Well, OK. Seems to me most of your examples support the notion of individual agency, responsibility, and guilt. Which is good. Maybe I’m missing what you’re trying to say about the distinction between group guilt and group responsibility. But let me bring up what I regard as the critical—and perhaps only—instance of genuine group guilt: the Mob Mentality. It is when a group becomes driven by emotions that feed off one another, without rational intervention or mediation. The mob as unified organism. If you’re part of a mob, you have surrendered your own agency to the group. This makes you culpable—not legally but I believe morally—for your own actions and for those actions you have fomented. In a way, this is an expansion of personal responsibility. But I think this approach is still consistent with personal responsibility. The choice is always to walk away from the mob or try to stop it. The latter may not be possible. Ask Kyle Rittenhouse. But staying, and being part of it, that’s abhorrent.

@GaryWitt "But let me bring up what I regard as the critical—and perhaps only—instance of genuine group guilt: the Mob Mentality. It is when a group becomes driven by emotions that feed off one another, without rational intervention or mediation. The mob as unified organism. If you’re part of a mob, you have surrendered your own agency to the group."

Yes, I agree in most part. That is why I don't attend protests, because soon as one joins the crowds its hard to practice personal responsibility. That being said, I fully agree that when we outsource our responsibility to a mob mentality we are guilty of doing so.

However, we must acknowledge that herd or mob mentality is also part of human nature, and its deeply embedded in our collective DNA. There is safety in numbers as well as risks. There is power in numbers as well as giving up personal power. But herd mentality is deeply embedded in our DNA. It takes a strong individual to resist it. And in some situations its the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down, so it carries great risk as well. Hence most people gravitate to safety of the herd. Like sardines.

We don't always operate in mob environment and therefore we have no excuse only responsibility.

This was I think best summed up by Carl Jung (1875 - 1961), Swiss psychologist

“The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness. Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself. To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is and that there is no coming to consciousness without pain. What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by simply imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. And we cannot change anything unless we accept it. We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― C.G. Jung

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Another good quote on this topic is;

Because men are in a group,
and therefore weakened,
receptive, and in a state of
psychological regression, they
pretend all the more to be
"strong individuals." The mass
man is clearly sub-human, but
pretends to be superhuman. He
is more suggestible, but insists
he is more forceful; he is more
unstable, but thinks he is firm
in his convictions ...
Democracy is based on the
concept that man is rational and
capable of seeing clearly what
is in his own interest, but the
study of public opinion suggests
this is a highly doubtful proposition.

JACQUES ELLUL, Propaganda

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In essence I agree with the original quote and your comment. I just wanted to point out that from my view, there is a difference between externally assigned collective guilt, like for example CRT does. Critical Race Theory, claims all white people are racists because of assumptions of what their ancestors have made, and one cannot be forgiven this sin. One is always trapped by it. This is the kind of collective guilt I reject. But I do accept the concept of collective responsibility that failed to maintain society which would protect itself from such ideologies as CRT.

After all society is made up of individuals and individuals have personal responsibility. But it is not a one way street. As members of society we have certain social responsibility. The more of us that outsource that to others, the more the society breaks down and eventually leads to chaos.

For example, the western nations and by extension many westerners like to be proud of their democratic ideals. But when one looks at the results, is it really that morality superior to other systems and can some of those problems be associated with responsibility.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse ( willingness to give money, or money given to poor people by rich people) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 300 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” ― Alexander Fraser Tytler

“Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.” ― Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

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“Finally, we arrive at the question of the so-called nonpolitical man. Hitler not only established his power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then essentially nonpolitical; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal" manner, by mobilizing no less than five million nonvoters, that is to say, nonpolitical people. The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the question as to what it means "to be indifferent or nonpolitical."

If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all mean rationally consistent—it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a worker, an employee, or an official has a rightist orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position.

The more a man who belongs to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social responsibility yields clear insights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of the broad nonpolitical strata.

In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups.

In the case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority, social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual anxiety is the predominant one. […] Until now the revolutionary movement has misunderstood this situation. It attempted to awaken the "nonpolitical" man by making him conscious solely of his unfulfilled economic interests.

Experience teaches that the majority of these "nonpolitical" people can hardly be made to listen to anything about their socio-economic situation, whereas they are very accessible to the mystical claptrap of a National Socialist, despite the fact that the latter makes very little mention of economic interests. [This] is explained by the fact that severe sexual conflicts (in the broadest sense of the word), whether conscious or unconscious, inhibit rational thinking and the development of social responsibility. They make a person afraid and force him into a shell.

“Without the power to put them into practice, truths are of no use. They remain academic. Dictatorial power and truth do not go together. They are mutually exclusive. Power, no matter what kind of power it is, without a foundation in truth, is a dictatorship, more or less and in one way or another, for it is always based on man's fear of the social responsibility and personal burden that "freedom" entails.

― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

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"In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government." - Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881), Scottish author, essayist, & historian ― Past and Present, 1843

"Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without." - Edmund Burke, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011

I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties. – Ron Paul

"Few men desire liberty, for it requires personal responsibility. The majority are satisfied with a just master." - Sallust (86 BC - 34 BC), Roman historian & politician

“Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.” ― Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

...and that is where collective responsibility exists. Without it how can any civil, complex society exist in any other form than tyranny with master and slaves, rather than friends and family?

@Krunoslav I think you nailed it, quite well said.