Donald Trump's agenda, which he is implementing as the head of the world's leading power, follows a vision that is as coherent as it is disturbing: the masculinist counter-revolution. Of course, the law of the strongest and territorial claims has long been derived from values traditionally linked to masculinity, as demonstrated by European imperialism in another era.

However, we'd be missing Trumpism's profound originality if we didn't acknowledge that, in addition to this predatory instinct for money, the environment and women, there is also a desire for reconquest rooted in the masculine ego. Transferring the MAGA ("Make America Great Again") spirit to men, Trumpism promises the restoration of masculine "greatness." To halt the decline of a supposedly emasculated society, men in power will give power back to men.

This reassertion of control revolves around five themes: the virtue of violence, aimed at intimidating or humiliating opponents, whether political adversaries or foreign leaders; salvation through technology, seen as a form of "masculine energy" (in the words of Mark Zuckerberg) capable of sweeping away the old world's rules; misogynistic essentialism, which dictates that men are destined to lead the world while women are meant to satisfy or serve them; slander turned into arguments, insults into proof, lies into truths, vulgarity into civility, all in the name of a "freedom of expression" that allows hatred to be unleashed on allied social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram); and the rewriting of history in the style of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the Scottish historian and author of On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History, who argued that a handful of conquerors shaped the course of humanity, reducing the rest to an amorphous mass. Greenland or planet Mars, such will be the frontier of these "great men."

Institutional machismo

In this mythology, where resentment and messianism jostle for prominence, men take center stage, seen as inherently superior. Intersectionality is needed to understand how their supposed qualities, sources of pride and markers of authority reinforce one another to establish the new macho society.

You have 80.03% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.