Perpetrators must justify violence to themselves to lift self-sanction restraints

Evidence

Whether it is the “anarchic” type embracing revolutionary rhetoric, or the “nationalistic” type seeking redress of long-standing grievances and an independent state; whether it is left wing or right wing; and whatever the sociopolitical context might be, secular terrorists face the same moral predicaments. They have to justify the morality of their violent means to win public support for their cause. But even more important, they have to justify it to themselves so that they can remove the restraint of moral self-sanction to inflict death and suffering without being haunted by guilt. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2209

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that self-justification precedes guilt-free action is testable — does the self-justification always come before, or can it be retrospective? Bandura’s mechanism normally says anticipatory.
• XREF: This is the core Bandura mechanism — moral self-sanction as internal restraint that must be disengaged — connecting to vault claims about how policy supporters rationalize harm. — connects to: Aggressors strip victims of human status to justify their own violence; Genocidal perpetrators must first hate their own humanity; Dehumanizing victims lets perpetrators disengage self-sanctions for mistreatment
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2209