Why the Trump administration publicly supports an alleged trafficker of people

Andrew Tate made his name as a misogynous podcast star, but more recently is known as an alleged rapist and trafficker of people while waiting for a criminal trial in Romania with his brother Tristan. Last week, the Financial Times reported That the Trump administration, through the special envoy Richard Grenell, had tried to press the Romanian government to raise travel restrictions to the brothers.

Andrew Tate, whose online course “Hustler’s University” became a platform with Almost one million usersIt became a barrel of dust among the influencers of the extreme right media in the early 2020s due to its explicitly sexist worldview and their deep influence on millions of adolescents and young men.

This last high profile turn in the current legal saga has again brought the horrible accusations against him at the forefront, this time with apparent approval of the United States government. It is also a reminder of the cultural scope of the light call that Tate helped popularize.

Andrew Tate’s enormous influence is based on intense misogyny, and a great criminal activity

Tate’s rise began with a successful kickboxing race, she was followed by her Elimination of the British version of Older brotherand culminated with a very popular podcast that anointed him “King of toxic masculinity. “As Rebecca Jennings explained for Vox in 2022, his” inflammatory diatribe Now he lives in Romania, first moving there in part because, Said“The violation laws are more indulgent,” but has been left; After his arrest, he has not greatly allowed him to leave the country.

Tate helped bring conventional concerns about the “light”, the term for the loose network of male influencers on the right of the Internet and its associated communities. At first, Tate seemed to be such an obviously extremist node that should be, as Jennings wrote, easy to ignore.

But the safe and flagrant misogyny of Tate was very popular: her dictates, which were to boast of Never have read a book to boast An aggressive emotional and physical domain over women, seemed Advance children and men who admired him for his striking lifestyle, his preceded wealth and commitment to the bit. Tate’s maxims extended by adolescent culture, generating horror stories of parents and Teachers on its apparently generalized and pernicious influence. Originally, Tate presented His Schtick as pure fiction, a deliberately exaggerated regressive person. He soon seemed that he was far from the case, since the accusations against Tate and his brother began to increase.

Romanian officials have persecuted Andrew and Tristan Tate since April 2022, when first assaulted one of the couple’s mansions After receiving a tip that the Tates had allegedly kidnapped a woman and held her there against her will. The following year, the brothers and two Romanian accomplices They were accused For rape charges, form a criminal gang and human trafficking. The authorities alleged that Andrew and Tristan Tate had trafficked seven women from the United States and the United Kingdom to Romania preparing them and subjecting them to physical, sexual and psychological abuse. (The brothers quickly responded with a civil demand Against two of their alleged victims.) In early 2024, the two faced New accusations from the United Kingdom of Trafficking in Personsderived from an investigation launched more than a decade earlier.

Then, in August, the Tates faced additional positions of trafficking in people after Police exceeded their assets again and arrested six people. The brothers have also faced multiple civil demands presented by alleged victims. One of those women recently Filed a lawsuit Against them in Florida, claiming that they defamed her after she agreed to witness in the Romanian criminal trial.

Despite the severity and amplitude of the charges against them, things have gone quite well for the Tates. Last month, Andrew Tate was released from house arrestalthough he and his brother still cannot leave Romania and are under the supervision of the Court. This followed Return of your luxury assets In October, and a ruling of the November Court of Appeals that the important evidence in the first Romanian criminal case, including the testimony of the alleged victims, was inadmissible. A judge, citing accusation failures, sent the case to prosecutors For review. This left the case in unstable terrain, and that was before the US government called.

Romania Foreign Minister Emil Hurzeanu, He dismissed his conversation Last week with Grenell, which took place briefly during the Munich Security Conference, as “only a repetition of a known position.” Grenelll’s position as “Special Missions“It seems to be informal based mainly on his condition from loyal to Trump for a long time and his previous role as an ambassador to Germany, but has made his interest in the public of Tate Brothers, and explicitly political.

On February 3, before the trip to Munich, Grenell Twitteated An answer to Tristan Tate in X and claimed that Romania had used funds from the besieged Usaid agency to attack the conservatives, saying that the program was “armed against people and politicians who were not awakened.” It seems that there is no objective basis for this statement, but reinforces the argument of the Tates for a long time that they are victims of a political witch hunt.

“Support to the Tate Brothers as evident for my tweets publicly available,” Grenell told The Financial Times.

Tate’s cultural impact has felt for years, but is it just the beginning?

Andrew and Tristan Tate now face three different criminal cases and multiple civil demands in different countries, mostly for extremely serious accusations of violence and sexual abuse against women. His alleged more expansive crime, human trafficking, became part of the Andrew Tate online brand. He really sold An online course To his followers about how to do it, what he called the “title of pimp.”

Experts say that the techniques taught in this course and elsewhere It could be seen as a textbook on how full of boasting On violence against women, sexual assault, the preparation of minor girls and emotional abuse.

The “Andrew Tate effect” on young men has been so deep that counteracting it has become a mission in multiple sectors of public services, from education to public health. The researchers in Sweden found that the children exposed to the influencers of the light were It is more likely to dehumanize womenwhile Researchers in Australia found “Generalized experience of sexual harassment, sexism and misogyny perpetrated by children to the master women, and the sinister presence of Andrew tate that shapes their behavior.”

Tate concerns cover real concerns about public safety, and if children who have prolonged exposure to it could become more aggressive with women around them. At the same time, Tate and others in the light have been accredited with Helping to balance the 2024 elections in the United States Solving for Trump among young men.

Tate is already a manifestation of extreme misogyny, the worst of what the purity has forged, and its cultural elevation and now political is part of a larger and more gloomy regression that perhaps we are only at the beginning.