We need to stop young boys’ dangerous fascination with Andrew Tate. It’s already gone too far

After waking up and hearing the news that Kyle Clifford had watched Andrew Tate videos before his sadistic rape and murder of Louise Hunt (his then-girlfriend) and the cold-blooded killing of her sister and mum, it got me thinking: surely now, people will stand up against the war of terror on women?

Andrew Tate: a vilified misogynist

Andrew Tate, who has been charged in Romania for rape and human trafficking as well as setting up organised crime groups to sexually exploit women, is a vilified misogynist. He makes hating women and girls his career, as he bombards men and young, vulnerable teenage boys with content that encourages them to treat women as subordinate and deserving of punishment and abuse if they don’t do as they are instructed by their ‘master’. 

In several of his clips, he consistently discusses choking women, controlling them, and even threatening them with a machete:

It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch.

Self-styled hero to men and boys, Tate is instead the absolute embodiment of toxic masculinity. He and his views no longer hide in the shadows of the dark web, but in full view of the public as he perpetuates the very seams of social media, with his videos worryingly being viewed more than 11.6 billion times. 

Yet little to nothing has been done by social media platforms to prevent Tate’s extremely harmful content from appearing on people’s timelines. It seems that there is no care or guardrails even remotely being put up to stop him from poisoning the minds of boys who are infected by the Tate misogyny parasite. 

More and more, we see young teenage boys being pulled into the sphere of Tate and other dangerous far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson.

Ensnaring young men and boys

Many teachers across schools in England have also expressed their concerns. The growing influence of Andrew Tate is doing irreparable harm to the minds of boys who believe that women are beneath them and should be forced to simply stay in the house to cook and clean and obey their orders. 

Enamoured by Tate’s lifestyle – the flash cars, the Lamborghinis, and the crypto – it is clear that Andrew Tate is essentially grooming young boys en masse to share his same deeply polluted and chauvinistic views, so they too might become minions of Tate

But the reality of that is far from the truth.

It will simply create people like Kyle Clifford, who was so incandescent with rage towards his girlfriend that he plotted the triple murder for months on end before he eventually carried out his savage and cold-blooded crime.   

Before committing murder, he had begun to research and purchase weapons as well as watching porn online and misogynistic videos. 

The prosecutor, Alison Morgan, argued that the kind of material and content that Clifford was searching was key in terms of how:

he views women and why sexualised violence is an important part of the attack.

During the trial, the prosecution was also told that Clifford did not like to be told “no” by women. Louise had raised concerns to close friends and loved ones about him being an aggressive person with a very nasty temper. 

Enabling misogyny, rape, and murder

Four British women who had sued Andrew Tate on Thursday for his harmful content, and published a statement through their lawyers, also reinforced the call for Tate to be removed from social media companies’ platforms, as the misogynist continues to “reap enormous profits from his hateful content”. 

Whilst women are made to suffer, boys as young as 10 and 11 are being convinced to believe the rhetoric that “men are better than women”. There are even reports of young girls in the classroom who engage with Andrew Tate’s content being asked for sex by their schoolmates. 

It is therefore clear that this ultra-macho world is more than just crypto, fitness, and getting other men on side. It also suggests that belittling women is fine and acceptable in a world where Tate and others like him are not held to account for their actions. 

Similar to being groomed for a terrorist gang or organisation, teachers have also raised concerns that schools must get a grip on Tate’s catastrophic influence on teenage boys. They’ve said that the public and government needs to start a wider conversation about how to stop violence against women and girls and his impact and encouragement of this. 

Police have raised fears and alarms too. They have in recent years and months come across cases where Andrew Tate has been at the front and centre of the radicalisation of young men, with recent statistics from the NPCC stating that from 2022-23, violence against women and girls accounted for “20% of all police recorded crime”.

Andrew Tate: blood on his hands

To make matters worse, just last week, Andrew Tate was welcomed to the US with open arms by president Donald Trump who evidently sees the influencer as a useful tool to reinforce his anti-DEI and anti-‘woke’ world view. 

This is not at all surprising considering that Trump has been accused of raping several women in the US and made consistent comments that degrade women. For example, during his first election campaign he deemed it as acceptable to “grab em by the pussy” (meaning women). So, Trump clearly sees Tate as a man who is cut from the same twisted cloth.  

Surely this is enough for social media companies to take back control to protect users from such harmful and repulsive content?

We must do more to protect women and girls across the country who are at a high risk of experiencing abuse at the hands of men by removing Tate from social media platforms. 

It is evident that by simply letting Andrew Tate continue to pollute the minds of men and boys across the world, we are not only going to see a rise in domestic abuse and violence, but the rapes and murders of young women and girls.  

Featured image via the Canary