This government proceeds to implement an absurd economic policy under which employees pay money to employers while receiving money for shopping. The result is deep social division. Other politicians, appearing in human form and defending the public interest, oppose the policy, prompting the government to smear and marginalize them until it succeeds in enforcing its agenda and ultimately drives the country into economic catastrophe.
This imagined conflict forms the plot of Ian McEwan’s novella The Cockroach, in which he satirizes the irrational conduct of British politicians after Brexit in 2016. McEwan uses the symbolism of that repellent insect—one that typically hides in walls and sewers—to expose how instinct, selfishness, and incompetence came to dominate the perceptions and behavior of political actors in policymaking. Through this literary device, he criticizes the rise of economic nationalism in Europe and the United States, especially after populist leaders came to power, raising slogans of isolationism while practicing trade protectionism.
Published in 2019, McEwan’s novella was inspired, in reverse form, by Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, written in the early twentieth century. Kafka’s novella criticized the triumph of human functional value over human dignity within the capitalist order. It tells the story of an ordinary worker who turns into an insect, is rejected by his family, loses his job, and suffers estrangement from himself and his surroundings until death becomes his final release.
This literary use of animal symbols in political or social questions expresses a kind of magical realism that blends imagination with reality to uncover hidden meanings behind human phenomena. At the same time, it gives weight to a symbolic approach to modern politics through imaginative rationality. Through this lens, the complexity of political phenomena can be understood and influenced by borrowing material and immaterial symbols.
This approach has been accumulated through the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, George Herbert Mead, Michel Foucault, and others, who sought to explain how symbols become instruments of influence, communication, discipline, and control over political, social, and cultural structures, as well as tools for mobilizing political crowds, reinforcing legitimacy and identity, and managing political competition.
From this literature emerged the concept of symbolic politics: the discourses, actions, and activities in which symbols in their various forms are used for political purposes. Within this politics, leaders, governments, and groups may employ the characteristics of animals and patterns of interaction in the jungle to represent and generate political meanings such as power, status, and identity, and to frame public perceptions.
Examples include the American eagle, the Chinese dragon, the Russian bear, the British lion, and others. Conversely, animal imagery may be used to insult opponents by invoking the attributes of weak or despised creatures, such as insects, rats, or pigs, to stigmatize them.
This pattern of use appears in times of peace and war alike. When political discourse borrows the attributes of a particular animal, it is not merely projecting those attributes onto human interactions; it also reveals how political actors imagine their goals and practices, whether present or future. Israel, for instance, chose the slogan “the roaring lion” for its recent war alongside the United States against Iran. The phrase is primarily inspired by the Lion of Judah in the Torah and is meant to convey power, deterrence, and intimidation of adversaries.
Israel’s “Roaring Lion” symbolism invokes power, deterrence, and biblical identity in wartime discourse.
The choice of this animal symbol is inseparable from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s view of the Middle East as a “predatory jungle,” one in which Israel cannot afford to be merely “a villa in the jungle.” Before the war against Iran, he said: “If you do not go into the jungle, the jungle will come to you.” This was a telling reference to the shift in Israel’s strategy since the 7 October attacks: from containing threats to pre-empting them.
This shift has operated on two main levels: first, the creation of buffer zones in Israel’s immediate regional surroundings, including Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza; and second, the weakening of more geographically distant regional powers, foremost among them Iran.
Yet the political deployment of animal symbols raises broader and more troubling questions. These concern the dehumanization of the other and the production of divisions within societies and between states, particularly given the multiple meanings carried by the same symbols, as well as their intersection with the fault lines of political conflict at home and abroad.
This analysis seeks to explore these dilemmas by examining the characteristics of animal symbols as forces that express political meaning, why they are so familiar and closely linked to the interpretation of political phenomena, and how metaphors drawn from the animal world can push modern politics toward an instinctive condition.
