Quote from Naaga on March 8, 2023, 2:05 am

Purpose of this post is to highlight the reason about James going after Snape, marauders' hypocrisy and debunking the fanon.

Source: James only attacked Snape because he was going after the racist students by Chicken_Dinner_1999

Snape's relationship with the Marauders during his time at Hogwarts is one of the more contentions issues of this fandom. A segment of the fanbase defends James's actions by claiming that they were motivated by a desire to protect marginalized students. The notion that James was only going after Death Eater wannabes and wouldn't harm "innocent" students is frequently brought up - many readers push the idea that even if James attacked several of his fellow students, including Snape, he was only acting with the noble intention to punish the school racists.

However, there isn't much evidence suggesting that James and Sirius selectively targeted aspiring Death Eaters or that their attacks were driven by political ideology, even if they did happen to share a distaste for Voldemort's cause. It's also interesting to note that there's no evidence of James targeting any DE-wannabes other than Snape.

While the books haven't exactly explored the Marauders' motivations in-depth, it's suggested that the attacks were carried out for far simpler reasons: entertainment, and the exercise of power. Lupin and Sirius have a long conversation with Harry about the bullying and characterize it as such:

 

"She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin.

“Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius.

“And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,” said Lupin.

Lupin and Sirius are James's best friends, but even then, they do not portray the bullying as a well-intentioned crusade against fascism. They confirm that there were multiple victims, not just Snape, and that it was done, simply put, just for fun. They never once implied that James was only trying to teach a lesson to racist bigots in need of correction. Sirius also confirms that the attack was carried out for entertainment, making zero comment on ideology:

“Yeah,” said Harry, “but he just attacked Snape for no good reason*, just because — well,  just because you said you were bored,” he finished with a slightly apologetic note in his voice.*

“I’m not proud of it,” said Sirius quickly.

Harry accuses his father of having attacked Snape for "no good reason". Now, this presents the perfect opportunity for Sirius to raise a reason or justification for the attack. Sirius could've easily corrected Harry's assumption and said, "yes, we might've looked awful, but we attacked Snape because he was a racist prick. Didn't you see him call your mom a slur?" Sirius could've explained, "Harry, you have to understand that we were going after bigoted Voldemort supporters during a time of heightened political tension". But why didn't he? Lupin and Sirius were trying to comfort Harry here - if they had a good justification here that would help Harry feel better about his father, why didn't they raise it?

In another interaction, Lily also confirms that there were multiple victims, not just Snape. She never suggests that James chose to go after the Hitler Youth or other people who might deserve it:

"...hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can — I’m surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK."

Hexing "anyone", she says, not "Slytherins" or "Death Eater wannabes".

To make matters worse for James, JKR has commented on his relationship with Snape and suggests the hostility James feels for him was somewhat motivated by jealousy and possessiveness over Lily:

"James always suspected Snape harboured deeper feelings for Lily, which was a factor in James’ behaviour to Snape."

All of this paints a rather unfortunate picture for James, implying that he went after Snape for petty, personal reasons and NOT because of his racism. Anyhow, I really fail to see why choking Snape, dangling him upside-down, and showing everyone his underwear can count as taking some principled stand against racism.

Snape, James, and the Dark Arts

Now, Sirius does say that James hated the Dark Arts, an area of magic that Snape was captivated by and is often practiced by bigoted wizards. But then again, that doesn't negate all of the other aforementioned reasons why he wanted to attack Snape. It also doesn't prove that James's teenage delinquency was mostly motivated by heroic, anti-racist ideology, or that he went around attacking people as part of a righteous mission to stand up for the oppressed.

Furthermore, Dark Arts ≠ racism. The Unforgivable Curses are Dark magic, yet simply using them does not make one a bigot - our hero, Harry, has unrepentantly cast the Crucio torture spell, and he's certainly not a Nazi. And while it's true that Snape was indeed a bigoted practitioner of the Dark Arts, the books never cite Snape's blood supremacism as reasoning for James's dislike of him.

Lastly, the characterization of what constitutes "Dark Arts" in the HP universe is incredibly inconsistent. Many sources, including Pottermore, clarify that Dark Magic encompasses any form of offensive magic intended to hurt others, including milquetoast jinxes, hexes, and low-level curses. The Harry Potter Compendium also defines it similarly:

A Dark Spell is primarily defined as any spell that consistently affects the object in a negative manner, usually associated with varying levels of discomfort. They can be classified into three groups: jinxes, hexes & curses.

If that's the case, James would be a massive hypocrite in targeting Snape for employing the Dark Arts when he himself used illegal hexes on others, which counts as Dark magic.

TLDR: James attacked Snape for fun and because of petty, personal grievances. It's ridiculous to reframe his bullying into a noble crusade for social justice.

P.S - Can you move this into right category, I mistakenly put this in wrong one of off-topic chatter @heatherlly