Andrew Tate (third from right) and his brother Tristan Tate Photo Credit: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images/TNS (Tribune Content Agency)
Throughout our lives, we are forced to stomach many harsh, unapologetic truths about ourselves and the world around us. While it initially hurts us deeply when we become disillusioned to the cruelty and evil that plagues our world, we ultimately learn from these experiences and they allow us to grow in the long run.
A phrase used by many to describe this phenomenon is “swallowing the red pill,” as opposed to the “blue pill,” which means to stay in a deluded sense of reality and to refuse to see the truth of a matter for what it really is.
In recent years, there has been a section of media that has become dedicated to preaching the ruthlessness of reality, which has become known as “Red Pill media.”
A huge contributor to this so-called “Red Pill media” is British-American influencer Andrew Tate.
Tate initially rose to prominence as a kickboxer, breaking many records in the sport.
However, Tate is most known for sharing his extreme far-right ideologies surrounding women and gender roles in relationships.
Tate has stated publicly that he believes that a woman is a man’s “property” in a marriage, noting that the father of the bride “gives her away” to the groom in a traditional wedding ceremony in many cultures.
In another instance, Tate, who was 35 at the time, stated in an interview that he only dates women who are under the age of 25, his reason being that “the younger a girl is, the less bulls*** she’s been through with men, and the softer she is as a person.”
“How many d**** have been through her?” Tate asks in reference to women over the age of 25. He goes on to state that women become “jaded” as they have more negative relationship experiences, and that these experiences strip women of their “genuine feminine softness.”
In the same interview, Tate talks about how it is “completely normal” for Mafia bosses in Moscow, Russia, who are in their sixties to sexually engage with girls as young as 18, and the fact that situations of that nature are not socially acceptable in the United States is “Western bulls***.”
A clip surfaced of Tate claiming that the women he dates “are not allowed out” without him. “I don’t know what b**** a** dude is letting his chicks go out to the club with her friends without him. No. You stay in the house. You don’t go nowhere; no restaurants, no clubs, nothing.”
Tate has even admitted to emotionally manipulating women into working under himself and his brother as sex workers, convincing them to “obey” him and “give [him] most of their money.”
This arguably means that Tate willingly admitted to using the “loverboy method.” An article published on Crime + Investigation defines those who use this method as “traders in human beings who weaponise affection to lure victims.”
“Once the victims have developed an emotional attachment to the traffickers,” the article reads, “they will be manipulated or forced into sex work.”
Tate and his brother were arrested in Romania in December of 2022 under rape and human trafficking charges. The brothers were released from house arrest under these charges on August 4, 2023, and placed under judicial control for 60 days following their release.
The Tate brothers were detained by Romanian police in March of 2024 under similar charges of sexual aggression that occurred in the United Kingdom. The charges date back to between 2012 and 2015.
A Romanian judge has approved the extradition of the two brothers to the United Kingdom after their trial for the rape and human trafficking charges in Romania.
Teenage boys make up a large portion of Tate’s viewers, meaning that as these young men are learning to navigate their way through this complicated world that is so new to them, a trusted adult is telling them that a noble man is one that controls and dominates over the women in his life, and that you are weak and cowardly if you do not do so.
It is beyond concerning that this is a man who is adored by so many as the ultimate “alpha male,” and is a testament to how easily growing minds can be influenced by adults.