The ‘Madmen’ of Politics Provide No Explanation for Our Age of Chaos

The cultural obsession with individual psychology obscures systemic questions which must be asked of the social and political structures in which we live, writes Rafael Holmberg

The recent foreign policy tremors around Israel, Iran, and the US reawakened a familiar sentiment. The journalist Jonathan Sacerdoti labelled the Iranian leadership psychopathic; while an article by Bill Curry, a former White House counsellor to President Bill Clinton, asked whether a “mental condition is driving Trump’s foreign policy”; and a BBC News item sought to explain “how Trump is using the ‘madman theory’ to try to change the world (and it’s working)”.

But the suggestion that this age of chaos can be explained by the ‘insanity’ of its world leaders is flawed.

Much of the international community has condemned Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, with Benjamin Netanyahu often framed as the fanatic behind it all. Perhaps this is so – but it fails to shift the frame onto the type of international stage that rewards and sustains such a figure.