The point is, though, it’s not a child. It’s not a “bad group.” It doesn’t have emotions. It is a predator which exploits your empathy in order to kill you.

That may be true within the context of the fiction, but that fiction itself exists in a context in which fascists did and do give this exact justification for killing the children of minority groups. That real world is where the people engaging with the story exist and so that context is going to color their reading of the story.