Andrew Tate’s Empire Proves the Toxic Male is Thriving

Andrew Tate's rise to fame has been rapid but how did someone with such openly misogynistic views build up such a devoted following in a short space of time you got your sword your wife starts talking you're like shut up cook the self-termed king of toxic masculinity who espouses polygamy and Compares women to property is certainly a reflection of the toxic males Unapologetic Resurgence amidst today's metoo backlash but he's also a result of our current culture War obsessed media machine which values and rewards those who Stoke controversy after his early brush with Fame getting kicked off the UK Big Brother due to accusations of abuse his recent online worship and acceptance by alt-right figures like Alex Jones Paul Joseph Watson Nigel farage and Tommy Robinson show exactly how he got his foot in the door to be good at being a man you have to have had a hard life so what specific version of manhood is Tate offering and why is it selling today Tate isn't a politician and his message isn't even overtly political his social channels aren't about who to vote for but instead a kind of Manifesto for masculinity aimed at an audience of young boys who are trying to figure out their own identity most shockingly of all he's retained an army of top G Defenders even after facing charges of organized crime human trafficking and abuse so how does such a morally bankrupt and ethically depraved individual still Garner so many loyal supporters in today's day and age here's our take on Andrew Tate the Pied Piper of misogyny and why so many are dancing to his tune I run Hustler's University which is now currently the biggest online educational platform in the world we have 110 000 students inside of a year thank you Birmingham City University Professor Robert Lawson told Vox that Tate's version of masculinity is such a seductive cell because it combines the idea of the alpha male the man that's in control and always gets what he wants with conspicuous consumption a very Jet Set lifestyle and regressive relationship models where the man is not just the protector but the patriarch the provider Lawson also attributes Tate's popularity with young men to Michael Kimmel's idea of a grieved entitlement the idea that over the course of the last 20 to 30 years the world has changed in a way that has de-centered primarily young white men and someone like Tate is attractive because he recenters young light men and basically says you're important you're needed your masculinity is needed to fight against all of the changes that are happening in the world what underpins Tate's worldview it's his belief that now traditional Notions of masculinity are under threat and he's right it's just that they're under threat because those traditional Notions of masculinity are facing valid criticisms for how they subjugate women and the lgbtq plus community and actually don't even benefit most straight men unless they're at the top of the hierarchy you name the biggest conquerors that you can possibly name from history Genghis Khan Alexander the Great all of them they all had 100 wives bunch of children Big G conquered the world normal in Tate's mind men like him are being pushed out in this new more tolerant World Lawson says Tay tries to normalize misogyny and make it seem socially acceptable by wrapping it in a discourse of rationality and if some of my views based very firmly an absolute professionalism by extension absolute reality come across in a misogynistic tone then that is your problem so in that respect his worldview is aligned with right-wing commentators who are explicitly wading into culture War debates and trying to make the progressive side sound unhinged like Matt Walsh who's transphobic what is a woman documentary is a call for a return to regressive gender Norms are you a cat no can you tell me what a cat is you want to tell us what a woman is but perhaps the reason Tate has taken off with young boys in particular is because his image is very aspirational he's not Jordan Peterson speaking in pseudo-intellectual terms to grown men he's all flashy cars and plush mansions and big cigars speaking in a language young people understand that's me that's me baby big bosses Mr plenty so if Tate is telling people that masculinity is under threat then what they're seeing is that their own ability to get those same fast cars riches women all that is going to be taken away in Tate's pre-influence her career he was a kickboxer and a pretty good one at that he's a legit world champion kickboxer who's a hard man who doesn't buy any [ __ ] [ __ ] this is the image Andrew Tate is selling a bona fide fighter a champion who is now taking on a much bigger battle and because he has this history of success people see it as a battle he could win they're primed to listen to how he got his success and how they could get the same Andrew Tate is a creation of the internet and his popularity reveals just how prone the digital spaces we've come to exist in are to being manipulated an investigation by The Observer revealed that his surge in popularity on Tick Tock was a result of a specific coordinated attempt to game the algorithm and I've conquered the internet I decided to conquer it and I took it and it's all mine followers flooded the site with videos of him the more controversial the better in order to achieve the maximum amount of views one of the dangers of platforms directing views toward controversial material is that while some may initially click due to the shock value they could be increasingly convinced by what they hear like other viral provocateurs Tates No Holds Barred manner of speaking and total departure from politically correct language makes him incredibly appealing to many internet dwellers despite rumors swirling that he's a troll or often in character Tate never drops the facade and there's no punch line or acknowledgment that he's behaving egregiously for some higher commentary or purpose so whether or not his over-the-top performance is in some ways an act of trolling the reality is that too many he's received as entirely sincere and his underlying messages are resonating with fans so regardless of how true this top G Persona is or the degree to which fans take everything to heart the bottom line is the harmful views he espouses have built him an army of supporters if you have strong women it doesn't really matter it's the men that matter so if you have strong men then Society can flourish the guardian Shanti