Perpetrators can sincerely believe their own cruelty is ethical vengeance.

Evidence

The pernicious legacy of the Holocaust is that today’s persecutors may inflict new pains and create new generations of victims eagerly awaiting their chance to do the same, while acting under the conviction that they are avenging yesterday’s pain and warding off the pains of tomorrow; while being convinced, in other words, that ethics is on their side. This is perhaps the greatest among the Holocaust’s curses and Hitler’s posthumous victories. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 671

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the moral-reversal mechanism in colonial psychology and to Arendt’s banality of evil framework the Islamophobia canon assumes. — connects to: Hereditary victimhood functions as a blank cheque for moral righteousness — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 667; Fraud defendants can sincerely recast self-interest as heroism against banks — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 654
• DEEPTHINKING: Resists one-line summary: self-deception of the perpetrator who fully believes ethics is on their side is a dense, multivalent mechanism.

Related

• Hereditary victimhood functions as a blank cheque for moral righteousness (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Hereditary victimhood functions as a blank cheque for moral righteousness #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 667