The video was filmed in 2017, three years before the murder. We see Mickael Philétas, 35 years old, aviator glasses, closely trimmed beard, speaking to the camera, in front of a library dripping with personal development treatises. Like real YouTubers, he starts by greeting his viewers, around a thousand people. Here is the “virtuoso of seduction”, he intones, his wrist broken, his index finger pointing downwards, mimicking an orchestra conductor.
In a strong voice, despite his stammers and his omissions of text, the apprentice videographer asserts his truths on masculinity. A man, he says, must be “aggressive”, “dominant”, to seduce. Behave as an “alpha”, like the “alpha males” that we see in animal documentaries, and who punch to the death to subdue their peers and mate with the female of their choice.
His channel never really caught on. His crime will put an end to this fad. On January 29, 2020, at 2 a.m., this father infiltrated his ex-partner’s house, in Ecquevilly (Yvelines). He stabs her eighty times. The man she was with that night suffered the same fate, but against all odds, he survived. Mickael Philétas is arrested, tried, and in February 2024, the Yvelines Assize Court sentences him to life imprisonment.
“If you don’t have strength, you’re useless.”
During the investigation, the police decided to review his 1,300 videos, all with the same tone. He depicts men as gorillas, inevitably intimidating, and women as followers. We hear him say: “If you don’t have strength, if you aren’t virile, you’re useless. […]. A woman cannot have this kind of energy.” Investigators and magistrates wonder: could his vision of gender, which he recounts from tutorials to rants, have played a role in his move to the act ?
In the world of Mickael Philétas, there are the “alphas”, proud, powerful, authoritarian. And then the rest: the women, the children, the men who are not there, too nice, too accommodating. A reading modeled on old scientific treatises on animal behavior, where the term “alpha male” was born. “It’s a fantasy idea of the naturalness, of the authenticity of man, quite common in certain masculinist communities, and even in part of the general public,” explains Mélanie Gourarier, anthropologist at the CNRS and author of Alpha Male, seduce women to appreciate each other between men (Threshold, 2017).
From bodybuilding classes that slip into carefully crafted identity pamphlets, a bridge is thus built, linking what these men believe to be true, in nature, and their vision of society. “Man is an (evolved) animal, and there are alpha males in many living species on Earth (including mammals close to us), we can therefore accept the idea that there are alphas in humans”, regurgitates, all in syllogism, Fabrice Julien, 142,000 subscribers on YouTube, also a seduction coach.
From bodybuilding classes to identity pamphlets
What happens, according to them, among mammals, would thus dictate gender roles, to the point of justifying a certain male superiority: “If she sees you as an alpha, she will be happy that you take your place as leader, your place as a man, your rightful place […] A feminine woman is cooperative”, interprets Vinc Wolfenger, 47,000 subscribers. “If you are a feminine man, your wife will become masculine and castrate you”, concludes, with a turned face, Killian Sensei, 189,000 subscribers, “alpha claimed “.
David Mech, 87 years old, pocket vest screwed to his chest 365 days a year, knows nature. Much better than YouTube or TikTok, a platform on which the hashtag “#alphamale” has 900 million views. What makes his mustache tingle, which he wears long and bushy, are wolves. The American dedicated his life to the study of these canines. He is one of the greatest specialists. And also one of the first to popularize the expression “alpha male”. To his great regret.
In 1970, after numerous expeditions to follow wolves in semi-captivity in American national parks, the zoologist, more at ease with animals than with journalists, published The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. A scientific summary of what he thinks he knows about these animals threatened with extinction. He describes the internal struggles he saw between young specimens to become pack leader, the “alpha”. “All of this was completely misinterpreted,” he laments today.
Scientific fake news
The wide open spaces, the adventure, and the aura that the animal enjoys are seductive. His book is appreciated. The concept of “alpha male”, first introduced in 1947 by Rudolph Schenkel – under a different definition – was until then reserved for obscure scientific details. It finished at the top of bookstore sales in the United States. And infuses, from newspaper articles to television shows, from philosophy to the same personal development books that Mickael Philétas highlighted when he launched his channel.
