Counter-extremism workers have warned of a rapid rise in the number of cases being referred to them by schools concerned about the influence of the self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate.
Incidents include the verbal harassment of female teachers or other pupils and outbursts echoing Tate’s views, which are disseminated and spread mainly on social platforms TikTok and Instagram despite him being banned from them.
Tate was arrested in Romania in December on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group to exploit women. He denies wrongdoing.
Frontline practitioners delivering the government’s counter-extremism Prevent programme told the Guardian that he was a factor in cases dating into last year.
Their warnings come amid criticism of a review of Prevent by William Shawcross, which concluded last week that the misogynistic “incel” subculture, whose women-hating adherents have been drawn to Tate, was not a counter-terrorism matter.
Dr Tim Squirrell, of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a counter-extremism thinktank, said misogyny of the type peddled by Tate was “falling through the cracks” of counter-extremism policy.
“Tate clearly represents a risk of radicalising young men into misogynist extremism. This kind of extremism is not currently considered for support under Prevent unless it is accompanied with a recognised ideology, eg incel/extreme rightwing/Islamist. That’s a problem,” he said.
Frontline workers handling cases under the Prevent programme in different parts of England who spoke to the Guardian told of dealing with cases referred to them where Tate was cited and also trying to help teachers understand a whole new lexicon of words they were hearing but did not understand.
“There are cases such as where a kid draws a swastika or say that they want to join Isis. The inclusion of Andrew Tate within that – in small and bigger ways – is quite new,” said one.
Another said: “From September he’s just accelerated from nowhere to become a primary issue for schools that I have been dealing with. He obviously doesn’t fit within the Prevent sphere but incels do. He is parallel to them and has a crossover. When I’m in schools I find myself describing him, effectively, as toxic misogyny on steroids.
“It may have been the delayed effect off the back of young people talking more about him after he lost access to some of his social media platforms, but we started to see a rise before Christmas, in terms of schools telling us about pupils really challenging staff, such as cases where pupils have said to female teacher: ‘What do you know, you’re a woman, you can’t teach me anything. Your place is in the kitchen.’”
Tate, while claiming to have converted to Islam, has also had close links to far-right figures including his fellow Luton native Tommy Robinson. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was spoken of fondly as a “solid guy” by Tate, who has associated with far-right figures including the British conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson and the US “alt-right” activist Jack Posobiec.
“Tate’s conversion might be a stunt, but what it has done is feed into that kind of unclear and very messy ideological aspect that is now affecting a larger cohort of pupils in schools. Not only do you now have, for example, white kids who were drawn to him before but now you now have young English Muslims too,” said one of the Prevent workers.
Another, who pointed to examples of pro-Islamic State platforms sharing Tate’s “content” added: “So we’re in a position where we now have to acknowledge he has those connections to those extremists spaces, but when a school comes to us for help, he is not necessarily our remit.”
The referrals do not always progress under Prevent. Some get passed back to Safer Schools partnerships, others go under safeguarding due to concerns about a pupil’s own wellbeing or result in support being offered to families.
The warnings about Tate’s influence come as the home secretary has committed to an overhaul of the Prevent strategy after endorsing the Shawcross review.
In a reflection of some increased awareness of misogynistic ideologies as a priority, separate Prevent statistics published last month listed incel as a discrete category.
Senior counter-terrorism officers regard incel as an “emerging risk” making up 1% of all referrals to the anti-extremism scheme in the year to March 2022 – 77 cases – though Shawcross said he agreed with the UK’s deputy senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism policy that it was not a “terrorist ideology”.
“Incel violence against women could well be classified as a form of hate crime,” he stated in his review, adding: “Such individuals may also be driven toward suicide and self-harm due to psychological distress rather than violence against others.”
However, Squirrell said Shawcross was wrong about incels because the ideology had demonstrated itself as a driver of mass violence in numerous instances worldwide, such as the killings in Isla Vista, California, in 2014; in Toronto in 2018 and 2020; and in Tallahassee in 2018.
In the UK, he also pointed to at least one Terrorism Act conviction – that of Gabrielle Friel in Edinburgh– where the offender was influenced by incel ideology, and one act of mass killing – by Jake Davison in Plymouth in 2021 – where the perpetrator was involved in incel ideology.
“Incel ideology isn’t the only misogynist ideology, or even the one that causes the most damage in absolute terms, but claiming that it is not and shouldn’t be considered a terrorist threat is misguided,” Squirrell said. “It also cannot be dealt with under hate crime because – and you would hope that Shawcross would know this – misogyny isn’t included in hate crime legislation.”
A government spokesperson said the online safety bill would require technology firms to protect young people from being exposed to harmful material online and enforce their age limits. The teaching of online safety is also being reviewed.
“To help schools protect children, we have made relationships, sex and health education a compulsory part of the curriculum and are strengthening our guidance for schools on how to be alert to issues such as misogyny and gender stereotypes,” they said.
