collective guilt
Group bears responsibility
Collective guilt is the shared sense of responsibility attributed to or felt by members of a group for wrongs committed by that group, even by members they never knew.
The concept appears in discussions of historical atrocities: Germans grappling with collective guilt over the Holocaust, debates about collective guilt for slavery.
Critics argue it unfairly burdens individuals for actions they didn't personally commit; defenders see it as necessary for historical reckoning.
- shamePainful awareness of failure
- responsibilityState of being answerable
- blameAssign responsibility for wrongdoing
- atonementCompensation for wrongdoing
- complicityShared criminal involvement
reparations · inherited · original sin · sin · accountability · moral debt · burden · shared · silence · ancestors · generational trauma · genocide · war crimes · apology · truth and reconciliation · remorse · community · historical
- Blameblame, fault, culprit, accusation, finger-pointing
- collective emotionsmass hysteria, national pride, national mourning, emotional contagion, social contagion
- social stigmastigma, stigmatized, shame, shamed, disgrace
- Germanic lawAnglo-Saxon law, law codes, blood feud, ordeal, trial by combat
- Orwelliannewspeak, doublethink, Big Brother, thoughtcrime, Ministry of Truth
- political repressionpolitical prisoners, political crimes, political purges, secret police, show trials
collective guiltindividual responsibility
Duty for one's own actions
individual accountability · personal responsibility · personal liability
collective, collect, collected, collecting, collector, collectors, collection, collections, collectible