The power of animal symbols: Representing meaning and framing behaviour
In the famous cartoon Tom and Jerry, a symbolic conflict unfolds between two animals: a small mouse and a cat far larger than him. Yet the smaller animal always prevails by virtue of intelligence and skill, in a paradox that is not merely comic but also breaks with ordinary assumptions about life, in which the cat usually defeats the mouse.
This imagined reversal may encourage human beings to grasp the relativity of basic concepts such as strength and weakness, and to realize that an opponent can be overcome, whatever their size or power, through intelligence and cunning.
Yet an underlying meaning of conflict always surrounds the relationship between Tom and Jerry. This is a meaning that the Western capitalist imagination absorbs into its understanding of human interactions, from society to politics. Although there are brief moments of peace and alliance between the mouse and the cat when a common enemy appears, the two parties in this symbolic struggle resort to all kinds of violent weapons without either of them dying. This is not only for artistic and imaginative purposes, but also to keep the state of conflict renewable, continuous, and endlessly repeatable.
When the cartoon first appeared in 1940, it aimed to ease the psychological burden on Western societies during the Second World War. Yet as it spread globally and continued across decades, it became one of Hollywood’s sources of power in disseminating capitalist entertainment culture during the twentieth century. This also exposed it to criticism from psychologists, sociologists, and political scholars, who saw in it a cognitive normalization of conflict and violence. It was also accused of racial bias against Black people, particularly through the negative stereotyping of the Black female character Mammy Two Shoes, who cleans up the chaos caused by Tom and Jerry’s battles.
The hidden meanings behind the animal symbolism of Tom and Jerry may be interpreted differently from one social culture to another. Yet at their core, they reveal the strength and appeal of the animal symbol as a communicative tool capable of representing and generating diverse, expansive, and suggestive meanings. This is a powerful effect that applies, to varying degrees, to symbols more generally: signs, marks, words, images, colors, persons, living or non-living objects, and others.
In politics, such symbols may take many forms: a leader, a historical experience, a place, an institution, national anthems or flags, memorials, religious icons, animals, and so forth. They express the connection between a society’s heritage and its political, social, identity-based, and cultural present. They may also pass from one generation to another and become entrenched over time, either in the same form, meaning, or interpretation.
Alternatively, the meanings of symbols may change, or the symbols themselves may be marginalized or erased from human memory when the contexts that produced them change, as happens when some countries change their national flag after the fall or transformation of political regimes.
Animal symbols, as living visual metaphors, acquire particular political significance compared with material symbols such as flags, places, and anthems. They can penetrate perceptions quickly and influence behavior because of their appeal to human beings, their ability to simplify ideas and issues, and their psychological effect on emotions, feelings, and imagination. They can also become a means through which societies escape restrictions on freedom of expression.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors, whatever their type, fundamentally govern our perceptions and daily behaviors in all their details, because they shape the conceptual system through which we organize our understanding of others, judge their actions, and respond to those actions. Ammar Ali Hassan similarly argues that politics does not revolve around facts alone, but also around the power of metaphor, which leads to actions driven by, inspired by, or seeking to realize that metaphor in reality.
Language, from which metaphor is born, is therefore a central force in the political process. It may precede, justify, and accompany political action.
When political metaphors take the form of embodied, living symbols such as animals, they become more familiar and more capable of expressing meaning. Projecting animal characteristics onto political actors—whether leaders, governments, or groups—or onto their patterns of interaction creates imagined associations through which leaders and publics perceive events, ideas, and political issues without mediation.
In other words, invoking an animal symbol in political discourse turns abstract meaning into something tangible and familiar—something that both supporters and opponents can grasp quickly.
Once a political actor describes himself or his supporters as lions, for example, he summons the attributes of those animals: power, ferocity, and predatory behavior in pursuit of objectives. Conversely, when he describes his opponents as insects, he implies their insignificance and their susceptibility to being crushed. Yet when politicians borrow an animal symbol, they do not merely import a single meaning or behavior associated with that symbol.
