[Note: The first draft of this post was written in October, 2022, in the early days of the blog. I made minor changes to it through the end of December, 2022. With my decision to start writing in the blog again, I looked at this post with an eye to erasing it, but after a few minor edits, I decided to let it stand for its explanation of how the blog got underway. It does ramble on. Sorry about that. Cyclonejane]
In the early summer of 2022, Andrew Tate became “the most Googled man on the Planet.” He outdistanced Joe Biden, Elizabeth II, a pantheon of rappers, the entire Kardashian-Jenner mob, and even Donald Trump. In late August, Tate was banned, almost simultaneously, from the most popular Internet sites: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube (where his channels, Tate Speech and Tate Confidential, had appeared), and even TikTok, where Tate had never had an account. TikTok, unlike the other platforms, banned videos having Andrew Tate as the subject matter.
The banning from Hell. The assault included shutting down the payment processing for Tate’s online school, Hustler’s University, and the loss of server space from Amazon. It also included smaller inconveniences, such as closing his Uber account and access to other sites so many of us commonly use, and big headaches like freezing of his London bank accounts.
Clearly, the banishment wasn’t only intended to stop Andrew Tate’s voice: it was intended to CRUSH him.
Tate has said that he responded to only one termination: he emailed Air Bn’B to let them know that although he didn’t think he had ever had an account with them, they were welcome to ban him if being part of the attack mattered that much to them.
Strength of following makes a difference. The scope of the ban was much broader than anything that had ever happened to any other public figure, although ultimately, it was less damaging to Tate than the censorship of Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, or even Donald Trump had been to those men. Tate’s fans flocked to join him on Rumble while simultaneously continuing to upload Andrew Tate video to YouTube. Andrew was never missing-in-action from the public eye.
The actions in the banishment occurred in quick, orchestrated succession. There could be no doubt platforms were ordered by a single planning group. Those doing the banning offered no official explanations to Tate himself, but instead provided a narrative for the mainstream media to roll out in sync with Tate’s channels disappearing.
The narrative: Tate was banned as a person harmful to women. A bit later, that ridiculous idea morphed into the notion that Tate’s misogyny was harmful to boys.
Often labeled as “toxic masculinity,” Tate’s message to young men was workout everyday, acquire wealth, stay away from drugs and useless people, and build a network with other aspirational males. Is that message scary stuff?
Actually, it is, if you are the powers that rule the world, what Tate calls the Matrix. They don’t want even the potential for an army of physically fit, fighting-aged males. Men are the group that global rulers have been attempting to physically and psychologically neuter (and sometimes turn into fake women).
The second actual reason for banning Andrew Tate is that he commented without filter on current events, cultural and political topics, and on macro and micro economics, finance, and business. I will leave a fuller account of this material for another post. However, Tate’s detailed, ongoing revelations about the COVID scamdemic alone would have been sufficient for global powers to push him out of the picture. The Tucker Carlson interview (see below) contains the best summary of what Tate said, rendered in his own words.
Misogyny. There was, of course, no evidence that Tate was a danger to women or anyone else. As I will maintain throughout this blog, misogyny is a point of view, not a crime. Tate says he is not a misogynist. I say he is (you can read my assessment here), but I also say that fact was not–and is not–a reason to censor him. What is the advantage of banishing a misogynist from an Internet platform?
Let’s suppose Tate’s statements about females represent the diametrical opposite of those held by a fictional influencer called Zelda the Flaming Feminist. An individual may imbibe all the arguments, opinions, and sentiments both Andrew and Zelda articulate without adopting the position of either one of them. The whole beauty of the “marketplace of ideas” is to craft your own position after considering many others, not to adopt another person’s in its entirety.
Censorship produces programmed minds and cult conduct, which is what the Matrix attempts to bring by limiting access to any content other than the narratives of the MSM. Those of us who love freedom and opportunity are not buying that approach. What Tate had been saying about women was there to provoke a reaction, to make his listeners define for themselves how they felt about interactions between the sexes.
Tate set himself up as a role model, an alpha male that no other man could out-work or out-think. However, he did it in a way that was both genuine and comic, and that was the key to his popularity. If you somehow took everything he said or did literally, or if you only looked at a tiny bit of it out of context, you could misinterpret his message. However, that’s true of any public figure. Surviving the censorship elevated him to a sort of Free Speech martyrdom, and he was still the most Googled figure in the world.
