Plenty of activists, even those with radical opinions, take that approach. They have a long term goal in mind, but to get to that goal they try to make incremental changes with the power they have.
Hermione got involved in house-elf welfare as an adult and was successful. I am not sure where that is covered, I think maybe Cursed Child? I don’t know much about what happens after the series is over, so I can’t speak to that in detail.
The fatphobia is real, but I’ve never bought the bit about the books being against Hermione’s anti-slavery stance (I assume that’s what you mean by a woman who speaks up as well). My interpretation was that Hermione was always assumed to be in the right because slavery is almost universally condemned in modern society. But she’s standing up against a system where even one of her two closest friends has been indoctrinated into it. Standing up to “others” is hard, but standing up to peer pressure is harder.
That said, the depiction of chattel slavery is of course inaccurate. Slave revolts were common, whereas the house elves want to be subservient to humans. I guess that could be marked up to house elves being a distinct species that may have been manipulated to be subservient, but that’s never explained.
You get a lèse-majesté and you get a lèse-majesté!
On the plus side, they don’t send people to prison over having walkie-talkies like in Myanmar, so… win?
First, the definition of appeal to authority, since it’s one of the most misunderstood fallacies. Citing someone based on their area of expertise is not appeal to authority. The problem is when you cite the stated opinion of someone, but their area of expertise is not directly relevant to that opinion. I’m a software developer, I could give you an expert opinion on various topics in that area. But outside of topics I am an export on, appeal to authority.
I didn’t say he’s necessarily wrong. But at the same time, he got his Nobel prize by being an economist who made a substantial contribution to economics. He is not an expert on fascism. His expert opinions in economics often run counter to many other credible expert economists, so you should consider those other expert opinions as well and not just listen to the person who tells you want you want to hear. That’s certainly not anti-intellectual.
Experts and intellectuals should absolutely be considered to better understand a subject, but they’re not some infallible oracle of truth. They contradict each other, are often limited by an ivory tower environment, and operating in the same societal context as everyone else.
This feels like an appeal to authority. He’s an economist, not a political scientist. His Nobel prize was in contributions around screening, which is important but has jack shit to do with fascism. And he’s held some opinions before that were highly controversial to say the least, like advocating for the breakup of the eurozone. Just because he says it and he has a shiny prize doesn’t mean it’s right.
Yeah, that definition of “master” is different than master/slave from what I can tell. Think the master copy of an audio recording. There are plenty of perfectly legit uses of “master,” but there’s no reason to use master/slave in this day and age. It was stupid to start doing so to begin with.