Except that, for around twenty years, scientists have agreed that this vision of animal relationships is false. In 1999, David Mech published a corrective study. What he observed was actually the exception. In the wild, wolves do not operate in packs, but in families. No alpha male, but a dad and a mom, who share tasks so well that it is difficult to distinguish their role. And no fighting for the throne or mating. “Young people of childbearing age leave their family, find a partner, then bond with him,” summarizes the person concerned.
The correction made by David Mech has reached consensus, but has not made an impression on the general public. Especially since other works have in the meantime supported the bellicose alpha, giving the impression that nature is like this, everywhere, all the time. This is the case of Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, published in 1982 by the Dutchman Frans de Waal. This primatologist, scientific figure, will also spend the rest of his life fighting against the secular interpretations that will be made of his work, until his death in March 2024.
Alpha males cuddling
“Yes, we can say that chimpanzee societies are brutal and patriarchal, but these observations have since been qualified and weakened by the existence of other relationships,” explains Elise Huchard, CNRS primatologist at the Institute of Human Sciences. evolution of Montpellier. Alpha males console and groom their peers, sometimes appear empathetic. They have a repertoire from which they draw, summarizes a study published in 2008, in American journal of primatology. Elements already highlighted by de Waal in the 1980s, but reaffirmed since.
No offense to those who use it, the word “alpha” does not designate specific behaviors. “In scientific literature, it is simply the individual who occupies the best social position, when society is hierarchical, which is not the case all the time. That is not at all how we sees it in everyday vocabulary, which conveys a lot of confusion,” summarizes Krista Milich, anthropology researcher at Washington University in Saint Louis.
Among chimpanzees, females do not dominate, but still influence collective decisions. And, in other species, such as bonobo, they are the “alphas”. They can fight or form alliances. Or even “inherit” the leadership position. This is also the case with hyenas, for example. “In this species, social privileges are transmitted by birth. If the head of the second family is very fertile, and has more daughters, therefore more support, she can try to make the revolution,” continues primatologist Elise Huchard.
Trump’s Favorite Alpha Male
Enough to ridicule the “thinkers” of personal development, who since the 1990s have dressed up their thoughts in this way: to succeed in business, be “alpha”, to lead a team, become “alpha”, to regain confidence, think ” alpha”, we can read in these works. To be better, become better, we could translate. Even today, these bad interpretations persist, particularly in politics, where the term is still used, often with virilist undertones.
“He’s not an alpha male,” said Nicolas Sarkozy by François Fillonin the middle of the 2017 presidential election. “Macron-Sarkozy, a five-year term between alpha males”, headlined Opinion in April 2022. In the United States, one of Donald Trump’s advisors, Nick Adams, has made “alpha” his business. He distributes the attributes he associates with them as soon as he can, with a certain art of excess. “An alpha male doesn’t care about the time change because he gets up every day at 4 a.m.,” he writes on X. Or again: “Alpha males drink beer […] The betas snack on vegan tapas.”
Among masculinists, whose radical and misogynistic content filled Mickael Philétas before he killed his ex-partner, there is also the idea of a superior male due to his build. In nature, these gentlemen would necessarily be thicker, except for rare exceptions. Here again, the idea was first considered scientifically true, due to initial observations in this direction, notably those of Charles Darwin. Before evolving.
Not so strong males
According to a study published in March 2024 in Nature, in 55% of cases, the female, at least among mammals, is of equal or greater weight to the male. To obtain such results, the researchers did not simply take all known species. Too easy: certain groups of animals of the same type are closely observed, others not, which is subject to bias. Like pollsters, they preferred to constitute “representative” samples of each group (ungulates, felines, rodents, bats, etc.).
Enough to call into question the idea, also very widespread, that by nature, females would systematically “choose” the largest, strongest males, and thus would be Homo Sapiens. This is the other big idea of the extremist groups which operate online, notably the Incels, these “involuntary celibates”: sexual competition would be unfair; puny men would inevitably be left behind, one would only have to have the size of males in nature to be convinced of this. Again, a false interpretation.
Especially since “selection” does not mean “choice”. In many cases, the one who is “selected” is none other than the one who survived the hazards of a wild life. Being the tallest can be a disadvantage: long-legged ibex fall from cliffs more often than others. “And above all, we cannot deduce, from a corner of the table, truths in humans,” scolds primatologist Elise Huchard. Infanticide is quite common among primates. Fortunately, no one extrapolates and attempts to legitimize these crimes among humans!”
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