They also implicitly borrow the wider structural context of animal interaction in the jungle: hierarchy, relations of strength and weakness, and the projection of these patterns onto a political reality that may already suffer from imbalances of power.
The meaning politicians borrow from the animal world may not be accepted or agreed upon by all, because animal symbols differ in their connotations and in the extent to which they can be used in public discourse from one social culture to another.
The donkey, for example, may be used in some cultures as a political insult by invoking stupidity. In other cultures, however, it is viewed as a symbol of effort, perseverance, and labor. This is why the American Democratic Party uses the donkey as its electoral symbol, owing to its historical associations with the struggles of the working classes against the Republican elephant, which symbolizes size, wealth, and power.
The donkey and the elephant show how animal symbols can become enduring markers of political identity.
The political borrowing of animal symbols is also governed by a mechanism of highlighting and concealment. That is, invoking an animal attribute and the meaning that follows from it may be selective, depending on the situation, the purpose of its use, and the cultural context.
When Muammar Gaddafi sought to humiliate those who rose against him in 2011, he described them as “rats” and called on the people to control the situation—a message that implied confronting them with violence.
In that speech, the rat metaphor was tied to its negative meaning in the human imagination: filth, danger, disease, and the need for extermination. In this way, the perceived meaning of the animal symbol was transferred into a behavioural direction. Yet rats themselves have benefits for human beings in other contexts and cultures, whether in testing medical serums or in wartime mine detection.
Thus, the animal symbol does not merely express political meaning; it also helps frame political behavior within categories and constructs on the basis of which particular expectations can be built. When a leader, state, or group describes itself as a lion or a fox, the issue is not only the transfer of an animal attribute to the human world. The description also leads us to understand and interpret the behavioral traits of the political actor: ferocity in the case of the lion, cunning in the case of the fox. It then shapes our expectations of how that actor may respond to future situations.
As the animal attribute becomes continuously associated with the political actor, it becomes part of his public image and legitimacy before the audience. This may push him to conform to that image when making decisions or adopting positions, in a dynamic resembling a self-fulfilling prophecy. Accepting an animal metaphor in a political context may therefore help explain subsequent events through the automatic orientation of future behavior.
Here we may return to the Israeli example mentioned at the beginning of this analysis. The choice of “the roaring lion” as a symbol for Israel’s recent war against Iran implicitly formulates a behavioral tendency toward the use of force and toward ferocious conduct, unconstrained by normative limits, in the pursuit of political objectives. Netanyahu and the Israeli far right seek to embody this political meaning and behavioral framing to preserve their image before supporters and opponents alike.
This may make it possible to anticipate their reactions in future crises, while keeping in mind that understanding the behavioral characteristics of a political actor is only one tool among many complex and interconnected instruments of political forecasting.
Human-Animal connections: Between the familiarity of symbols and biology
Because form and meaning cannot be separated when animal symbols are borrowed in politics, the lived connections between human beings and animals add a deeper dimension that enhances the familiarity and appeal of this type of symbolism. Animals are partners in human societies, whether as domestic creatures that bring daily benefits, wild creatures that represent threats, or biological tools that supported the transport of soldiers in ancient wars, such as horses and donkeys. This role evolved in modern wars, where animals have been used to detect mines, while military tactics have drawn inspiration from them, such as the swarming behavior of bees.
Human identification with animal traits in battle was common in ancient Rome and Sparta, where the wolf was used to encourage citizens to identify with it as a model of the fierce ideal warrior. The same animal was later invoked by Nazi Germany as a symbol of loyalty, courage, and cruelty, to the point that Hitler’s headquarters during the Second World War was called the “Wolf’s Lair.” The roots of such identification are linked to the social function of the totem, as a symbol of an animal, plant, or inanimate object that distinguished clans and reinforced their cohesion in primitive societies. According to Durkheim, members of a clan would take the name of the totem because they believed in a spiritual relationship with it, sometimes reaching the point of sanctifying it and forbidding its hunting or consumption.
