Andrew Tate: How He Guides Young Men Into Misogyny Under The Guise Of Self Improvement - by Year 11 Pupil

Emory Andrew Tate is an internet personality and former professional kickboxer. Following his kickboxing career, Tate began offering paid self-improvement courses and memberships through his website and later rose to fame as an online influencer. He was recently arrested following an investigation into human trafficking and rape accusations and as of the writing of this article is currently in detention with his brother and business partner Tristan.

In this blog post, I am not going to cover my opinions on Tate, nor am I going to go through his extensive list of controversies, but I am interested in why the methods he uses to garner attention and support are so effective, and will try to explain why these methods work.

Confidence

Confidence is key. Tate’s ‘Top G’ persona of being powerful and intelligent is rooted in the fact that he strides everywhere he goes, talks with purpose and never shows vulnerability. When he talks, he never stutters and he has a stoic demeanour that leads people to think “This guy must know what he’s talking about!”.

If you actually deconstruct his arguments most of his talking points are loosely tied together and have little evidence, but due to his charisma and fast-talking style you never have time to fully comprehend what he’s saying before he’s done talking; if you were to say that you didn’t understand he would likely respond with, “clearly you need to read a book”. 

This method of talking fast and with purpose to disguise weak arguments is used by all sorts of speakers from everywhere on the political spectrum, and even by quite experienced debaters when they get turned around in an argument. 

Charisma and confidence is almost everything when it comes to influencing others, and Tate clearly has both.

Flaunting Wealth

Wealth is a deeply desirable attribute; wealth of money, possessions, fame and sexual partners. Andrew Tate makes it very clear that he has an abundance of anything he could ever want. Whether people want to be like him or not, I don’t think there are many people that would say no to having the power, influence and money he has. This also feeds into his intentional objectification of women, because if his viewers (mostly dispirited young men, the audience most likely to desire attention from women) view women as an ‘asset’ then his numerous sexual partners becomes another carrot on a stick that he can hang over his followers heads and say, “If you want what I have, follow me”. It all feeds back to his purposeful breakdown of a young man’s confidence so he can rebuild it in his image. 

His content is meant to be viewed from two different perspectives, the first being an unmanipulated young man who has no self-belief, and the second being one of his followers. Videos of his consistently challenge wider society and attack the “sheep” that believe the narrative, while also proclaiming that “men like him” continue to thrive.

If you are as of yet unmanipulated, Tate’s content makes you feel worthless, weak and inferior. If you follow his ideals, it will make you feel vindicated and that you are superior to your fellow man. This means that each video he churns out keeps his followers on a tight leash, as at this point they will likely find Tate to be one of the only voices of reason, while also generating new fans by making them believe their only path to redemption is through Tate.

Counter Culture

One of Tate’s big talking points is the idea of the ‘Matrix’. It is thought that Tate uses this term to describe the powers that be in politics, media and large organisations. Tate's theory derives the idea that the World is being controlled by the rich elite, and talks about leaving The Matrix for "The Real World". This immediately paints him in his followers eyes as an unrestricted, wildly intelligent man who is freeing all of us from the slave-mind.

This intertwines with Tate’s pigeonholing of his fans, making sure they follow him and him alone. The idea that Tate is a freedom fighter against the world’s elite is designed in such a way that he can yet again make his fans feel as if they’re superior to everyone else and that anyone who challenges him is a “pawn of the matrix” and cannot be trusted. Tate has even gone as far as saying that global warming is a hoax designed so that the world’s elite can “take your money through taxes so they can make the sun stop being hot”.

Tate’s rise to infamy (and/or adoration depending on who you ask) obviously goes deeper; there are so many factors in his success that whole books could be written on the subject, but in conclusion to this piece, I would argue there needs to simultaneously be a societal breakdown of the systems that allow Tate to thrive and of toxic masculinity. I also think that we need to empower young men in other ways so they don’t feel as though a (self-proclaimed) online scammer is their only chance at feeling confident.