answers shouldn't contain political views on this site. take that crap to politics.se. this site is for science fiction.take out the entire second paragraph and it's a decent answer.

@KutuluMike The second paragraph addresses the issue of why the wizarding world didn't take part in WWII for purely altruistic and apolitical reasons. Without that, one could say "sure, there's the ISoWS, but couldn't an exception be made for helping the Allies against Nazi Germany?"

The second paragraph is a made up justification for why Dumbledore, in the OPs own imagination, might not have thought Hitler was evil. For which there is no evidence given other than "some other people thought Churchill was evil too", which is a logical fallacy on top of everything else. (They're both allowed to be evil.) It also goes against all common sense about how a character who spent their entire lives living in Britain would see Hitler in the middle of The Blitz.

@KutuluMike That's a rather rude way of saying it's a theory about the answer to the question. You've also misread or misunderstood the answer, since (1) it doesn't say Hitler wasn't evil, only that Churchill and the British empire were also evil (thus, no logical fallacy), and (2) it points out that a character who spent their entire life living in Britain wouldn't necessarily be subject to Muggle propaganda; why should Dumbledore see the Blitz as worse than the bombing of Dresden, say?

the entire answer is a rather transparent way to trash-talk the British by reviving a question that was asked 9 months ago by providing an answer that included precisely 0% additional relevant information wrapped around a unnecessary political rant, posted by a user with a long and pathetic history of causing trouble just to be a jerk about it, so I feel no need to pretend not to be annoyed by it.

@Randal'Thor - I find the fact that he's using this question as a vehicle to air his (pretty offensive IMO) political views to be unsuitable, especially give the lack of any canon backup to justify it.

@KutuluMike If you support the British empire, downvote the answer for criticising it. If you dislike the user, keep that to yourself. None of this seems to be a reason for deletion. Why are you calling it a "rant", anyway? It's just expressing a political opinion - one which, by the way, can be supported with facts about the atrocities committed by the Allies - not abusing anyone or going on at great length.

@Randal'Thor - None of which is suitable to be aired on a site about science fiction and fantasy. If he wants to debate history, we have an entire stack for him to do so on.

@KutuluMike The question was revived few days ago by another answer (that's when I noticed the question). The answer indeed adds extra whether you understand it or not. And, be nice when talking about other users (I also don't want to bring Bifrost event on the table again in which I was the victim).

@Randal'Thor it's a rant because it has nothing at all to do with the question or the answer. Whether the British Empire was evil or not is completely irrelevant to why a character with Dumbledore's power didn't try to stop another evil person in history. You could ask why didn't he stop both of them, but the OP is fully away that answer was already given. They were just looking for an excuse to tell us that the British Empire f---'d over India in case we didn't already know.

@Randal'Thor and there's is a HUGE difference between disliking a user, and recognizing that a user has repeatedly taken actions to disrupt the site despite being routinely punished for it, and deciding that said user no longer qualifies for "assuming good faith" because they have proven decisively that they have none.

@KutuluMike Also, maybe you should read the answer more carefully? It first explains why someone like Dumbledore wouldn't side with Britain against Hitler, THEN explains why he wouldn't stop both of them either. Every time you describe this answer, you say it's doing X and would be OK if it was doing Y instead, when it's actually doing Y.

@Randal'Thor - That would be an amazing answer if it had an iota of a scrap of evidence to back it up. In the absence of that, we have to assume that the OP is projecting their own politics onto the situation. We could just as easily argue (using the same logic) that Dumbledore was a massive anti-Semite.

@Randal'Thor you're ignoring the key part of my comment: if you take out the anti-British rant there is no NEW information in the answer. The Dark Lord posted a very thorough answer about the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy nine months ago. SS's answer merely takes that exact information, presents it less clearly, and tacks on "plus Churchill was also evil" onto it.

And yes, I'm openly, blatently, and explicitly voting the user, not the post. If anyone else posted this, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt that they were just unclear how this site works. SS knows better. He's doing this to make people angry and I'm absolutely going to downvote him for it.

I whole heartedly disagree with the original answer, that the answer was undeleted, and this meta answer.

