Andrew Tate influences boys with misogyny

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According to The Washington Post, Andrew Tate has said, among other things, that women are men’s property and that women should have children, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee. He calls himself a misogynist, a person who strongly dislikes women.

«Victims of sexual assault share responsibility for the abuse.» This is a quote from Andrew Tate, according to Wikipedia.

According to NBC, TikTok videos have been tagged with his name nearly 13 billion times.

Tate is a British-American kickboxer who moved to Romania to escape 11 charges police had against him. He explained in a video that it was easier to have rape cases dropped in Eastern Europe.

But in Romania, new cases appeared. Romanian police launched an investigation to check whether he was involved in human trafficking because the U.S. Embassy warned that a woman had possibly been held on his property against her will.

As per The Guardian, Andrew Tate has been banned from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for spreading hateful ideas. Still, more people search Google for him than, for example, Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian. Interest in Norway is greatest in Hordaland and Sør-Trøndelag and lowest in Finnmark, according to Google statistics. The search for Andrew Tate has increased significantly in the summer of 2022.

Although he has been kicked out of major social media, his followers find his posts and share them. The reason is that he has created a financial pyramid where it pays to spread his message. Tate offers economics courses on the internet. If you acquire customers for the course, you get 50 percent of the revenue.

The economics course is called “Huster’s University.” It is not certain whether lawyers will refer to the course as pyramid (illegal), it may go under the label MLM (legal). The course is in the form of discussions between participants on a Discord server, as well as tips and advice from a handful of employees who call themselves professors.

«Does my age matter?» This is one of the questions on the introductory website that will entice you into the course. Tate’s answer is, «You can shock your parents and friends by becoming the child who makes it into real life.» That is, as opposed to playing computer games.

The target group of Tate is the minors. The entrance fee is $50 a month.

After being kicked out of all the major social media, Tate has started sharing posts on Rumble, according to NRK. As per Wikipedia, Rumble is a right-wing channel. It also writes that when conspiracy theorists and people who produce fake news are evicted from larger channels, they often end up on Rumble.

Tate has also received marketing help by guesting on the conspiratorial channel Infowars several times. The channel can be found on Rumble. In the summer of 2022, Rumble was ordered to pay $50 million to the parents of a boy who died in a school shooting, an incident the channel claimed was staged in which no one died.

Here are some questions that parents and teachers can ask for reflection with their children:

• Why is Andrew Tate popular?
• Can you find examples of positive and negative Tate quotes?
• What do you think is good or bad about what Tate says?
• Is it possible to find financial advice without having to pay for them?
• Does freedom of speech mean a right to use everyone else’s platforms?
• What do you think of Tate’s view of women?
• Tate says the goal is not to get rich but to get the most power. What do you think about that?

(Main image: Wikipedia)

Also read:
A list of fact-checkers around the world
Hate speech and when it is illegal
People Norwegian children follow online
How to reduce real-life violence on social media

(Translated from Norwegian by Ratan Samadder)