Aftermath of banishment. Post-banning, Andrew Tate put up a Web site called FreeTopG, where he described in detail the sudden, broad-based censorship he had endured and also explained the basis for unsubstantiated rumors that he was a human trafficker. He quickly moved both Tate Speech and Tate Confidential to Rumble.
Meanwhile, various online “influencers,” some of whom had previously expressed admiration for Tate or even claimed friendship with him, began protecting their own hides from similar treatment by parroting Big Tech’s official line against Tate. But simultaneously, his followers fought back with videos of their own. On YouTube, the most widely used platform, old videos continued to circulate with new, and the banished figure appeared in everyone’s feed. Tate himself could not speak, but everyone continued to talk about him.
Tucker Carlson to the rescue. Within a few days of the ban, the most popular television commentator in America, Tucker Carlson, threw Tate a lifeline. In an interview for Tucker Carlson Today, Andrew Tate was given the opportunity to shape his image for Carlson’s millions of viewers.
Carlson’s gentle yet careful open-ended questions helped the public understand two things, both of them true and important: first, that Tate was banished not for misogyny, but because he had for years defiantly addressed forbidden topics, such as the nature and meaning of the COVID hysteria and the crisis of depression among young males; and second, that what happened to Tate was a clearcut abuse of Big Tech power that could be weaponized against anyone.
Tate, who appeared on a feed from his home studio in Romania, was at his most engaging, making his points clearly and succinctly while presenting the best construction he could put on his views on women. Tucker did not probe that subject, obviously realizing it was not significant to what had happened. Tate displayed his good humor and employed his topnotch storytelling skill, and he came across as intelligent, polite, perceptive, and caring. He also lied about several things (such as saying he had never been arrested) and omitted a few points, but his dishonesty was minor. You had to have followed him closely to even detect it.
By the interview’s conclusion, Tucker had helped Andrew Tate widen his audience. This interview, now available on Rumble, is a must for anyone wanting to understand Andrew Tate.
Patrick Bet-David’s podcast. In short order, Tate flew to Spain to appear on a five-hour podcast with his new business partner, the Internet influencer and fellow entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David, and PBD’s sidekick, Adam Sosnick, who handled most of the questioning. Tate was clearly fatigued, and the vodka flowed as the participants talked.
By the final hour of the podcast, Tate was exposing some of his weakest arguments and ugliest views. He gratuitously demeaned his sister and even his mother, and he made an complete ass of himself on the topic of his father, Emory Tate. The podcast, which can now be seen in full on Rumble, is significant for those genuinely interested in the Andrew Tate phenomenon. It is five-hours-long, and the questioning is not stellar in the first hours, but one really needs to watch it all to understand what happens.
My blog begins. Watching Tate falter on the PBD podcast was the impetus for this blog, although the frustrations of working on WordPress in its current Beta editing system (WP proudly notes it is changing “daily”) have delayed my efforts.
Tate is a complex personality and performer and, frankly, a genuine conundrum. He has been seeking the public’s attention, one way or another, for over a decade, and as with any public figure, changes have occurred in the person and image over time. Tate’s intelligence and hard work are consistently appealing, but there are rough edges and darker pieces in this human puzzle. That is what this blog explores.
Tate and his brother, Tristan, have done their own “Emergency Meeting” podcasts on Tate Speech. Due to Andrew’s surly, drunken behavior, one of the early ones on the Rumble platform was so poorly received that he had to remove it from the site.
Like many others, I find Andrew Tate, when at his best, the most rewarding public figure to emerge in ages. He’s visually appealing, and his brilliance is multi-faceted: he’s so intelligent, so entertaining, and so unique that one never wants to give up on him. He opines on whatever interests him, and his outrageous demeanor, frank assertions, and utterly unfiltered delivery make me laugh and reflect at the same time.
The bombastic alter ego Tate adopts for comic effect can be charming even at its most obnoxious. “It’s ridiculous,” he’ll point out: “These days you can’t even tell your own bitch that she can’t go out drinking with men from her office.” Explaining that he’s not the guy next door, he told podcast host James English that the “beans on toast, watching television with the missus, and two blowjobs a month” of married life weren’t for him. (This podcast, which is also wonderful, remains available on YouTube.)
Cyclonejane
December, 2022
Conundrum Andrew Tate 