Andrew Tate is a man who has made a living out of controversy. The extensive media coverage garnered since his arrest in Romania on suspicion of rape, human trafficking and organised crime has largely called him out for his misogynistic views.

This matters, because he is a literal influencer. Tate has known a lightning rise to global fame and the kind of viral reach that most of his peers only dream of, despite having been banned by many platforms.

By his own account, his strategy has been to get his followers to extend his reach by reposting his content. It is what one criminologist has termed “incendiary content sharing”.

In doing so, he has amassed a fortune from billions of views of his videos and via subscriptions to his Hustlers University, where men and boys pay for tips on getting rich. The fact that he routinely describes himself as a “high-net worth individual” feeds right back into the appeal of the content. Quite how much money he actually has is unclear, but disenfranchised boys and men are taken in by his confident message that if they do as he says, they too will be rich and ripped and in control.

Tate’s responses to accusations of being misogynistic and sexist vary. He has variously agreed, deflected – fine, he says, call me that, I don’t care – or denied, declaiming the love he has for women. He has also claimed that he says what he says as part of a persona he’s taken on online.

Whether he acknowledges it or not, however, research shows that everything Tate is selling, from the language he uses to describe women to the positions he holds on sexual assault, partner control and a woman’s worth, justifies those labels. And the danger inherent to the term “influencer”, however accurate, is that it effectively lends legitimacy to the idea that such misogynistic content is something to be sold in the same way that another social media influencer might “sell” a holiday or “boost” a fashion brand.

Read Full Story https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/andrew-tate-research-has-long-shown-how-feminist-progress-is-always-followed-by-a-misogynistic-backlash-197433