This totemic model was reproduced in the modern state through imagined associations between loyalty to the nation and the animal symbol of certain societies. Hindus in India, for example, sanctify the cow and link it to their religious and national identity, seeing it as representing motherhood and abundance because it produces milk. They therefore reject its slaughter and support its legal protection. This has generated political controversy in India, especially because the Bharatiya Janata Party has supported this approach against the Muslim minority, which rejects it because of the losses it causes farmers. This dispute led an Indian court to suspend a law banning the sale of cows for slaughter in 2017.
Human links with the animal world deepen further because the attributes borrowed from animals into politics have been transmitted through a long accumulated heritage of stories, myths, and religious and social cultures. For this reason, the political uses of animal symbols do not always correspond exactly to their biological realities. The tales of Kalila wa Dimna, translated by Abdullah ibn al-Muqaffa from Indian literature and containing moral and political advice, entrenched stereotyped attributes of certain animals that became part of political and social cultures.
In the story of the lion and the bull, Dimna, the jackal, deceives the lion king and pushes him to kill his friend Shatraba, the bull, by claiming that the bull is plotting betrayal and rebellion against him. As a result, qualities such as cunning, deception, shrewdness, and the stirring of political discord became associated with the symbolism of animals such as jackals and foxes. Yet these animals also possess other attributes, such as sharp intelligence, adaptability, and maneuverability when dealing with danger and threats.
Animal symbols in Islamic culture have also carried cognitive, protective, and solidaristic meanings and functions that were absorbed into political cultures. The crow, for example, taught Cain how to bury his brother Abel after killing him, while the dog accompanied the youths who believed in their Lord and remained in the cave for hundreds of years. Yet Islam’s prohibition on eating pork has been weaponized as a counter-symbol by far-right extremist groups in hate crimes against Muslim minorities in the West. Extremists have used pigs’ blood and body parts to attack mosques in Europe and the United States, a phenomenon that grew with the spread of Islamophobia after the attacks of 11 September and then intensified with the rise of far-right anti-immigrant movements over the past two decades.
These material and symbolic connections between animals and societies helped produce an understanding of conflict, survival, cooperation, and alliance in politics from a biological perspective. This perspective assumes that human interaction resembles a living organism in its developmental cycle and interactions, as in Darwinian evolutionary theory. From this emerged famous theories such as the notion of Lebensraum, which views the state as a living organism with expansionist needs that grow as its population increases, pushing it to resort to force against its neighbors. This theory was used to justify Nazi aggression and military expansion during the Second World War.
The biological perspective also linked wars in the human world to patterns of animal conflict, on the basis that both are products of instinctive aggression for self-defense and survival, which may take forms of organized violence. Violent conflict occurred between two groups of chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1970s, and again in Uganda in 2015. In both cases, divisions within chimpanzee communities emerged because of the death of leaders, competition over resources or females, and then developed into civil wars marked by systematic killing that lasted for years. Some scientists, however, have suggested that this unprecedented pattern of violence among animals may have resulted from human pressures, such as interference with food sources and the shrinking of natural habitats.
Many political scientists reject the biological interpretation of war because conflict in the animal world is natural within the context of ecological balance and the protection of biodiversity. Among humans, however, war is not the product of instinctive factors alone, but of acquired factors within the social environment. Moreover, human conflict is far more destructive because human minds and knowledge can produce instruments of exterminatory violence against others that far exceed the capacities of animals.
Indeed, ethological studies of animal behavior have shown that conflict among animals often involves a form of “ritualized fighting,” which aims to subdue rivals through displays of power for mating, leadership, influence, or protection of food without causing severe physical harm or death, as in battles among lions. There are also other patterns of cooperation, empathy, solidarity, and even fairness in food distribution, as observed in some primate communities.
