Resisting Trump’s Fascist Politics of Human Animalization: The Canaanite Woman, Jesus, and Gentile “Dogs” as a Paradigm

This essay brings the nascent field of dehumanization studies into conversation with an uncomfortable moment of dehumanization in the early Christian movement: namely, Jesus Christ’s animalization of a Canaanite woman and her gentile kin as “dogs” (Matt 15:26–27). Recent scholarship on human animalization has shown that dehumanizing animal metaphors have an uncanny ability to hijack humans’ moral inhibitions against killing one another. Too often, animal metaphors have been wielded to legitimate structural and direct violence against the oppressed, including serving as a precursor for enslavement and genocide. In the context of the United States, animal metaphors thrive in Donald Trump’s fascist politics and far-right MAGA movement to scapegoat and essentialize immigrants as subhuman creatures. Disturbingly, this anti-immigrant foment is especially pervasive among adherents of White Christian nationalism. To confront this moment of democratic backsliding and Christian power worship, this essay brings recent scholarship from dehumanization studies into conversation with animal metaphors in Greco-Roman antiquity and Trump’s fascist politics. This background is then brought to bear on Jesus’ confrontation with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28. The essay concludes with reflections on how Jesus’ changed mind and benefaction toward the woman’s daughter undermines White Christian nationalists’ nativist and dominionist interpretation of Matthew’s Great Commission.