Historical Guilt at the Generational Turning Point: The Rise and Fall of Auschwitz Etiquette

For nearly eight decades, Auschwitz has been the West’s ultimate moral red line, the warning sign that certain paths lead inevitably to mass graves and smoking chimneys. That line is fading fast.

Last month, several young social media influencers, with millions of followers, giggled their way through Holocaust denial and open calls for killing Jews. The shock wasn’t just their words, but how calmly and matter-of-factly they framed genocide as “logical.” Even more striking: some were Black or Hispanic, echoing rhetoric once thought to belong only to fringe white supremacists.

This isn’t the product of Rumble or Elon Musk’s X. It’s the long tail of a political and cultural dynamic dating back to the 1970s. The New Left made Auschwitz the centerpiece of Western morality. The New Right, fueled by generational cynicism, is dismantling it.

When every political opponent is branded “Hitler,” the taboo loses power. For Gen Z in the alt-right, the label “Nazi” no longer terrifies, it intrigues. That curiosity, fed by revisionist history, slides easily into moral collapse.

The deeper problem? A moral code rooted solely in a historical event is fragile. Without a transcendent, theological, or philosophical foundation, it withers as memory fades. The American right failed to build an alternative. The left overused and politicized the symbol. The result is a moral vacuum, now being filled by grotesque nostalgia for the very evil Auschwitz was meant to warn against.

And where is the left now? Silent. The same voices that called Trump an antisemite for political gain have nothing to say when antisemitism surges for real.

The Auschwitz warning sign is gone.

The question is: what replaces it, and will America recognize the danger before the next moral Rubicon is crossed.