Merkel, May and Clinton and the return of the angry white man

Last year looked like a breakout year for female leaders in the western world. In June, Theresa May became prime minister of the UK; in early October, Hilary Clinton was in the ascendant (she was widely viewed to have thrashed Trump in the televised debates and ahead by a considerable margin in the polls); and Angela Merkel's role as German Chancellor since 2005 seemed unshakeable, as the longest-serving leader in the EU and G7 since 2014.

Now the tide has reversed. In November 2016 Clinton loses to Trump. In June 2017 May is shocked to have lost her majority in government, relying on the DUP as a crutch. In November 2017 FDP leader Christian Lindner pulls out of negotiations to form a coalition with Merkel's CD/CSU party in an apparent attempt to humiliate and weaken her leadership. Across the Western world, female leaders are humbled and punished for the 'hubris' of leadership in a way that will be familiar to any woman who has tried their hand at authority in arenas dominated by men.

In each case, who is the prime cause of this humbling? An angry white man. It may come as a surprise but the Donald, Jeremy Corbyn and Christian Lindner have two things in common: they use charisma to marshal anger at traditional modes of leadership; and they are men in a role traditionally occupied by men.

This combination has proved immensely damaging to female leaders, alongside declining privileges for white male populations, rising inequality, polarisation on the causes of declining privilege and an outraged sense of economic unfairness. For some portions of the electorate, whether consciously or unconsciously, it's a counter-revolt against the fruits of the feminist advance that has taken place since the 1960s.

Many perceived weaknesses of May (much as I dislike her e.g. for, among other things, her anti-immigrant values) and Clinton are amplified by a sense that they neither fit the iron lady role of past Anglo-Saxon female leaders nor the caring humane role traditionally desired in women; and that in walking the tightrope of a public persona they lack the charisma of their male opponents.

But I think it goes deeper than that to activity going on in the prefrontal cortex. Male privileges over female do not exist just in the human kingdom, but also in the kingdom of the great apes - and particularly our nearest ancestors, the chimpanzees. (I highly recommend Jane to everyone reading this; an astonishing film if you don't know the Jane Goodall story.) In the book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson show how male chimpanzees engage in intra-group hierarchical violence, violence against females and extra-group murdering raids. The most senior women rank below the least senior men. And just as in human beings, their behaviour is influenced by both logic and prefrontal cortex-mediated emotion.

So when many of us in the electorate are feeling emotional and want to pin the blame on others for things not going our way, naturally we point at the women at the top, unnaturally usurping traditional male authority. Sometimes they've got to power due to intra-group violence in the males of their party - witness May's easy path to power following the Johnson-Gove fiasco. And since the election in June this year, May has increasingly become a shield for the men advancing Brexit. She takes the flack so they don't get hit.

Why have these angry white men returned? 
1. The credit crunch, austerity, intra-EU tensions caused by state debt crises, and a general sense of malaise at the uneven gains of the past decade have all created a huge amount of anger. All of these issues seem to be caused by some remote logic, which makes sense enough to the technocratic governing classes, but little sense to the man in the street. Canny political actors have channeled this anger against the status quo.

2. Angry men are much more enchanting than angry women to the public at large. Angry men have figured out what's wrong with the big picture and they will forge a new path forward round the traditional thinking that sidesteps the technocracy seemingly at root of the malaise. Angry women are emotional and volatile and shouldn't be selected as leaders. Or so perception dictates. When sensible pragmatic, yet mutter Merkel becomes too much of a mutter and opens the border to immigrants, that's a step too far in caringness and must be stopped.

3. The internet has led to polarisation and media segmentation. The herd reactions, so brilliantly, sickeningly observed by Burke, are much easier to manipulate with micro-targeting. It shows in instant media online exactly who you should be angry with and who against. Stirring videos show the glorious angry white man in all his silverback glory telling it like it is; while the woman (excluding Merkel) robotically repeats worn political cliches that allow her to pass in the political sphere without being labelled emotional. And this polarisation plays both to the angry men of the radical left (Corbyn), right (Trump, Farage, AfD, Davis) and centre (Macron).

4. Traditional white male privileges are perceived as threatened. In the US, Trump says the threat is China, Mexico, North Korea - it's the yellow men, the olive men, the brown men. In the UK, it's nostalgia for the days of economic imperialism laissez-faireism when Britannia ruled the waves and never never never shall be slaves. In Germany, UK and the US it's the immigrants stupid. And this threat to the white order has parallels with threats to the masculinist order, parallels that tend to be exploited by the angry white men.

So when will we next see the political ladies in the ascendant? Not for a good long while, I'd guess, though Merkel may pull off the unexpected in the next few months. The political world of 2017 looks more like me and I'm angry about it.