The whole point is that the self-fulfilling prophecy and their own cruelty which created the victims is exactly what threatened them later. One reducto-as-absurdum hypothetical I give of this type of self-fulfilling prophecy from fallacious logic is that if group A decided that say, all redheads were all vicious bandits who would kill them on sight and therefore should be killed, guess who is now incentivized to kill Group A on sight?
"The Spartans were a threat to Helots. the French to Black Haitians. the reich to the Jews."
justification, doesnt transform a victim into a threat.