Harry Potter author JK Rowling unleashes fury at Brexit voters on Twitter

And at former London mayor Boris Johnson

Daniel Roberts
·Contributor
0

The author of the Harry Potter series is telling her 12 million social media followers she's "proud to be part of the #IndecentMinority."

That minority is the 48% of Britons who voted to remain in the European Union. And Rowling, who tried to wield her considerable influence to support remaining in the EU, is declaring her anger after the shocking result of the referendum.

Rowling had made herself one of the most vocal public figures on the issue over the past few weeks with a steady flow of tweets, culminating in a blog post earlier this week that warned her fellow citizens against voting to leave the EU. In the blog post, she compared those on the Leave side to "villains" like Hannibal Lecter, Big Brother and her own character Lord Voldemort.

Now, in light of the result, Rowling is going off on the voters she has called "a bunch of mini-Trumps." She retweeted someone calling UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage "an unspeakable piece of sh*t." She retweeted someone saying "all the wrong people are clapping" in response to a celebratory tweet by Marion LePen, niece of the leader of the French National Front.

But Rowling didn't just retweet the fiery comments of others. She posted her own scathing comments as well. Those who voted to leave the EU, she said, are "like the cheating man shocked he can't stay in the spare room for 2 years while he sorts himself out." In another tweet she said, "This is what happens when you try to fix a faulty watch with a hammer."

Rowling's comparison of the Brexit situation to her own wizarding world, made in her earlier blog post, is not such a stretch. In her Harry Potter series, wizards ban together against a small but virulent "dark arts" faction, led by Voldemort. The dark-arts wizards in her fictional world are exclusionary; they reject non-wizards and half-blood wizards, and seek to keep the wizarding world pure. Rowling and others have observed a similar tone of xenophobia in the campaign of Donald Trump and the campaign to leave the EU, and now, in England, that faction has triumphed. (And the result may help Trump's chances in the U.S.)

It is an uncertain and scary moment for the global economy. Rowling, among many other British celebrities, such as Virgin CEO Richard Branson and soccer legend David Beckham, is distressed.

As for Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who led the movement to leave the EU and is now the odds-on favorite to be the next prime minister, Rowling shared a comment by Johnson that the UK will not be any less united because of this vote, and she added, "Always good to kick off by showing you don't understand a key issue."

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Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.

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