Mencius Moldbugman

First, the current Auschwitz museum complex is undeniably a business, and a lucrative one at that. It is a precuser to all other Woke Capital efforts: the original money-maker that pulls on your heartstrings semi-religiously for profit in exchange for the bestowal of virtue.

Auschwitz is situated near Krakow: Poland’s main tourist destination. It’s an old city mainly catering to stag/hen parties and British/Russian tourists looking for cheap alcohol and solid food. The underlying feeling is: should you be having fun while Auschwitz is nearby?

There is an official ticket website, but it is impossible to buy tickets from it as they are all snapped up by tour agencies. A ticket to Auschwitz (with bus) through an agency costs about $25 USD which is quite a lot in low-cost Poland.

Ostensibly it is possible to visit Auschwitz for free, but in reality it is practically impossible. Free tickets are only sold before 10am and after 4pm and are most often “sold-out”. Most people enter the gates alongside a huge tour group and an audio guide.

On arrival at Auschwitz you’ll see a barrage of gift shops, bookstores, cafes and money exchanges all at inflated prices. This is the most obvious sign of the industry that has grown around the Holocaust. Even the toilets charge 2 zloty a go. It’s Disneyland with ovens.

Upon entry, there is no chance for reflection. Every inch of the complex is covered in sprawling tour groups, herded through the corridors by bored tour guides like cattle. In this way the modern experience at least evokes the original atmosphere of the camp.

Personally I don’t have too much issue with all of the above. Even a site like Auschwitz has operating costs that have to be covered, despite all the NGO money that undoubtedly floods into it. What I found more interesting was the attitude of the tourists who visit.

Honestly speaking, it is a rather boring day out. It involves a lot of slow walking through open fields and narrow corridors listening to dreary translated Polish and bumping into other tour groups. The facts are nothing that anyone hasn’t heard before. Yet that isn’t the point.

It’s almost as if the Auschwitz experience is meant to be as tedious as possible to build up the sense of virtue within the visitors making the pilgrimage. And I don’t use the word “pilgrimage” lightly: for Auschwitz very much is where a new religion was born.

I predict that if my fellow tourists were to tell the truth, they’d admit to having more fun downing vodka shots in Krakow with their compatriots. Fun isn’t the point though. The Auschwitz visitors are “better” than the stag parties and this sense of moral superiority is the goal

The more tedious the better. The more money spent the better. It is morally superior to spend $30 looking at blank metal jaildoors than on drinking vodka shots. Auschwitz is Mecca. Auschwitz is the old Christian pilgrimages of Europe. It’s the birthplace of our modern religion.

Out of the ashes of old political ideologies and Rabbinical teachers sent to their death, Auschwitz is the Jerusalem of all the principles that built the post-1945 world. We no longer have penitents whipping themselves, but you can pay $25 to stand in a field and feel guilty.

Auschwitz claims to be an “educational” experience. This is clearly false. Nobody learns anything at Auschwitz they don’t already know. The guides repeat facts and figures that were drilled into every tourist during school and repeated time and time again in the media.

Education isn’t the point. The purpose of visiting Auschwitz is religious merit pure and simple. The chance to go home and tell people how moved you were, how shocking it all was, and your new mission is to make sure this NEVER EVER happens again by voting Trump or Brexit.

The fact that Auschwitz is an ultra-capitalist profit-seeking tourist enterprise only further cements its status as modern religion, for what use is anything in our accelerated age if it doesn’t contribute to the economy and an extra digit to Poland’s GDP?

It’s worth browsing through Tripadvisor reviews of Auschwitz. The cognitive dissonance is extreme. 5-star reviews spout how worthy the visit is but carry hints of boredom and rip-off. Angry 1-star reviews complain of the commercialism of what should be pure of worldly concerns.

Just outside Auschwitz... is a McDonalds. Is there any better symbol of the ideology that dominates our age than a car park with Auschwitz on one side, and a fast food joint on the other? Thus our physical and spiritual bugman needs are jointly served in one handy excursion.

This thread is mere observation and not meant to disparage what happened at Auschwitz. I am no Holocaust denier. If touring Poland it is certainly a worthwhile place to visit. Even try the attached café - the mini calzone is particularly good.

Yet if you do go, pay attention to what is really happening when visiting the camp and you will probably learn a lot more than what is printed on the signboards or recorded on the audio guides, for it is the sacred nativity of a religion that doesn’t claim to be a religion. END