Projection functions to justify aggression against minorities who are believed equally aggressive

Evidence

If you are a psychological functionalist it is not enough to label prejudice as projection. One must ask what is projection for? What is its utility for the prejudiced person? One answer is suggested by certain quotations from the interviews. A man who bought a fur coat for his mother from a Jewish salesman took advantage of the fact that the salesman misread the price tag and so quoted a price one hundred dollars below that on the tag. “That was a case where I out-Jewed a Jew.” “I am not particularly sorry because of what the Germans did to the Jews. I feel the Jews would do the same type of thing to me.” Finally, “I think the time will come when we will have to kill the bastards.” The prejudiced person has aggressive impulses but he dare not direct them at members of the in-group. He can direct aggression against minorities if he believes the minorities are themselves aggressive and so deserve to be attacked. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 549

Categorization

• SEED: The stark sequence from a minor cheating anecdote to “kill the bastards” traces how minor justifications cascade into genocidal rhetoric — an article angle on escalation mechanics.
• XREF: Connects to Milgram’s escalation and to the functionalist account of sacrifice as stabilizing hierarchy in the ‘On Sacrifice’ article. — connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: Ours, True, and the Identity That Defends Both”