Before he was arrested by Romanian authorities for alleged rape, human trafficking, and organized crime, violent misogynist Andrew Tate provided advice to young men:
“Women should clean up. Not only should women clean up, women should clean up unprompted,” Tate once advised.
Tate also said rape victims should “bear some responsibility’ for their attacks. “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want.”
“The reason 18- and 19-year-olds are more attractive than 25-year-olds is because they've been through less dick,” Tate declared. “I'll say this right here on the fucking internet. I don't give a shit.”
These disturbing tidbits from Tate’s history are what made him a social media star to so many young men. It didn’t matter if his advice was crude, sexual, or hateful; Tate made a fortune making himself synonymous with the manosphere – a far-right community that recruits susceptible young men with toxic masculinity and misogyny.
Even after he was banned from major social media platforms, Tate was all over the internet. His fans flooded platforms with reposts of his misogynistic and abhorrent content, taking advantage of algorithms on platforms like TikTok.
Now, other right-wing manosphere influencers are repackaging Tate’s odious rhetoric for their own audiences. They are using social media to spread their messages and are diversifying their content strategies, posting on various platforms, and are pushing the limit on how far their hate speech can go (and often evading social media bans in the process).
Similar to Tate, some manosphere influencers are linked to far-right and white nationalist figures like Nick Fuentes.
What is the manosphere?
The manosphere is an online community of right-wing websites, bloggers, and influencers that is cultivating a worldview based on a conservative and outdated gender politics repackaged for the internet age, which valorizes pick up artists, violent misogynists, incels, men’s rights advocates, and conservative cultural critics. The group often blames women for myriad societal woes and treats them as an inferior sex.
Manosphere influencers, who are sometimes linked to far-right figures, recruit young men online by sharing content on social media platforms that speaks to the real issues and fears the demographic faces.
A February 12 article in The Conversation explains the allure of the manosphere to young internet users: