Twentieth-century visual satire offers many examples of human-insect hybrids to represent a repulsive parasitism and insidiousness, casting particular human actors as invasive species that infest otherwise healthy and beneficent societies. Arachnoid monstrosities are a special subcategory represented here in several images of eight-legged menaces that stretch out across threatened territory or spin webs, lying in wait for ensnared prey.

Then there is the octopus, a cephalopod sharing the alien repulsion of the spider with its bulbous head and mass of eight tentacles. It is used in many images to represent imperialist powers and other antagonists with a monstrous overreach, an enemy that attacks on multiple fronts simultaneously, stretching out in multiple directions to seize territory, goods, power, and influence for the inhuman blob of its head-body.

اسماعيل صدقي - يعنى «الفلت» ده موجود وحا يبقى دبان؟ يخي ديهدي

(Isma’il Sidqi - Look here, I’ve got the “flit” [bug spray] but the flies are still around! Brother, what’s going on?), April 1, 1932

Artist unknown

al-Kashkūl № 568, 1932

Egypt, Arabic

Highly authoritarian Egyptian Prime Minister Isma’il Sidqi (1930-1933, 1946) was particularly known for his repressive tactics during the 1930s. Sidqi and this periodical, al-Kashkul, had become major critics of Egypt’s Wafd party in the 1930s, and Sidqi is seen here trying to keep the flies, likely other politicians, at bay, but not doing so successfully

El fascismo. 7a Conferencia. El fascismo japones

(Fascism. 7th Congress. Japanese Fascism), 1939

Isidoro Ocampo (1910-1983)

Mexico, Spanish

In this 1939 anti-fascist poster from Mexico, Japanese emperor Hirohito is represented as an enormous looming hairy tarantula prepared to descend on a map of China.

Halte à l’impérialisme communiste!

(Stop communist imperialism!), 1972

National Front

France?, French

Communism is depicted as a giant tarantula, climbing up from Africa to strike at Europe. Morocco, Angola, and Djibouti, countries that the right-wing National Front considered under threat from communism, are highlighted on the map. In fact, only Angola was communist. A quote misattributed to Vladimir Lenin at the top reads: “We will turn Europe [to communism] through Africa”.

Паук семейства СОИ

(The SDI Spider), 1987

Матвей Борисович Мазрухо (M. Mazrukho) (1911 – 2000), verse text by В. Капралова (V. Kapralova) (dates unknown)

USSR, Russian

The United States appears as a giant spider with missiles for legs. In the center of its web is the acronym for the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars” — the Reagan-era, space-based, anti-missile defense program. The text reads: “The SDI spider/ Weaves its web/ And there’s no peace for the planet/ As long as this continues.” Billed as a defense initiative, its elaborate network of military technology was viewed by the Soviets as a form of imperialist expansionism.

Pax Britannica, 1943

Giulio Bertoletti (1919-1976)

Italy, Latin

Giulio Bertoletti depicts the English John Bull as a voracious octopus using his tentacles to pierce the globe in several points: Greece, West Africa, East Africa, and the Caribbean. The English octopus’ stranglehold on the world provides an unjust peace.

«Папаша» возносит своего Маленкова

(“Papa” Raises Up His Little Malenkov), 1952

Николай Олин (Nikolai Olin) (1909-1978)

Сатирикон (Satirikon), №15, 1952

Germany, Russian

An aging, white-haired Stalin is shown hoisting his upstart protegé, Central Committee Chairman Georgy Malenkov, appearing here as a grotesquely bloated flea — a blood-sucking, flightless, parasitic insect. The caption reads “‘Daddy’ raises up his little Malenkov. He who is born to crawl, takes off and flies.” The name Malenkov is very close to the Russian word for “child” or “little one”: malen’kii. The word here is meant to infantilize Malenkov, and also ironically gesture toward his obesity. The last sentence is a parody of a passage from Maxim Gorky’s “Song of the Falcon:” “He who is born to crawl cannot fly.”

La Piovra Britannica

(The British Octopus), 1940

Artist unknown

Supplement for issue 9 (1940) of the youth newspaper Il Balilla

Italy, Italian

This is the cover of a children’s book published by a subsidiary of the Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, the largest publishing company in Italy. John Bull sits astride an octopus which has its tentacles planted all over the world. A Blackshirt (the paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party) is using his ax to chop off the tentacles and free the world of the British threat.

Pasifikte: Japonya - Ahtapotu görünce kırdığım potu anladım!..

(In the Pacific: Japan - Seeing the octopus, I just realized that I have made a great blunder), 17 Şubat/February 1944

Ramiz Gökçe (1900-1953)

Karikatür, vol. 17 no. 425

Türkiye, Turkish

Japan is represented by a man with stereotyped East Asian features, wearing the imperial chrysanthemum seal on his hat and standing in a boat with the Imperial Japanese flag. He looks onto a giant octopus meant to be the United States. By February 1944, the United States was winning the war against the Japanese in the Pacific. This caricature sees the Japanese as the small enemy overpowered by an American octopus military taking control of the sea.

محمد بدر الدين بك مدير الامن العام في صورة اخطبوط

(Muhammad Badr al-Din Bey Director of Public Security in a picture of an Octopus), October 4, 1922

Artist unknown

al-Kashkūl, No 68, 1922

Egypt, Arabic

As an octopus, Muhammad Badr al-Din Bey has his hands/tentacles in many things. The caption on the bottom reads “The octopus is an eight-legged marine animal famous for its toughness and long reach.” As director of Public Security in Egypt, Muhammad Badr al-Din Bey was likely involved in above-board and below-board acts, in order to carry out his job as he saw fit.