Ayn Rand? Aleister Crowley? How exactly do you get there? What Rubicons do you cross? It's not the justifications I'm interested in, but the critical moments of thought.

My guess is that Ayn Rand at least applied a "reversed stupidity = intelligence" heuristic. She saw examples of ostensible altruists committing great evil - and from there generalized to the opposite extreme - since altruism leads to evil, the only good must come from selfishness.

(Just to be clear, I am not defending Rand here.)