Das writes in less than three months the strategy has earned him a huge following online and potentially made him millions of pounds with 127 000 members now paying the 39 pounds a month to join Hustler's university community many of the men and boys from the UK and U.S we're about to get rich right here Hustlers University this method of gaining traction and building an audience through stoking controversy and manipulating algorithms is becoming a new Norm the divisive brexit campaign in the UK was played out on social media with misinformation allowed to spread unchecked and in favor of the vote leave campaign Donald Trump used similar tactics throughout his presidency leading to the attempted Insurrection of January 6. the people who are paying or maybe not paying just using the system to in a clever way to get at you are not necessarily Pleasant people but nearly a decade after both those events it looks like nothing effective has really been done to limit these tactics Andrew Tate was banned from Twitter Tick Tock Facebook and Instagram I don't care if they ban me I don't care if they cancel me I don't give a [ __ ] and though his Twitter was reinstated he doesn't need to be active on these platforms for his videos to spread he teaches people to gut up clips of him and to use him to get views he then drives people to buy entry into his Hustlers University which describes itself as an online money-focused community providing education and coaching to over one hundred thousand students worldwide now in the UK courses that aim to help School teachers fight Tate's popularity amongst young boys are selling out while teachers are also urging parents to step in and have those conversations at home but if social media channels can't stop his popularity what chance do teachers and parents really have it's got to be short sappy hard hitting content and then you have to push people to something you control this isn't the first time rhetoric like Tates has been popular Neil Strauss is the game penetrating the secret society of pickup artists was a huge hit when it was published back in 2005 and its view on gender Norms wasn't that far removed from Tates Tom Cruise's pickup artist character in Magnolia is Cut From the Same Cloth I am the one who says yes no now here and the fact that film came out in 1999 illustrates that these kinds of men were already present in the culture and there was an audience out there for them every woman no matter how initially repugnant the time it takes for you to realize you want to Bone her but as Lawson told Vox people have been pushing this crisis of masculinity discourse all the way back in the 1970s or 1980s through the men's movement led by people like Robert Bly and so on where there was a sense of reconnecting with your own masculinity as a way of fixing the world the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived I see all this attention entire generation pumping gas waiting tables really what Tate belongs to today is self-help culture and right now we're in a golden age for those kinds of texts whereas previously this genre was targeted at women now men are being courted with Publishers preying on the exact same uncertainty that Tate is seeing in his audience we're wired to want status we're wired to want to be beautiful and sexy and to want to impress others like that's never going to go away this is amidst widespread talk of a greater crisis in our culture for many young men and boys so feeding on that anxiety you have the explosion and popularity of people like Jordan Peterson Johann Hari Mark Manson and yes Andrew Tate but what is that guidance exactly where most self-help texts direct the reader or viewer on how to change and become a better version of themselves these voices guidance for men feels more geared towards not changing and instead boosting self-esteem and self-belief even when that comes at the expense of others for Andrew Tate his message is clear the problem isn't men it's everybody else how do you you start off get centered to become successful but you need to find a way to some degree to escape the matrix this invocation Atrix if you ignore the irony that it's a film made by two trans filmmakers and widely interpreted to be at least in part an allegory about the transgender experience is also in line with a wider alt-right toxic masculine rhetoric that's been a fixture of online culture for several years the subreddit the red pill was for a time one of the most active communities on the internet with the guardian Steven March describing the reality its Advocates believed to be living in as one where women run the world without taking responsibility for it and that their male victims are not permitted to complain through a law-abiding man inside the Matrix your future and the life that is laid out for you is nothing but depressing and while Reddit stepped in to quarantine this and other similar subreddits research has shown that this cracking down only intensifies the beliefs of those audiences which makes sense when you hear that Tate claimed the Matrix attacked him when he was arrested right now Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are in police custody in Romania on some pretty horrific human trafficking charges and it seems like the image he's worked so hard to present is maybe starting to crumble with a recent Guardian article claiming his Pad is less Hollywood Hideaway more run-down meat factory maybe this public embarrassment will cut him off at the knees and damage his credibility so much that his followers will migrate away from him or maybe this will just be more fuel to the fire more evidence that he is an underdog and that people are out to get him strike one is they try and shut you up and discredit you which I've just been through strike two as they try and put you in jail for no reason and spread for easy kill you the truth is that even if he does disappear someone similar will take his place the only potential solution is for young men to start hearing another compelling narrative aimed directly at them one that boosts their self-esteem without making everyone else the problem and tells them they can become anything they want without making them victims what we need is a narrative for young men that doesn't push them to the margins but allows others to exist in the center of the story too

Channel: The Take

Views: 87,297

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Id: 1530PO1OP-4

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2023