The movies are quite awful when it comes to the world lore. The books are slightly better and at least have some justification as to what's going on, but the world itself is still pretty silly. But here I go:jademunky said:
Wizard-Muggle relations had already reached a peak amount of distrust in the 17th century as both groups saw themselves culturally shifting away from each other along two different lines, magic and technology. Neither understood the other. Several people on both sides lashed out. Eventually, muggles started killing wizards and wizards started killing muggles as the tensions between them grew to a boiling point. It even got to the point where muggles started killing other muggles because of accusations being thrown around. For everyone's safety, as things only continued to get worse, the International Confederation of Wizards enacted a law stating that wizards have to go into hiding. Breaking this law can bring about heavy consequences, too. Some people have even gone to Azkaban, UK's wizard prison, for it. Generally, both people are also quite happy to have had this happen and both groups are now pretty isolated from each other, culturally. These shifts only continued to happen, to the point where, in the books, comedy relief in one form comes from the wizards just not understanding a single thing about technology, which is understandable. They don't need technology in any single way and often it just doesn't plain work in their world anyways. The same goes for muggles, who don't understand magic either.
It's now been quite a few centuries since the passing of this statute of secrecy and there have been several attempts to overthrow it, most notably by Voldemort. Voldemort's plot isn't to enact genocide over muggle-born wizards and muggles, though he most certainly will. It's to overthrow this secrecy law and propel the wizard world into dominance over muggles. This isn't the only attempt either. Another notable example is Grindelwald, whose initial planning stages were helped along by none other than... Dumbledore.
Yeah. Dumbledore's temple of tolerance is subverted at the final book where he admits to his weaknesses he had at an early age and that he seeks to atone for his actions, that he's a man filled with intense amount of regret. He's a champion of muggles and muggle-borns, supporting many legislation to fight for their rights and especially the latter's equality in a world that tends to treat muggle-borns as second class citizens. Championing their rights doesn't mean breaking international law and getting severely punished for it - and several people have been punished for unlawfully breaking the statute for the purposes of protest. Several exceptions are made and the muggles are warned, too, in the books. The muggle prime minister of the UK is told about what's going on and warned several times throughout the course of the timeline (and it is written in the main portion of the series). This warning, though, isn't something that can really be acted upon. It doesn't even help wizards defend themselves properly, let alone muggles. Indeed, by the middle of the final book, all of Britain's wizard population has fallen under Voldemort's regime.
