The influencer is just “one of many” sharing toxic messages about women.
An expert has warned that Andrew Tate is just “one of many” influencers who are brainwashing young boys online with deeply toxic messages about women.
Julia Ebner, a counterterrorism adviser to the UN, said that the popularity of the self-styled misogynist shows that the extremist ideas he shares on the web have become mainstream.
Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested in Romania in December on suspicion of human trafficking and rape. They deny wrongdoing.
A former professional kickboxer, Tate previously said he is “absolutely sexist and I’m absolutely a misogynist”.
“Andrew Tate is just one of many examples,” Ms Ebner told The Independent. “We’re almost in an era where the mainstreaming of extremist ideas has become easier and quicker and there is a bigger demand to fill a vacancy of frustration, anxiety, loneliness, especially among the younger generation facing this in the wake of Covid.”
Ms Ebner, who is also senior research fellow with anti-hate organisation the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, said Tate is “absolutely” only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online personalities spreading hate about women and girls.
“We have seen there are many people who have spread many similar ideas to Andrew Tate,” she said. “His ideas are the ones we read about in the headlines but if we look at platforms like 4Chan, Telegram, even YouTube comments, we see that these views are much more widespread and he’s just one out of an increasingly strong proportion of the population in the UK.”
She said many “copycat Andrew Tates” are using alternatives to YouTube such as Bitchute and Odyssee and Twitter substitutes such as Gab, Parler and Truth Social, to get around the hate speech policies of big tech firms.
It comes as counter-extremism workers have reported a surge in the number of cases referred to them by schools worried about the influence of Tate.
The Guardian reports that frontline staff delivering the government’s counter-extremism Prevent programme cite Tate as a factor in cases dating into last year.
They say female teachers or other pupils have suffered verbal harassment and outbursts echoing Tate’s views, which are being spread mainly on social platforms TikTok and Instagram despite his ban from them.
The British-American social media personality has millions of online followers, despite being banned from sites including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook for his misogynistic comments.
His Twitter account, which has five million followers, was reactivated in November and remains active, despite his arrest.