For the record what I also noticed that the user posted their answer and then started a vote to close as POB. If the user felt the question was POB, why provide an answer that is surely just opinion then. If I have my time line messed let me know, but this is what I noticed...

voted to delete it again woohoo

@Himarm On what grounds? That you disagree with its political views? That you dislike the poster? I haven't yet seen anyone provide a good reason for deleting this answer (as opposed to simply downvoting it, which is your good right).

Well so far meta consensus seems to want it to be deleted

@Randal'Thor - Um, because it contains uncited material that others may find offensive?

Uncited - nope; as mentioned before, it's cited both to the Potterverse (e.g. International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy) and to the real world (e.g. real leaders who thought Churchill was as bad as Hitler). Offensive - well, if you're a British imperialist, then yes, you might be offended by someone mentioning the British empire's atrocities, but they still have the right to mention them. What do you think of, say, this Great Answer which calls real political leaders "evil monsters" and scoffs at western Stalinists?

@Himarm So it's OK to criticise mass murderers as long as it's "world agreed" to do so, and not OK if they won the last major war and therefore wrote the history books? If you think Dresden, Nagasaki, and so on were all perfectly justified, that doesn't give you the right to silence people who call out war crimes and mass murder by Allied/western powers. Also, nobody is defending Hitler, only saying that the other powers in WWII were also evil. Why is that so hard for people to understand?

Numbers dont lie , line up hilter stalin mao , with allied leaders.

@Randal'Thor - That'd be nice, if that's what the answer really was. It's not. There are so many things wrong with it. 1) Probable trolling from a user with a long history of suspensions. 2) Complete speculation, with a side of ignoring canon. 3) Minimization of the Holocaust. Yes, it's there. The heavy implication that it's "propaganda" that leads us Muggles to consider Hitler as "terrorizing innocents," the pointed quote by a politician saying that Hitler wasn't much compared to Churchill....

@Rand'alThor - "What-about-ism" is a classic technique for minimizing atrocities, too. "Hitler did it, but what about Stalin?" There are many ways to measure atrocities: probably more people were killed throughout the whole history of British colonialism than during the Holocaust. But that's really only because Hitler didn't get the chance. Had he won, he would have followed a standard colonialist rulebook in many parts of the world, and he'd have been much worse than Britain. Britain was mainly motivated by greed. The Nazi Party was mainly motivated by an ideology of racial supremacy.

One need not ignore the bombing of Dresden, the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Bengal famine to recognize when these events are being employed in defense of Hitler.

It's worth noting that, in the worst picture of things, Churchill was an anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu leader whose occasional callous negligence exacerbated lethal conditions. This is no recommendation, but, by contrast, Hitler pursued a systematic, widespread, and deliberate policy of genocide of several different ethnic groups, a policy which he vigorously pressed through conquest, and was an individual whose later politics were founded essentially solely on Aryan supremacy. Hitler could hardly have allowed Jews, Roma, Slavs, and so forth to starve: he was too busy gassing them.

And frankly, here's the most irritating thing about just saying "everyone was evil in WW2." Well, sure. Everyone did horrible things. In case we've forgotten, war itself is a horrible thing: avoiding "war crimes" hardly means being nice and conciliatory. But this line of argument encourages people to throw up their hands and call it a wash. To say, "eh, there wasn't any point in trying to stop Hitler. The Allies were evil too, right?" Or "The North killed a lot people during the Civil War and suspended habeas corpus. There wasn't really any point to the war, since they were both evil."

Or, to rephrase this sort of implicit argument as a modern politician would put it: "World War II had hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."

That the fact that you are trying to justify a political statement should be a red flag, the fact this political statement is trying minize the evil Hitler did (even if by calling others evil) is a second red flag, and the community response to the answer and this meta post should be the third. I am baffled by the your actions. Answers get deleted every day with out a peep. I I fail to see why this any different. I did not think moderators were supposed to force their will on the community.

@Null I am not expecting an answer in here, but I seriously hope there is discussion going on behind the scenes on this. Clearly the community has spoken on the issue.

@Skooba The mods haven't had a chance to discuss it among ourselves yet. I haven't seen any of them in chat yet.