This reminds me of Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “thought terminating cliché.” The Holocaust by bullets on the eastern front could be rationalized by the Germans through simplistic statements such as “It’s awful and inhuman, but such is the way of war.” Similarly, the concept of racial Darwinism appeals to nature to justify atrocities. In both cases, an appeal to a deeper, unchangeable logic lets the perpetrators make the appeal that they’re morally impotent.