Monsieur Pelicot, who drugged, raped and sold his unconscious wife to strangers was described by her as ‘a good chap’ when police came for him. Even afterwards, she makes clear in her book that reconciling his mostly charming nature with his horrific crimes against her is a major problem she wants readers to tackle. He was not a monster all the time.
The same has been said by a victim of Epstein in another recent interview: he was fast-talking and to the point, but also witty, charming and horrifically evil. At first she and her friends were put very much at ease. He was not a monster in every word and deed.
Many campaigners point to this as evidence that even seemingly good men are guilty of the original sin of sharing a sex with such criminals. But I think it links to societal attitudes more broadly. We promote good-natured and charming people to positions of power because of their charisma, taking it as either a partial balancing factor against incompetence or dishonesty, or else as the only factor for judging someone. Big organisations that I have worked for prioritise ‘relationship management’, including of a person’s own managers, over doing the job with insight, speed or rigour. We value ‘fit’ at interview, a euphemism for whether the interviewer liked someone. So in fact, we treat prickly, rigorous and honest people as seedy and difficult, and value as ‘good chaps’ people who display affability that is, in fact, entirely unrelated to moral worth.
Or perhaps affability is itself a sign of immorality, as smoothing social life can displace honest behaviour and shows a lack of concern for wrongdoing. For example, one should be angry and upset about politics, and anyone who can breezily crack a smile and reassure you that life is fine is clearly unaware of or unconcerned about the situation. A bit of prickliness and raw honesty is a sign of principles and boundaries.
It is not the case that all men are bad because even good chaps can be bad, but instead that what some people value as making someone a ‘good chap’ is wrong. What makes many people feel at ease and comfortable is a calming mist that obscures the truth. The truth will sometimes, or maybe often, make you uncomfortable, and anyone who blankets you in a thick haar of cosy happiness is consciously or unconsciously allowing you to be deceived. It might be a priest preaching that eternal life should stop you worrying about death, or it might be an abuser who does horrid things but has thereby given himself the energy to be exceptionally charming the rest of the time, but it is all a bad thing.
People like to cite examples of quiet outcasts finally snapping: ‘it’s always the quiet ones’ becomes a refrain that allows the ‘good chaps’ to continue to bully innocent and awkward weirdos, who become more weird and resentful as a result.
In a recent podcast, Marina Hyde of the Guardian said of Epstein, based on reading some of the files, “Someone introverted, quite awkward, someone who is palpably creepy and sleazy”. In her mind introverted and sleazy are natural bedfellows: she is happy to condemn maybe a quarter of the population as sleazy based solely on not being quite as outgoing as everyone else. Charismatic people put her at ease, and the feeling of sleaziness is an opposite of feeling at ease. But those feelings aren’t a good way to judge whether someone is good: she should have listened to the interview given to her own organisation. There is no trustworthy instinct that reliably tells you ‘this is a wrong ‘un’ and ‘this person is good’. Some bad people can’t hide it, but many can and do.
‘Good chaps’ are the ones who can get away with bullying. The ones who got along with the rugby teacher and were selected for matches despite actually doing worse at any of the training. It was a ‘good chap’ who was allowed to join the expedition to cross an ice cap in place of a quiet friend of mine, but who lost his tent’s food while out there so that we had to turn back: a ‘good chap’ who failed to turn up to any training, bought his way in and then failed us all. ‘Good chaps’ at university were the ones who laughed and partied in the big main undergraduate social group but never spared a thought for the misfits except maybe to laugh at how weird they were. While the weird outcasts were probably regarded as likely to end up in prison for unspecified seediness: a seediness that came entirely from knowing themselves to be scorned and unwelcome, and therefore were not as friendly towards those unwelcoming people.
I have been well aware all my life that the people most regarded as nice are often not. For me sleaziness comes from those men and women who are full of bonhomie even with strangers: the people who are unjustifiably friendly. Some are merely privileged never to have been caught out by being friendly with someone who hurt them; or privileged never to have been rejected and therefore learned more caution. But many rely on their friendliness as social capital which they then freely spend: to blag favours, wangle jobs they do not deserve, and, of course, balance out suspicions or wrongdoing.
It is not just the charismatic who use social capital. Some feminists like the idea, such as Catherine Hakim who proposed that women use men’s desire as ‘erotic capital’ to manipulate life in their favour.
