Andrew Tate’s Hollow Vision for Men

[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Earlier this year, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage caught hell for declaring that controversial social media superstar Andrew Tate “was a very important voice for an emasculated” generation. Member of Parliament Alex Davies-Jones, among others, slammed Farage, telling the Guardian that Tate was a “dangerous misogynist who is facing multiple charges of human trafficking and sexual offences – and it is inexplicable that a politician would praise him.”

Both Farage and Davies-Jones are right. Tate is a dangerous misogynist who has nevertheless become an important voice for the emasculated.

It has become impossible to talk about the state of manhood in the West without addressing Tate’s impact. A former kickboxing champion and shrewd self-mythologizer, Tate, 37, is seemingly ubiquitous across the internet. His name is one of the most-searched on Google. His TikTok videos have been viewed billions of times, shared through a massive network of followers. His influence among many millions of alienated young men and boys is arguably on a scale equal to that of Jordan Peterson.

Tate’s notoriety stems from two things: his flaunting of an extravagant lifestyle (expensive cigars, suits, and watches, and a fleet of flashy supercars) and a reputation for outrageously misogynistic statements and behavior. The latter have gotten him kicked off a reality TV show and banned from virtually every social media platform. But as he sees it, any publicity is good publicity.

Tate himself proudly admits that he grew wealthy from his lucrative pornographic webcam business and related pyramid schemes which he ran out of Romania, a country he said he moved to because the government there is more corrupt and sexual assault allegations are taken less seriously. He and his equally unscrupulous brother Tristan made millions by romancing dozens of young women and then manipulating them emotionally to participate in a business model he has readily admitted was “a total scam” – not only of the female employees he admits he cheated but the lonely suckers his webcam girls sponged, sometimes for their life savings. Tate went on to launch “Hustler’s University,” a $50-a-month online program designed to teach young men essentially how to imitate his own success exploiting women. He even offered a “PHD Program” (“Pimpin’ Hoes Degree”) which is just what it sounds like.

Some on the political right nevertheless admire the glib, charismatic Tate for a few reasons: he has made valid conservative observations condemning the decadence of the modern West; he repudiates feminism and promotes a strong, unapologetic vision of masculinity; and he calls for men to embrace more traditional relationship roles like protector and provider. In a two-and-a-half-hour interview last year, media maverick Tucker Carlson treated Tate with almost giddy admiration and seemed to take everything he said at face value, which is a serious mistake where Tate is concerned.

The conservative impulse to latch onto the celebrity Tate as a political ally is also a mistake, because he is an execrable role model. His legion of male fans, who are justifiably fed up with a feminized culture that batters them for their “toxic” nature, sees Tate as someone who has it all: he’s a former champion athlete who advocates for men to improve themselves through self-discipline and fitness training; he’s “living large” surrounded by the kind of expensive toys that appeal to young men; and he lives on his own terms and doesn’t cower before feminist outrage or cancel culture. He represents to them a peak virility which flies in the face of a culture that celebrates gender-bending celebrities like singer/actor Harry Styles, who poses in dresses on the cover of Vogue.

But the showy facade of Tate’s lifestyle conceals a spiritual and moral abyss. Even a cursory investigation into Andrew Tate turns up abundant, damning video evidence of his own statements exposing him as a master manipulator (or in his own words, “ice-cold hustler”), a ruthless exploiter of women and the young men he claims to be inspiring, and a morally repugnant egotist.

As if this weren’t concerning enough in terms of the kind of masculinity he promotes, a revealing development in the Tate saga is his recent conversion from Eastern Orthodox Christianity to Islam. “Islam is the last true religion on the planet,” he had declared even before his conversion. “Christianity has no power left,” he said, because Christians do not defend their own God, whom they allow to be mocked and disrespected in the culture.

“Muslims are the only people who defend their religion – they defend their beliefs, they refuse to be mocked,” Tate says in another video. “People don’t openly stand up and disrespect Islam – because they’re afraid.” In his mind, Islam is the true religion simply because it will likely be the last one standing. It’s irrelevant to him that the reason people are afraid to mock Islam is not because it is true or worthy of respect, but because its fundamentalist adherents have been known to respond to disrespect with murder and mayhem. What attracts Tate to Islam is not principles, truth or spirituality, but the fact that it projects a fearsome, hypermasculine strength.

The self-proclaimed misogynist Tate seems drawn to Islam also because, in its most fundamentalist incarnations around the world, it enforces a strict and even brutal sexism against women. In one video, Tate openly expresses his desire to find an “Islamic-ass” wife, alongside whom he would keep a pile of rocks “in case she gets fresh,” referring to the sharia practice of stoning women to death. I don’t think this is what Tate’s conservative fans have in mind when they think he advocates for traditional male-female relationships.

Andrew Tate is not a champion of young men; he is an exploiter of them – of their anti-feminist resentment, their youthful craving for worldly status, their marginalization in a feminized West. His admirers will one day find out the hard way that his hollow, materialist vision for men is a dead end.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior