Beasts

Images of a variety of mammals have been used to represent different varieties of human brutality. Some are composite beasts or inventions such as Nikolai Olin’s drooling, bull-like, short-legged, long-haired emblem for the Soviet Union. Most, though, are familiar species symbolizing specific forms of moral grotesquerie. Canine images often represent mindless ferocity and a slavish subservience to a master — the pack mentality and blind devotion to the alpha. Porcine figures are used to represent conservative, light-skinned European imperialism, with pigs displaying immoderate appetites and a slothful, gluttonous wallowing in the filth of ill-gotten excess. These images are aimed at a variety of imperialist, colonialist, or socially conservative targets, here Nazis, capitalists, and their enforcers.