Those of us who were born awkward and unattractive have no such social capital. The slightest sign of suspicion makes us socially bankrupt: we are spurned and outcast. We must walk the line between wrongdoing and having personal boundaries with rigorous precision. Too giving? You’re a creep and a loser trying to buy goodwill. Too pushy? You’re a creep and very quickly a genuine criminal. Unfailingly polite, neither pushy nor giving? You’re a wet fish, a boring nonentity. And glad for it, as it’s the best of the three categories. Although it is also true that many shy and awkward people grow to hate that judgement, resent their social poverty and their misfortune in the world of social capital, and willingly explore the other two categories.
Cultivating some friendliness weighs on the other side of the scales from these things. And that means that many people forgive, or overlook, abuse or warning signs. Charisma obscures the truth.
I am glad that women are recognising that charismatic people can be nasty too. I resent that some are tarring shyer people like me with the same brush and missing the truth entirely.
We have the old proverb about the way to judge societies being how they treat their most vulnerable members, and the same applies to individuals. It is not the case that since the most nice-seeming men can be bad that all men must deceitful, nor that people you previously perceived as less nice than ‘good chaps’ are less nice than criminals: it is that you were deceived and your standards are in error. How charming anyone is to you is not a measure of how good he is: what matters is how uncharming he can be to anyone. Change your standards of judgement, rather than keeping everyone on the same scale and dropping it a lot for everyone.
When someone gives you an instant warm feeling, that’s just a feeling. It’s not a pseudo-magical route to truth. It feels good and you like feeling good, but it’s not just Epstein and Pelicot who will deceive anyone who relies on feelings. Salespeople all over the world do this, as we know well. From the estate agent who has a rapid patter of friendliness, but glosses over the details that will cost you, to the scam artist on the phone trying to sell you a fake upgrade, to the pig butchers who try to make you fall in love online, all make their victims feel warmth towards them. They use that warmth, and no ‘sleazy introvert’ will have any such warmth to spend.
Personal boundaries are important, as is being able to trust and love. Maybe by recommending the former I will annoy people who think that the latter solves all ills, but I have seen and experienced bullies, men and women, try to abuse and manipulate others thousands of times in ways large and small, and I see all the harm in the world that comes from trusting charisma.
Too many people treat good behaviour as a karma-based system, in which if you do some good you are better, and you earn mysterious ‘goodness points’ that you can spend elsewhere. Charisma is a hack that makes many people give you free goodness points. And then people do good things for the charismatic and spend the warm feelings they have given themselves on rejecting the socially poor, needy and vulnerable: on malicious gossip, cruel jokes, exclusion. If we judged people as they are, not on how they make us feel, we would be truly moral. Instincts and feelings are no route to morality, which is grounded in principle, and therefore in clear thought.
The greatest example of all the problems with charisma, perhaps, is in politics. Why oh why do we require our politicians to be ‘someone I’d share a drink with at the pub’? I’m not the first to note that the random loudmouth propping up the bar is probably bad at running countries. Why do we want to feel warmth towards the stranger obeying the party whips in Westminster? Why does his commitment to goodwill and interpersonal relationships matter when (if) he skim-reads his twentieth departmental briefing and makes a snap judgement about whether the donor he spent dinner talking to is right, or whether the civil servant whose careful analysis has been reviewed, sliced and diced has a point?
Britain (but not me) trusted Boris Johnson because he was funny and charismatic. He was good at evading questions and no-one cared enough about the answers; instead ‘we’ were all swept up in his bon mots and cod Latin. ‘We’ trusted Tony Blair with his charm and spin; somehow ‘we’ fell for David Cameron, even more spin and less charm. It’s true that Keir Starmer is regarded as wooden, as was Theresa May, proof that incompetence is separate from charisma. But the worst the country has experienced has come from believing sweet-talking politicians. People are somehow falling for Nigel Farage, a schoolboy bully, wealthy stock trader and now grifter who entirely falsely gives the impression of being a charming member of the working classes.
These politicians we fall for are fundamentally dishonest and incompetent. Incompetence is a subject for another time, but charm: charm gives people the freedom to get away with wrongdoing. The more charm you experience the more you will forgive. And that means that Marina Hyde is entirely wrong to link introversion and creepiness. If more of us felt a surge of revulsion at skilled sales patter or social eels slipping into any situation with ease, as I do; if more of us had principles instead of feelings; we would see far fewer problems.
That means starting at home, with the person in the mirror. It’s not ‘all men’ being nasty, nor the establishment being inhumanly selfish. It is everyone’s tendency to forgive people whom we like; to brush away worries or suspicions when things feel good. Yes, those in power who fail in this all-too-human way have more effect on us: that’s the nature of power. But it’s a universal human failing.
