But projection is basically the asshole version of empathy. It is trying to project the future behavior of others by imagining what you would do in their shoes. So if you’re filled with violent impulses and barely manage to contain them, you figure that other are the same. If you’re basically a good person, you figure that most people are basically good inside. We pretty much model other people’s internal thinking on our own because our own internal life is the only one we have real access to.
I would argue that caring for others and being a complete asshole are both survival strategies that the process of evolution has bequeathed us all with. Even craze white supremacists venerate the sort of “brotherhood” of a community of like-minded people. But of course whether kindness or violence dominated our worldview varies widely between and within people. As an ideology, white supremecy appeals, as you said, to those who are deeply misanthropic.
