Showing posts with label closed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label closed. Show all posts

Monday, November 4, 2013

WWII as a dispute about dining : closed - or open - commensality ?

Between 1931 and 1941, Japan, Germany, Italy and Russia gobbled up a dozen or so small nations while the people in the "universality of human rights" espousing parts of the world (hello America !) sat silently on their hands , bystanders at a schoolyard bullying session.

They said, basically, that Manchuria, Albania, Ethiopia , Czechoslovakia , Poland, Denmark, Belgium et al were not members of their national family and hence not invitees at their dining table.

So the troubles of the Poles and Danes (or American blacks and other national minorities) were of no concern to them.

Commensality : closed , open --- and global

Hitler regarded German Aryans as family -  so they all got invited to eat at his table - but German Jews and German Romas did not - they might have once been Germans citizens but were not 'family'.

So, they got no meal invite but rather a whiff of  lethal gas instead.

Hitler practised what is technically called "closed" commensality : only inviting a select few to dine around the common table.