Brian Massumi, in his book What Animals Teach Us about Politics, challenges the traditional human view of the animal world as nothing more than a brutal Hobbesian war of all against all for survival. He explores cooperative dimensions that stand alongside aggression in animal behavior, calling for political inspiration to be drawn from these aspects of the animal world rather than focusing exclusively on competition and conflict. For this reason, the use of animals, whether as symbols or as living entities, may assume diverse dimensions in political discourse and practice. They may serve cognitive, protective, aggressive, solidaristic, or even promotional purposes designed to elicit sympathy.
Uses of Animal Symbolism: Identity, Image, and Simplification
In 1945, as the Second World War was nearing its end, George Orwell’s Animal Farm was published. The novel offered a political critique of Stalin’s totalitarian system through the borrowing of animal symbols and their patterns of interaction. The pigs take control of the farm after expelling its owner, Jones, who represents the monarchy, because of his mismanagement. Yet the pigs’ roles diverge: Napoleon represents the tyrant, Stalin, who monopolizes power; Snowball represents the reformist, Trotsky, who is expelled from the farm; Old Major represents Marx, the aged thinker who preached the principles of the animal revolution but died before it erupted; and Squealer represents the media mouthpiece who justifies every decision made by authority, whatever its nature.
The dogs raised by Napoleon became his instrument for confronting any rebellion against him. Boxer, the horse, represents the working class, whose strength is exploited in building the windmill before it is betrayed and sold when it is no longer able to work. Benjamin, the donkey, represents those silent figures who understand the corruption of conditions on the farm but do nothing. Finally, the sheep symbolize the collective herd that repeats slogans without awareness, even after the pigs dominate the farm and distort the principle of equality into the famous formulation: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
In this novel, one of the landmarks of twentieth-century world political literature, Orwell succeeded in using animal symbols cognitively to understand political phenomena. Through them, one can explain why political regimes fall, how revolutions turn into authoritarian systems, when socialist principles contradict reality, and how security and media mechanisms control societies.
The novel also exposes the dangers of class inequalities that benefit a small group monopolizing power and resources. By using animal symbols, the plot gives these mechanisms a generality that transcends time and place, turning them into defining traits of authoritarian politics.
Yet the nature of animal symbols allows them to move beyond cognitive purposes in understanding politics toward other functions: shaping collective identities, building the internal and external image and reputation of the state through soft diplomacy, intimidating adversaries, and more. The dilemma is that such uses may encounter problems that obstruct their effect in reality, because these symbols possess multiple voices and meanings that may even contradict one another. Just as this multiplicity can be a source of political influence, it can also fuel conflict, division, and competition. This can be seen in three fields, among others.
First, national identities. Leaders and governments invoke animal symbols in politics to help shape national identities. These symbols build a collective imagination through shared values, meanings, feelings, and emotions within society, allowing citizens to feel the identity, attributes, and values of the nation by transferring them from the abstract to the tangible. It is easy, for instance, for Americans to establish an imagined link between the eagle and values such as freedom, superiority, and leadership. The same applies to Russians when they consider the connection between the bear and the meanings of strength and the capacity to confront external threats. The effect of these shared feelings on identity formation increases when the animal itself is part of daily social life or of the country’s historical heritage, and the values through which it seeks to define itself before the world.
For this reason, political leaders may invoke animal symbols in speeches before their societies to connect them with identity and collective cohesion, especially during major political changes or existential threats such as wars. During the Second World War, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill defied Nazi attacks on his country by saying that if they bombed Britain, they would find a lion’s den, not a poultry farm or sheepfold. In doing so, he connected the identity-based meaning of the country’s national animal, the lion, with courage and cohesion in the face of enemies.
By contrast, an animal symbol may contribute to sharp divisions within a state when it intersects with political, economic, and social factors that inflame identity conflicts. This is the case in Catalonia, which seeks independence from Spain and has adopted the donkey as a symbol of patience and regional identity in opposition to the raging bull as a broader Spanish animal symbol. These divisions become more complicated when the animal symbol moves from a mythic, imagined logic that shapes national identity into a tool used to justify the superiority or domination of one group over another within the state.
