Guards likely misattributed victims’ filth to the victims’ own nature, not their own doing

Evidence

Goldhagen’s use of the word ostensibly and his mocking quotations around the word punishment suggest that he believed the guards were fully aware of the grotesque absurdity of their behavior. There is, however, no reason to assume that. Given how far the guards had already traveled along the continuum of destructiveness, they were certainly not motivated to make situational attributions for the prisoners’ appearance and behavior. As counterintuitive and even horrifying as it might seem, they could well have felt that it was only natural that they should re­ spond in such a punitive way to the filthy and animal-like behavior with which they felt they were confronted. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 363

Categorization

• XREF: The Helmbrechts bucket episode is a vivid concrete instance where the causal chain — perpetrators creating the degradation, then reading it as the victim’s trait — grounds envy/scapegoat attribution mechanisms. — connects to: Guards reframed their own coerced abuses as evidence victims were animals; Perpetrators can overlook their own role in degrading victims even when they caused it — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 362; Victims’ aggression gets reframed as the victim’s own deviance (+8 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘the filth they made’ — how degrading a target and then punishing them for the degradation is a self-sealing loop that applies from camps to institutional scapegoating.

Broader Connections

• Guards reframed their own coerced abuses as evidence victims were animals #expands (0.93)
• Nazi guards could sincerely punish victims for conditions the guards themselves created #corroborates (0.90) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 363
• Perpetrators can overlook their own role in degrading victims even when they caused it #expands (0.88) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 362
• People derogate their victims to justify having harmed them. #expands (0.86) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3962
• Perpetrators excuse harm by displacing blame and dehumanizing victims #expands (0.85)
• Committing morally ambiguous acts leads actors to derogate victims #expands (0.82) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3961
• Dehumanizing victims lets perpetrators disengage self-sanctions for mistreatment #expands (0.80)
• Victims’ aggression gets reframed as the victim’s own deviance #corroborates (0.78)
• High RWAs blame victims rather than authorities who order harm #exemplifies (0.78) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 290
• In-group perpetrated misdeeds ironically heighten victim dehumanization #qualifies (0.75) — Emanuele Castano, On the Perils of Glorifying the In-group, 75