By: Maya Kumar and Saanvi Bahadur
Andrew Tate, the self-proclaimed expert on all things women, has been at it again. His recent tweets and social media posts have made us all wonder: what would we do without his expert commentary? That being said, he’s currently in some hot water with the law, and though this isn’t his first arrest, it’s definitely his most significant. Andrew Tate is a British-American is a former kick-boxer turned social media and reality TV personality that sprung to fame in the last few years by voicing his views on women and race. His controversial views are typically ones that align with the ultra-traditional and patriarchal thoughts, namely the idea that women are secondary to men in most aspects and only exist to serve men. Most notably, he was kicked off of the UK reality TV show, ‘Big Brother’ after punching one of the contestants. One of his most recent campaigns, his ‘Hustlers University’ program, was a glorified pyramid scheme that ‘taught’ men how to pick up women, but was recently shut down after his social media accounts were banned.
Tate’s accounts on most major social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and TikTok were banned in August of 2022, finally a ray of hope in the cloudy sky that was Andrew Tate's reign over social media. That being said, it didn’t necessarily mean that the harm he caused had been undone. The main issue with Andrew Tate was the fact that his audience was primarily younger, more impressionable boys. Perhaps this is because anybody with a fully developed brain would be able to call him out on his nonsense, resulting in him having to appeal to literal children. He related to them, took existing insecurities they may have had and twisted and exploited them in order to convince these boys that the root of all their issues are women. Been rejected by a woman? Beat her up! In many ways, his views could be considered hate speech, especially as he often targeted and attacked minority groups for his content. He also had a very controversial lifestyle, which included promoting certain unconventional and potentially harmful practices like advocating for the use of steroids when going to the gym. One such nugget of wisdom was when he stated that women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted. Apparently his status as a single 36-year old man who can’t keep a girlfriend for longer than six months makes him the expert on these kinds of things.
The first of Tate’s legal troubles started in 2018, where he was arrested on charges of assault and battery of his girlfriend, Russian model, Olga Vlasova. Vlasova had posted photos on social media showing injuries to her face and body, and accused Tate of physically assaulting her. Tate initially denied the allegations and claimed that Vlasova had fabricated the story in order to gain attention. However, he was later charged with assault and battery, and the case went to trial. Tate was sentenced to a fine and a suspended jail sentence, and was also ordered to undergo anger management counselling. But of course, we can see that, predictably, this ended up being nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Not even a slap, a light touch if you will. He also experienced a lawsuit with his former business partner, Kofi Kodua Sarpong who accused Tate of fraud and breach of contract in connection with a business venture they had entered into together; the judge found that Tate had made false representations and breached his contractual obligations, and ordered him to pay damages of over £500,000.
Despite these various legal troubles, Tate has still not seemed to learn his lesson and has managed to continuously do worse and worse things, with this one taking the cake; sex trafficking. In December of 2022 Tate, along with his brother Tristan Tate, were detained and their house in Bucharest, Romania was raided. According to the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIOCT), “The four suspects... appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost."
This happened shortly after Tate had set his sights on a new victim: Greta Thunberg, the collaboration nobody ever saw coming. After a small Twitter feud between the two started, Tate posted footage in which he was handed a pizza box from a local restaurant, which some users suggested had inadvertently revealed his location. He then went on to brag about how he wouldn’t recycle the pizza box after he was done, which was an epic comeback that totally left Greta speechless. Tate had also bragged about the carbon emissions that his various cars produced, which was a strange thing to brag about but I wouldn’t put it past Tate, seeing as what he thinks passes for ‘comedy’ is laughable in and of itself. Ultimately, when Tate was arrested, Greta was finally able to settle this feud by reminding the general public, “this is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes”.
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