In Sri Lanka, the sword-bearing lion on the national flag refers to the Sinhalese majority, while the leaves surrounding it represent Buddhist virtues and values. This lion symbolism is drawn from a myth suggesting that the Sinhalese were born in this country from the union of a princess and a lion. It has been politically deployed to justify Sinhalese political, economic, and ethnic dominance over other minorities such as Tamils and Muslims.
In Sri Lanka, competing animal symbols became tied to national identity, ethnic hierarchy, and civil conflict.
To confront this, the Tamil minority chose the tiger as a counter-symbol expressing courage in the face of Sinhalese oppression. This animal symbol became the emblem of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which fought a decades-long civil war in protest against ethnic exclusion. Even after the war ended in 2009, the word “tiger” continued to mean, in public discourse, rebel, terrorist, or someone who practices violence for political ends. This differs from Western and Middle Eastern uses of the phrase “lone wolf” to describe a terrorist who launches a violent attack without being linked to violent organizations, showing how closely the political metaphor of animal symbolism is tied to the particularity and culture of societies.
Second, political image. Animals have become both material and symbolic political tools in constructing political image and reputation at home and abroad. Because of the emotional connection between the public and animals, animals have become part of the political capital that leaders use to market a positive image of themselves, one that carries meanings of compassion, kindness, and concern for animal rights before public opinion.
American presidents, for example, have been keen to own dogs and appear with them before photographers’ cameras at the White House. Although Trump was an exception to the culture of presidential dog ownership, he nevertheless honored Conan, the dog wounded while being used by the US military in the operation that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the terrorist organization ISIS, in 2019.
Externally, animals enter into the soft diplomacy of states to strengthen bilateral relations. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister after independence, pursued “elephant diplomacy” to reinforce the image of his country as a peaceful and neutral power by sending elephants as gifts to other countries, including Japan and the United States. China has similarly practiced “panda diplomacy,” gifting or lending pandas to national zoos in other countries for specific periods.
This political use extends from times of peace into times of war, where animals become symbols for mobilizing strategic sympathy. Ukraine has done this during its current war with Russia in several ways. First, it has built a humane image of the Ukrainian army by filming soldiers rescuing and treating animals and posting such material on Ukrainian Instagram accounts. Second, it has turned animals into national heroes supporting social resilience, as in the case of Patron, the dog that became a national symbol for its role in detecting mines during the war. Third, it has used animal symbols as a source of financial support within the “economics of kindness,” using animals such as the Ukrainian cat Stepan to raise donations for the war effort.
Yet soft political uses of animals in building political image and reputation may face constraints that limit their effect in reality. China’s panda diplomacy has been affected by tensions with Japan over Taiwan, as Beijing retrieved the last pair of pandas from Tokyo this year. Likewise, the Indian elephant, which Nehru used to portray post-independence India as a peaceful state, faced opposition at the time from right-wing currents that saw the animal as a symbol of docility, slowness, and heaviness because of its great size.
The same applies to dogs. Although they are used politically in some cultures to represent a positive image capable of generating support and sympathy, this does not prevent their use in other cultures to produce negative images. Orwell symbolized dogs as instruments of repression in Animal Farm. Naguib Mahfouz used them in The Thief and the Dogs to express corrupt forces in society that run after money, women, and power. Dogs may also be invoked as political insults and as a mechanism of self-defense when power balances are disrupted. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insulted former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman in March 2018 by calling him “son of a dog” because of Friedman’s statements legitimizing settlement activity, causing diplomatic tension at the time.
Third, political simplification. Animal symbols perform a functional role in simplifying political meanings for the public, as discussed earlier when examining the characteristics of symbols. Yet the ease with which such meanings reach the public may also create problems of credibility because of the possible gap between the symbolic and the real. If a political regime adopts animal symbols that embody its pursuit of strength, while people do not feel that strength in reality, the result is a false animal symbolism.
