and somebody says, this is cultural appropriation, Those kind of deliberate attempts to use public shaming and moral pressure to destroy people's livelihoods and careers.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

And Nagel says that over time, the tactics and norms that emerged from these subcultures that felt embattled, they began to really shape the language and norms of Internet culture more broadly.

[Angela Nagle]

And so we had to deal with a new sort of mean, cruel quality to the Internet. What's fascinating about this is that the sensitive, politically correct culture of Tumblr is driven to greater and greater extremes because they see the enemy culture that comes from places like 4chan. And likewise, the culture of 4chan is sort of inspired to become more and more extreme because they see the culture of Tumblr. And so both are not only reinforcing the culture within their communities, but but by observing the other side, they feel more like their political project is necessary. And therefore they have to become more and more extreme in order to fight this evil in the world.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

You've talked about what you've described as a witch hunt impulse when it comes to the dynamics of online cancel culture. What is that impulse and what parallels do you draw maybe to the witch hunt's?

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

Well, I think that people. There's a lot of sources of aggression. I think that aggression is a basic human instinct. I think there's a lot of kind of free form aggression in search of a target.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Natalie Wynn has a video with the title Cancel Culture where she goes into detail about what she sees as some of the underlying and very human impulses inspiring people on Tumblr and beyond.

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

Freud discusses this, like, morality can be sadistic. The sadistic superego, he calls it. And the idea is that you kind of use that kind of punishing, shaming, moral condemnation. You know, that becomes an outlet for aggression in itself. And so I think for people, it can become a way to attack someone while also kind of feeling good about themselves, which is a very, I think, tempting place to be.

[Helen Lewis]

Right?

[Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints)]

You're trashing someone, but you feel like you're crusading.

[J.K. Rowling]

I was starting to think about this a lot. Subcultures that have their own rigid rules, acceptable beliefs, non acceptable beliefs, everything becoming very reductive. I was also deeply concerned by it because to me, it was a rise of the kind of authoritarianism and lack of empathy that it's in all of my books. It's in literally every book I write. If there's one thing that I stand against more than any other, it is authoritarianism. And that cuts across political persuasions, cuts through atheists all the way through to various different religions. So I was definitely seeing that and I was becoming really concerned. I think the first time I became really interested in what was going on sort of culturally.

[Karamo Brown]

I've taken some time out of my busy schedule being fabulous and doing my hair to prepare a speech for you. Well, a few remarks, really.

[J.K. Rowling]

It was Milo Yiannopoulos.

[Karamo Brown]

Feminism is cancer. Thank you very much.

[J.K. Rowling]

The outright provocateur, I suppose you would call him.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

In 2016, this battle online really started to move offline. And for many people, the person who signaled this shift was an editor from Breitbart who essentially was the culture of 4chan in human form. Milo Yiannopoulos.

[Angela Nagle]

I think Milo Yiannopoulos was very much an embodiment of the moment where the culture of places like 4chan sort of bursts into the mainstream.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

As Milo was booked to speak on college campuses, he was increasingly met with protesters demanding that he be stopped, leading to real political violence.

[J.K. Rowling]

And I'm watching from across the pond as he tries to speak on various campuses. And there are protests, riots, campus lockdown.

[Karamo Brown]

As more than a thousand people rallied against the appearance of a controversial editor from Breitbart, Miley.

[J.K. Rowling]

We want him deplatformed. We don't want him to speak at all.

[Karamo Brown]

They are using free speech as a justification to have these fascists come to Berkeley.

[J.K. Rowling]

And I thought it was a terrible strategic error.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

Overnight, mayhem on campus.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

The University of California, Berkeley, erupting in.

[J.K. Rowling (Harvard Speech)]

Flames as over a thousand came out to protest.

[J.K. Rowling]

And my feeling was, you are giving this man way more power than he deserves by behaving in this way. It made Milo look sexier and edgier than he deserved to look.

[Karamo Brown]

Is there anybody in here who hates me?

[Angela Nagle]

Yes.

[Karamo Brown]

There we go. Thank you.

[J.K. Rowling]

I thought it was a strategically appalling get on that platform and eviscerate his ideas. Get on that platform and expose him for the charlatan that he is. You push back hard, but you've given him so much power by refusing to talk.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Milo went from relative obscurity to being a regular on primetime television and political talk shows in just a few months.

[J.K. Rowling]

You know, I have marched in my life. I've certainly been part of mass movements. I've signed petitions, and I've demonstrated in certain ways. But when it comes to a speaker like that, I just thought they were undermining their own ends. In fact, I thought they were serving his purposes because he was able to walk away from that, saying, look, they won't even. They don't dare debate me. This is how dangerous and edgy I am. And I don't think we want to cast the alt right in that light, but inadvertently, that's exactly what they're doing. I think so, yeah.

[Angela Nagle]

Yeah.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Rowling says that she was alarmed watching people who she saw as being on her side of the political aisle behaving in a way that she felt broke with her deeply held principles, even when the target was someone who she agreed was offensive and immoral and a political opponent. And she started to think that maybe this was something she needed to speak up about.

[J.K. Rowling]

I was becoming unnerved by some of what I was seeing. I thought the way this activist movement is behaving is troubling me.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

But then she started to see that it wasn't just her political opponents who were being treated this way.

[J.K. Rowling]

I was starting to see activists behaving in a very aggressive way outside feminist meetings. These are trans activists protesting outside a feminist meeting.

[Helen Lewis]

They're shouting terf. It stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

Like, what were they doing?

[J.K. Rowling]

There was a feminist meeting in which they were banging, kicking on windows. Very threatening. They were masked, which, frankly, is never a good look. If you're a good guy, you're probably not going to be standing there in a black balaclava. I watched that happening and I was deeply disturbed because now this movement that I started being interested in, now this is really happening. It's playing out very fast.

[Karamo Brown]

You. You, you ugly piece of. You look like you got your teeth knocked out. You fucking trashes. Nobody knows who you are and nobody cares. And you will die alone. You will die alone. And you will burn. And the house.

[Megan Phelps-Roper]

You'Ve been listening to. The witch Trials of J.K. rowling. Produced by Andy Mills, Matthew Bol and me, Megan Phelps Roper, and brought to you by the Free Press. Our sincere thanks to you for listening. And we would love to listen to you, too. If you have any thoughts or questions for us, you can send us an [e-mail].

[Karamo Brown]

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[Megan Phelps-Roper]

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[Karamo Brown]

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