Andrew Tate was arrested in Romania for sex trafficking on December 29, 2022.

On December 27, Andrew Tate posted a tweet stating “@Greta Thunberg, Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.” This refers to Greta Thunberg’s outspoken activism for climate change that she has been known for the past several years. She tweeted back, “Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalld[*][email protected].”
Tate then responded with a 2 minute video denying climate change and pitying Greta for being “controlled by the matrix”.

While it was originally speculated that this video was what allowed Romanian police to trace Tate’s location and arrest him, they were actually investigating him and his homes for months. Him, his brother Tristan, and two other partners were detained on the account of sex trafficking. Six women alleged that they were held against their will in his home and forced to produce online pornography, and many were branded with the surname “Tate”.

Andrew Tate began his rise to fame in the early 2000s as a boxer, but later gained more recognition after his appearance on Big Brother in 2016. However, he was quickly removed from the show after a video of him hitting a woman with a belt surfaced.
His social media presence took off in 2022, when he started posting Tiktoks about how to be more masculine, make money and control your women. This
“Alpha Male,” unrealistic and frankly violent personality is entirely based on the idea of male superiority and female subjugation. He has encouraged men to beat their girlfriends if they cheat, saying that women should take responsibility for being raped, and stated that women belong at home and should be good wives and mothers. He has also appeared on InfoWars with Alex Jones, sharing his extreme views.

While Tate’s rhetoric is largely to create inflammatory buzz, his videos and words are being viewed and heard by hundreds and thousands of people, especially impressionable teenagers. With his rise of social media fame, comes a rise of young men and boys that are being taught that not only is misogyny permissible, but that it is the way to treat women.

While he was being detained in Romania, Sameera Khan, an avid Tate supporter and self-proclaimed “anti-woke journalist” tweeted about the Taliban’s worry for him. On December 30, 2022, she wrote, “We are hosting a Twitter space with the Afghan Taliban to discuss the detainment of Andrew Tate. They are worried about Andrew Tate and they are asking us if he’s free yet. They say westerners need Andrew Tate because we are oppressed by feminists.”

Khan has had her own stream of controversial statements online. She has tweeted about her disdain for women in government (“We will liberate the United States of America from the dictatorship of the matriarchy”, “President AOC is gonna cope with her time of the month by nuking North Korea.”), and is a misogynist in general, retweeting the statement “Meghan Markle is the perfect example of how marrying the wrong woman can destroy your family”, and “‘Girlbosses’ are not wife material.” She has expressed her disapproval of aiding Ukraine in the war, and has demonstrated her support for Nazis by retweeting the statement, “DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION STARTED FROM THE NAZIS”.

The Taliban is actively working to suppress women’s rights and freedom in Afghanistan, denying them education, work, and forcing them to cover up their entire bodies (burqas). The Taliban’s support and sympathy for Andrew Tate demonstrates just how extreme Tate’s views are. Andrew Tate promotes an incredibly harmful rhetoric against women, pushing the idea that they belong to men, are responsible for sexual assault or rape against them, cannot cheat but can be cheated on, and that feminism is disgusting and evil. He has stated that he would rather date younger girls because they haven’t slept with as many men, because knowing they’ve slept with several men is “simply unattractive”. Tate has claimed that “male infidelity is nowhere near as disgusting as female infidelity because it involves emotion – [women] will not sleep with a man you don’t like. I will sleep with a woman I don’t like.” The harmful and sexist quotes go on and on.

After Andrew Tate’s arrest, Greta Thunberg tweeted “This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes”, referring to the point in Tate’s video where he asked for several boxes of pizza and to “make sure the boxes are not recycled.” So, the moral of the story is, protect the environment and protect women’s rights.

Now, several months down the line, Tate is still being held. On February 21st, A Romanian court on Monday upheld a third 30-day detention of Tate, who is continuing to be held on suspicion of organized crime and human trafficking. Tate continues to make repetitive claims of his innocence, alleging the case is a “political conspiracy.” On February 27th, he tweeted, “They weaponize lies to keep me in here.”

Andrew Tate is not an enigma. It’s clear that despite his arrest, despite the accusations against him, Tate has clung to his now infamous public image: Fueled by a deep superiority complex, he continues to push his violent rhetoric, impacting impressionable minds around the world.