The simplicity and appeal of the political meaning generated by animal symbols may increase the likelihood that emotion will overpower rational thinking in public opinion when evaluating political positions and behavior. Simplification may then become a form of political deception used to justify certain policies. The United States used the image of Marjan, the lion in Kabul Zoo who lost one eye because of a grenade, as a political symbol to simplify Afghanistan’s suffering under Taliban rule and draw public sympathy in support of US military intervention after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Yet that intervention itself failed after two decades, and the Taliban returned to power.
This symbolic simplification may also produce dangerous reductionist images in the public imagination, causing people to ignore complex details or other aspects when evaluating political situations. It may lead to the dehumanization of the other by confining that other to an animal attribute. Psychological studies suggest that such stigmatization, which reduces opponents to a single image, may also aim to immunize the group performing the stigmatization against any attempts to change its views.
In the 1990s, the Hutu prepared the ground for genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda by describing them as “cockroaches.” This negative image served as a form of reduction and humiliation of an ethnic group whose internal complexity and diversity were erased to strip it of humanity. The negative symbolism here sought to send two messages: one of internal solidarity among the Hutu, and another of the Tutsi’s killability.
The problem of symbolic reduction moves from the dynamics of internal conflicts to international competition when the Chinese dragon is viewed as pure evil in Western culture, even though in Chinese local culture, it is a mythical creature associated with rain, prosperity, and leadership. For China, therefore, it is a peaceful rather than threatening symbol. Yet this negative Western reduction of the dragon merges with rising geopolitical anxiety about China as an emerging global power, producing misunderstanding and potentially amplifying the perceived Chinese threat to the West.
Back to the Jungle: The Drift Toward Instinctive Politics
The political uses of animal symbols, with the cognitive and behavioral identification they may involve and the dilemmas they raise, warn of a transformation of domestic and international politics into a pattern that may not differ greatly from animal interactions in the jungle, particularly in their aggressive dimension. Reason, values, and norms recede, and politics becomes an instinctive, savage, and predatory condition aimed at survival and governed by the principle of force. The prospects of instinctive politics increase amid uncertainty, wars, rising geopolitical competition, economic crises, weak institutions, and violations of international norms and laws.
These contexts may help explain why politicians and thinkers increasingly borrow the word “jungle” in their discourse to describe global politics. Sometimes this is done from a racialized perspective, as when Josep Borrell, the former EU foreign policy chief, described Europe as a “garden” and the rest of the world as a jungle threatening it. At other times, it is used as an explanatory framework, as when the American theorist Robert Kagan argued that our world is returning to the jungle because of American isolationism and retreat from leadership during the Trump administration, even though Washington itself had established what he called the “garden” after the Second World War, meaning the liberal international order.
This metaphorical political consciousness of the jungle as a context or environment containing the interaction of animal symbols is inseparable from what is happening in real-world politics. There is a growing tendency to strip the other of humanity by placing him at the level of animals to violate his rights, including the right to life itself. This was evident when former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as animals after the 7 October attacks, language that served as a prelude to the genocide carried out by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza war.
Trump also repeatedly described the Iranian regime as “animals” because it had “killed thousands of protesters.” He even threatened to erase it and destroy its civilization if it did not submit to his negotiating conditions during the recent war. Stephen Walt viewed this pattern of Trump’s politics, which recognizes no rules, values, laws of war, alliances, or international institutions, and which practices coercive policies against states through tariffs, as a form of “predatory hegemony.” He argued that this would lead to an even greater weakening of Washington’s global influence.
Finally, in such a jungle, where political discourse and practice regress into an instinctive condition, the options for dealing with it are themselves derived from the meanings of animal symbols. One must either be a strong hunter like a lion, a weak prey like a rat, a subordinate like a hyena feeding on the remains of prey, or a creature resisting predation like the honey badger, which dares to confront animals larger than itself despite its small size. Alternatively, one may seek a path to survival by drawing inspiration from mechanisms of collective solidarity, as seen in communities of bulls, elephants, and bees.
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