On October 19, 2017, Mickaël Philétas gave a “masterclass” for his YouTube channel. He films himself discovering, on Wikipedia, the MGTOW movement (pronounced “Migtao”), an acronym of “Men Going Their Own Way.” “For him, it’s a revelation,” recounted in Voices of Crime David Senate, general counsel during the appeal trial of the man who would become an assassin.
“This fairly recent masculinist movement comes from North America. It brings together men whose common point is to think that in society, men would now be bullied and restrained by womenand that it is absolutely necessary to disengage from any serious relationship with them,” explains the magistrate.
Mickaël Philétas will push this logic to a bloody extreme. On the night of January 28 to 29, 2020, he stabs his ex-partner, Mélanie Ghione, to deathafter breaking into her home in Ecquevilly (Seine-et-Marne), seriously injuring Brayan Hernandez, her then companion, and Mallaury, Mélanie’s sister.
Mickaël Philétas is a man at the heart of a major contradiction
David Sénate, general counsel for the appeal trial
David Senate even speaks of a “conversion” of Mickaël Philétas to this ideology, where “he finds the references which will give substance to his eyes totally irrational intuitions but which are his own.” Especially since the founders of the MGTOW movement, two men who call themselves Solaris and Ragnar, propose “a pseudo-scientific corpuswith an appearance of rationality”, insists David Sénate.
This movement has different “levels”, between men who have cut all ties with women, and those who continue to associate with them, like Mickaël Philétas. David Senate analyzes his behavior: “He is a man at the heart of a major contradiction. He advocates the fight against women but he is emotionally dependent on all women.”
Through his YouTube channel, Mickaël Philétas has himself become a relay of the MGTOW movement in France, with his long “coaching” videos full of misogyny and calls for hatred towards women. This ideologylegitimized his violent acts and his actions“, estimates David Sénate, with a snowball effect in his community. A few months after his arrest, an Internet user commented on the femicide of Mélanie Ghione on a forum according to Slate : “No compassion… It’s one less enemy of our own survival.”
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