Andrew Tate was largely unknown until this year, but in 2022 his profile has exploded. Then, in August, Tate was banned from all social media — Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter — dealing a painful blow to his Hustler’s University’s online business.
But who is Andrew Tate and what is Hustler’s University?
The short story states that 35-year-old Tate is a self-help personality who revels in misogyny. Tate purports to extol men’s wisdom that will help them “escape the Matrix,” falsely claiming that women have some responsibility for sexual assault and that they lack “innate responsibility and honor.”
Before he was banned, his videos on TikTok and Instagram were viewed billions of times. His main business venture of late has been Hustler’s University, an online course for aspiring alpha males that taught crypto, stock investing, and “freelance”.
“He’s the whole package of the emerging new forms of misogynistic right-wing extremism that we’re seeing,” said Josh Roose of Deakin University, a political sociologist who studies extremism and masculinity. “He mobilizes not only a feeling of insecurity, but also anger.”
After he was blocked by social media platforms, a Tate spokesperson told Bloomberg: “Baning Andrew Tate from these platforms seems like the answer, but it’s not that simple. Removing Tate’s voice doesn’t allow for a kinder, hate-free society.”
TikTok sees it differently.
“Misphobia is a hateful ideology that will not be tolerated on TikTok,” a company spokesman said. “We’ve been removing offending videos and accounts for weeks and welcome the news that other platforms are also taking action against this individual.”
Roose says Tate is an “example of what this [social media] Appropriate regulations have been issued.”
Where did Andrew Tate come from?
Tate started out as a kickboxer and had his first fling in the public spotlight on the 2016 season of British reality show Big Brother. It lasted six days. Tate was kicked from the show after a video appeared to show Tate hitting a woman with a belt and threatening her with violence if she “texts him again”. Tate told The Sun that the video was of the couple “role-playing”. He posted a smiling selfie next to the woman in the video and said they are still friends.
After ending his kickboxing career, Tate started an online webcam company, claiming that up to 75 women, some of them ex-girlfriends, worked for him. In an interview with Britain’s Mirror earlier this year, Tate called the webcam business a “total scam” where women fake “sob stories” to get men to part with their money.
Tate has more recently risen to fame as an online personality who promises to show boys and men how to “escape the Matrix” — short for richer and more successful in women. Before he was booted from social media platforms, he had over 4.5 million Instagram followers as well as 600,000 subscribers on his Tate Speech YouTube account. Videos with his hashtag on TikTok have been viewed over 14 billion times.
Much of Tate’s content has nothing to do with women. Aside from offering advice on how to get rich, he’s also known for his outspoken support of Donald Trump, who he sees as a model “alpha male.” Tate also spoke out against COVID lockdowns and vaccination mandates, despite the extensive evidence showing vaccines are effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19.
What made Tate leave social media?
Tate’s comments about women appear to have gotten him kicked off Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Twitch. Although his political views were polarizing, many of his statements about women were clearly sexist.
Back in 2017, he was kicked off Twitter for criticizing the #MeToo movement, saying that rape victims “have a certain responsibility” to put themselves in a position to be attacked, a false claim aimed at targeting the perpetrators to relieve violence against women. Speaking of married women, the Earn money through OnlyFans, a subscription service known for its sexually explicit content, Tate said they owe their partners money because they’re a man’s property. Explaining why he would never let a woman drive his car, he asserted that women “have no innate responsibility or honor.”
Tate has spoken out against the MeToo movement, claiming it didn’t help women and only served to “destroy” men’s safety. In an old YouTube video, Tate said that “40% of the reasons” he moved to Romania were due to relaxed sexual assault laws.
I didn’t know who Andrew Tate was, but my 12-year-old son did.
Parents, they come for your boys. They market misogyny and racism to cishet white boys in a package that seems appealing. Talk to your kids, have tough conversations. It is important.
– The Bard 💗💜💙 (@Dragonfly_Darcy) August 20, 2022
“Andrew Tate is little different from many other far-right, far-right, and far-right crooks who have come before him,” said Luc Cousineau, co-director of research at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies. “Nothing about this man’s discourse is different … these copycat talking points continue to resonate with a certain subset of demographics because there is an appetite for being told that your ‘right’ as a man is to have dominance and power.” .”
Tate has been banned from Twitter for evading a previous ban, a Twitter spokesman told CNET. Meta booted him from its platforms for violating community guidelines under the “dangerous persons and entities” clause. A YouTube spokesman said Tate was banned from the platform after “multiple violations” of community guidelines.
Since being removed from all of those platforms, Tate has moved to Rumble, a video-sharing platform similar to YouTube that prides itself on being “immune to culture breaks.”
Cousineau said that Big Tech’s ban on Tate might reduce its influence but not erase it, as sites like Rumble provide a haven for speech deemed hateful on other platforms. “Andrew Tate and others like him will not be exposed to millions of new people and receive billions of views in these niches, and the cultural impact of their rhetoric will necessarily be minimized,” Cousineau said.
What is Hustler’s University?
If Andrew Tate’s talking points aren’t new, Cousineau said what sets Tate apart is that “he found a new way to play the current social media landscape.”
This was accomplished through Hustler’s University, Tate’s online self-help wealth building course. It costs £39 ($45) a month, which, according to its website, grants access to 12 “multimillion-fold experts in their chosen field”. Topics included in the course are copywriting, e-commerce, crypto, stocks and freelancing.
According to a report by The Guardian, part of Tate’s social media presence is due to Hustler’s University’s “affiliate marketing” campaign. Hustler’s University members earn 48% commission for each person they refer, the publication reports, and Hustler’s University actively encourages its users to share inflammatory Tate content on TikTok and other social media. Polarizing videos get more exposure, and more exposure means more endorsements for Hustler’s University “students.”
“There are people who say, ‘Don’t promote him and let him fade,'” said Roose of Deakin University. “But that affects our young men. Research I and others have done shows that where older men are typically more distrustful of minority groups, younger men are at a really surprising level, a significant minority, against the idea that women have the same rights as men. ”
“This demographic is being taken advantage of by people like that.”
The move to ban Tate from social media drew criticism from some. Notably, that includes social media personality turned pro boxer Jake Paul, who while speaking out against Tate’s offensive sexism, has spoken out against what he called social media censorship.
Both Cousineau and Roose argue that the ban is justified.
“I understand the argument that people like Tate are being shut off from mainstream platforms and pushing them into niche areas of social media and online where radicalization is growing,” Cousineau said. “But Andrew Tate and others like him aren’t going to be exposed to millions of new people and garner billions of views in these niches, and the cultural impact of their rhetoric is necessarily minimized.”
