Notorious influencer Andrew Tate is under house arrest in his Romanian mansion and banned from many social media platforms but it has not stopped his online campaign of toxicity being spread across the world.
Although banned from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube since August 2022, Tate’s vile misogynistic videos still reign supreme on the newsfeed of many young men’s social media because his fans - some as young as 12 - continue to spread content glorifying him and his nasty views.
“He does not rely on his own accounts and this is one of the reasons why de-platforming him wasn’t particularly effective, but instead he uses a kind of army of boys and young men to post clips of his content,” says Dr Tim Squirrell, Head of Communications & Editorial at the think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue, based in London.
Videos and images are plastered across all platforms of the man known to his followers as Top G - the G is for gangster - often spewing violent hate towards women, and praising Alpha males, usually with a lit cigar dangling from his mouth and blacked-out shades on his eyes.
And these videos were even being shared during his recent prison stint, where he had been held for three months on suspicion of rape and human trafficking, allegations which he has vehemently denied.
One TikTok account @MoneyIsMental, which has more than 574,200 likes, posts clips promoting Tate. On March 16, when he was behind bars it posted a clip featuring women lying in bed in underwear and then Tate hitting a punch bag, with a link to Tate’s get rich quick website The Real World in his bio.
A video shared on April 1 shows TikToker @purplehustler - claiming to be a teenager called Liam Garcia - claiming he had made $100,000 (£790,000) following Tate’s gospel, and filming money laid out on the bed. Another, shared by @success8809 January 19 shows Tate telling a woman she has to be both “beautiful and compliant” in order to keep her husband.
Even in the last few days the stream of supportive posts continued to appear on Instagram, including one from an account called ‘nepthees’ calling Tate a “legendary figure” and adding “He made a conscious choice to improve our lives, and he succeeded in doing so.”
Just this week it was revealed three women are bringing a civil claim against Tate in the UK, accusing him of sexual assault, physical abuse and controlling behaviour. Tate has denied the allegations.
Tate, who was born in Luton but was raised in America, has stated in the past he believes men should be strong, rich and powerful - no excuses or you’re a “loser” - and that women are their property, shouldn’t be able to drive and belong at home.
In one infamous video clip Tate, in a transatlantic snarl, describes how he would act if a woman accused him of cheating whilst holding a machete. “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck.” In another, he claims women as “barely sentient”.
However, these videos aren’t just being shared to promote Tate’s school of thought. They are a way for Tate to make money off the backs of impressionable youngsters.
Former Big Brother contestant Tate - who ran a webcam pornography business with his brother Tristan, 34 - has in part made his alleged £100 million fortune teaching his life and business lessons on a pay-to-view platform previously called Hustler’s University but now called The Real World.
It is named as such because mainstream society is supposedly a fake simulation known as The Matrix; like the simulation from the 1999 film of the same name.
Until last August his followers were incentivised to share videos of Tate accompanied by a sign up link to join his platform. When someone applied via that link the young men and boys got a cut of the profits - working as a sort of online pyramid scheme.
Payment processing company Stripe pulled out last year, resulting in this aspect of Tate’s business shutting down, but The Real World is still promoted online by many of his fans. On the websites ‘students’ can learn courses such as copywriting and e-commerce.
The site itself has over 200,000 members and costs around £40-a-month and is a cesspit of misogynistic memes and hero-worship posts about Tate.
If the numbers on The Real World’s site are to be believed - currently 228,146 members - and they are all paying the $49.99 monthly fee then Tate earned $11,384,485.40 (£9,109,295.99) and counting this month on that platform alone. He also runs an online network called The War Room which he claims has over 2,500 members and costs $5,000 (£4,000) to join, which could make him another $12,500,000 (£10,002,000).
From inside jail the notorious influencer was also able to capitalise on his situation by selling a limited edition t-shirt to celebrate his release on 1 April which is called Freedom, and is emblazoned with a chess piece. In true Tate form the relatively plain garment costs $131 (£104.86) and there are claims he has sold over 1,200 raking in another $150,000 (£120,000).
Dr Squirrell explains that the reason that his followers have not deserted him while he is under investigation for such heinous crimes as rape and human trafficking was due to Tate manipulation.
“He effectively primed his followers to believe that there was a conspiracy out to get him and any kind of action against him was evidence of a conspiracy. Which is the sort of thing you would do if you were a cult leader, whereby you would say the world has been poisoned against us. I am the one who is able to tell you the truth, other people are going to try to tell you that I have done something wrong and the only reason that they will believe that is because they are trying to take me down,” says Dr Squirrell.
This blind following of Tate is having ramifications for the way young boys are behaving at schools throughout the UK. Just last week a video surfaced online of a student arguing with a male teacher in a classroom.
The teenager, standing over the teacher’s desk shouts, “This punishment stuff is going to stop! I am now the alpha…The alpha takes priority over the teacher. The alpha takes priority over anyone. And the alpha doesn’t have to listen...”
Hannah, 30, a teacher at a secondary school in South London, says the name Andrew Tate and his sick teachings arise regularly in her classrooms.
“It is mainly the younger ones, year seven, eight and nine. They have bought his name up quite a few times,” she says. “They say things like, ‘Miss, what do you think about Andrew Tate? I think he’s cool. He’s got so many cars, got so many women and all that kind of stuff.’ I normally try to shut it down straight away.”
Kevin Evrald, 24 and from Viljandi, Estonia, became a fan of Andrew Tate last summer after seeing his videos on TikTok and has even enrolled in his platform The Real World.
“So many men look to him because he says things that other people are maybe afraid to say, and he says these things in a very articulate way,” claims Kevin.
He took a course in E-commerce and says he was happy to have made $150 (£120) in a week, although this is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands many online claim they make using Tate’s formulas.
Kevin is still a fan of the influencer even though he is under house arrest - “My opinions on Andrew Tate haven’t changed.” He says he doesn’t condone the influencer’s extreme misogyny, but takes it with a pinch of salt. “That content is satire, and he’s playing a character for his own benefit,” he says.
But Dr Squirrell says, “I’m really worried that 13, 14, 15-year-old boys are imbibing Andrew Tate content at a really impressionable age, and are seeing that as representative of the kinds of things that we ought to aspire to, and the kinds of gender roles that they ought to impose. It needs a really, really strong pushback from those around them.
“Unfortunately, because they are teenagers, a lot of the time they are pushing back against received authority. And the consequence of that is that they see Andrew Tate as someone who is going against all the kind of authority figures in our lives who’re trying to get them to be one way. So it’s going be quite hard for teachers, parents, etc, to be able to say, ‘Look, you shouldn’t be listening to this guy, he’s bad guy.’ Because they’ll say, ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? You’re part of the problem.’”
Dr Squirrell believes there is one way to shrink Tate’s sphere of influence if he were charged and convicted.
“It’d be very hard for his empire to survive him being in an actual prison for a long time,” the academic says.
Tate, who has lived in Bucharest since 2017, is being probed by Romanian authorities on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking offences.
He was arrested in December along with his brother Tristan, 34, and two women. All of them deny any wrongdoing.
