I’m sure the polarizing figure of Andrew Tate needs little introduction to most, but for those less active on social media or for those who are just generally unaware I will provide one.
A Boy Called Emory
Emory Andrew Tate was born to a relatively humble background, the son of an international chess master and a catering assistant in Chicago, before he and his family moved to Britain. Here Tate picked up mixed martial arts, and it is here that he’d find his first taste of fame.
In 2011, he became the International Sport Karate Association world cruiserweight champion, after having already being crowned British champion. From here he acrued what little fame was to be found in this venture, until he found another exploit: the world of pornography.
Tate began a pornography company featuring partners of his, and this is where he began his entrepreneurial exploits. From here, he made industrial collections and his own ways of viewing the world of business. Now he began his most daring stunt yet: Hustlers University.
What was Hustlers University? Hustlers University was an online subscription service wherein a person received lectures and lessons from different businesspersons of differing entrepreneurial persuasions, as well as from Tate himself.
However, this was all the surface function of this ploy of his; the hidden intentions were much grander in scale. When Tate established his partner program, the instruction was simple: push Tate’s ideology everywhere.
Each member was given a link to sign up to Hustler’s University to distribute. If someone used your link, then a certain percentage of the money generated from their subscription would be given to you. A digital pyramid of capital accumulation, or more simply: a new-age pyramid scheme.
Overnight Tate began creating a social media empire, one that spanned a multitude of different apps and consumed their feeds almost entirely. However, no app experienced this onslaught of Tate promotion more than TikTok. Tate became an almost inescapable presence on the app. Whether you agreed or disagreed with him, you knew who he was all because of the rampant successes of his partner program.
However, publicity alone isn’t why Tate is such a dangerous force upon the world. It’s his influence, his grip over the ideology of the youth. He has radicalised almost a generation of boys and turned them into reclusive demagogues.
But what makes Tate so appealing? Why do men and boys support his message in droves? How has his influence over the youth come to be?
Masculinity and Capitalism
Tate personifies the attractive allure of capitalist living. Through his vast network of incomes he lived lavishly. In almost every video of his he is surrounded by attractive models, expensive cars, and absurdly huge mansions.
Years of capitalist conditioning has made the bourgeois lifestyle one fantasised after, one everyone must strive to achieve. Thus, when one sees Tate they are met with a burning desire to be him, to be where he is.
This rings true especially for boys. Despite this generation being as progressive as it is, we still suffer from the generational trauma of extreme gender norms. The idea of a man, the breadwinner, the provider, the protector, is still ingrained to our very core by media. However, boys of this generation have lost themselves in their unyielding pursuit of masculinity.
We are approaching a more progressive dawn, but some intend rather to desperately cling onto what was, a sort of fetishism of the traditional ways of living. Because of this, men develop obsessions with the way things were. They create a rose-tinted window of the times and fanatically pursue them, and this creates either a culture of ignoring or even embracing the misogyny of the times.
This misogyny is the only natural result of this pursuit. Toxic masculinity can only exist at the expense of women. To feel dominant in our masculinity we enter abusive power dynamics with women where they are inevitably subjugated.
What does this have to do with Andrew Tate? With a large number of boys so lost in their masculinity, Tate has conveniently formulated a solution! One hidden behind enormous pay walls, of course.
These people view women as tradition obsessed too. They think women are attracted to successful, capitalist men. Because our dynamic with women is what validates our masculinity, we should choose to engage in what makes us “successful” men.
What is a successful man? A successful man is a capitalist, a man able to provide with their enormous amounts of wealth, a womaniser to be envied, a man who is competitive with other men where only one can succeed, and thus be at the top of the figurative food chain.
But what are the dangers of this ideology? Why must we, as socialists, oppose it so vehemently?
The Problem with the Tate Delusion
The idea of wealth accumulation creates an obsession with materials. We fall into a deep craving for the luxury commodities of Andrew Tate, and guess who benefits from this fetishism directly: why Andrew Tate of course!
His business lectures are not intended to make anyone else rich; they are absurdly priced red herrings that generate immense profits for Tate, and all his preaching on “refinding” our masculinity has merely been a front to funnel us all into chasing after exactly what these lectures spoon-feed us. Our very psychology has been turned into profit.
However, we as socialists are already aware of the capitalist obsession of commodities. What other dangers does Tate pose?
His view of womanising, of treating women like “trophies” to be conquered by the “alpha” male creates a dangerously distorted view of women and sex. The obsession of alpha dominance creates sexual power dynamics where men must exert their sexual power over women. This leads to hypersexual behavior towards women, which manifests as sexual harassment. Through slogans like “boys will be boys” this turns quickly to horrors such as rape and domestic violence, crimes which Tate himself has been accused of.
Tate even presents a more radical view on this sort of “trophy-collecting”, describing his own sister, and by extention all women, as “property” of their husbands. This reduces women to little more than objects, as less than a person, and quickly manifests itself into a societal subjugation of women, a process which we’ve seen manifest itself through religious slogans of masculine dominance seen in the middle east.
Now that we see the inherent evils to the solutions Andrew Tate provides, how do we fight them?
Fighting Back
To fight these thoughts root and stem, we start this right at home. We must hold ourselves accountable. We are all guilty occasionally of wrong thoughts, and we must engage in intense self-correction to not only fight these thoughts, but exterminate them from our heads entirely.
Further, we must hold our family and close friends accountable. We must challenge their beliefs fervently, we must correct them, we must consistently and constantly fight bigoted beliefs expressed by those we know. Firstly so they do not spread to others but secondly so our own message is heard. Tate has proven many things, but one particularly important thing is the youthful need for rebellion, our desire to be radicals.
However he has also shown that if we do not turn this radical flame towards something progressive and correct, someone will inevitably turn it to something reactionary and backwards.
Explain socialism and feminism to your friends, show them accessible resources so they can correct their own ways.
Never stop educating others, and never stop educating yourself.