I'm not so impressed by some of what I see on his Wikipedia page, such as his attitude towards Trump. But I'll see if I can find that book. (He appears to have written many books.)

For me, "animalism" refers to the upshot of conservative policies, disregarding the conservative's rhetoric in its entirety. Mind you, that's only a hypothesis which can be falsified by presenting a form of conservativism that (1) doesn't entail animalistic policies and (2) contrasts profoundly with liberalism/humanism.

"Mitigating" human nature could be a euphemism for "deferring" to that nature in practice, when doing so makes good on the conservative's authoritarian personality and sustains the dominance hierarchies she prefers (i.e. patriarchy, vast economic inequalities, the virtual slavery of the indebted lower class, the flagrant sociopathy of the aristocrats, etc).