‘Harry Potter’ author J.K. Rowling has decried aspects of the campaign to leave the European Union ahead of Britain’s long-awaited referendum on the subject later this week, describing some of the rhetoric as “uglier than any I can remember in my lifetime”.

Writing on her personal website on Monday (June 20th), the 50 year old Scottish author urged readers to reject the depiction of the E.U. peddled by the Leave campaign as a faceless, bureaucratic monolith. She was an opponent of the independence movement at last year’s Scottish referendum, and said the Leave campaign was “one of the most divisive and bitter political campaigns ever waged.”

JK RowlingJ.K. Rowling said that parts of the campaign to leave the E.U. were "ugly"

“I’m not an expert on much, but I do know how to create a monster,” she wrote, arguing that effective villains in fiction like Hannibal Lecter, Big Brother and her creation Lord Voldemort stick in people's minds because they are “simultaneously inhuman and superhuman and that is what frightens us most”.

“For some on the leave side, the EU is not merely imperfect, or in need of improvement: it is villainous… the union that was born out of a collective desire never to see another war in Europe is depicted as an Orwellian monolith, Big Brother-esque in its desire for control.”

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Rowling was quick to add that she didn’t believe that every supporter of the Leave campaign was a racist or a bigot, calling that belief “shameful”. At the same time, though, she said that the campaign was being run in such a way that it was attracting such people in droves.

“For some of us, that fact alone is enough to give us pause,” she said about the presence of such attitudes near the top of the leadership of the campaign.

She also attacked the much-criticised poster unveiled by Leave campaigner Nigel Farage, the leader of United Kingdom Independence Party, saying that the depiction of refugees queuing at the Slovenian border, saying that it was in essence trying to get people to “embrace the rage and trust your guts, which Farage undoubtedly hopes contains a suspicion of brown people, an unthinking jingoism and an indifference to the warnings of history.”

Lastly, she urged readers to not “retreat into selfish and insecure individualism” despite genuine threats to Europe. She said: “When the bonds that tie us are so powerful, when we have come so far together… how can we hope to conquer the enormous challenges of terrorism and climate change without cooperation and collaboration?”

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