INFLUENCER ANDREW TATE is “capturing the imagination” of young men and is a cause for “deep concern”.
That’s according to teachers and youth workers who have spoken to The Journal on the impact Tate is having on young male students.
British-American Andrew Tate first came to prominence when he appeared on the TV show Big Brother in 2016.
However, he was removed from the programme after a video surfaced online which appeared to show him attacking a woman with a belt.
He claimed the clip had been edited and that the act was consensual and they remain friends.
Since then, he has gained further notoriety online for a string of comments about women, including suggesting that they “bear some responsibility” if they are assaulted – an incident which led to him being banned from Twitter.
However, Tate was allowed back on Twitter after Elon Musk bought the company.
Some of Tate’s content also aims towards positioning him as a self-help guru, encouraging men to use his tips to escape the ‘matrix’, as he terms it.
His videos often focus on how men can improve their strength, improve discipline and make money.
These messages are amongst the many which have been criticised as being extremely misogynistic – he has talked about dating women who are 18 and 19 because he can “make an imprint” on them, and has also talked about hitting and choking women.
An Observer investigation showed how TikTok was promoting Tate’s content, despite it containing extreme and sexist views – going against the app’s policy.
He and his brother Tristan were detained in Romania last month as part of a human trafficking and rape investigation.
They appeared in a Bucharest court yesterday to have their appeals heard against a judge’s decision to extend their arrest warrants from 24 hours to 30 days.
Tate was initially detained for 24 hours on 29 December along with his brother Tristan, who was charged in the same case.
Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romanian anti-organised crime agency DIICOT, said the court had rejected the appeal.
Tate has appeared to deny the accusations, tweeting after this arrest that “the Matrix sent their agents”.
One young female teacher in a Co Kildare school, who spoke to The Journal anonymously, said comments by Tate are being repeated in classrooms to stir up controversy with female teachers.
She said contentious remarks by Tate are “randomly brought up in class, and always by a male student” who would ask her opinion of Tate.
She said it is mostly female teachers who are getting these questions.
At first, she didn’t know who Tate was but searched for information on him online.
She said a lot of Tate’s comments were “very derogatory and very harmful to young boys who are still growing”.
However, she believes the majority of males bring up Tate in class to antagonise female teachers, as opposed to truly believing what he says.
“I had a conversation recently with another teacher, and we said, ‘do we think the boys actually believe what he’s saying?’
“And we think to a certain extent that some might be influenced by it, but we have noticed that it is brought it up to female teachers and they bring up his name in class nearly to just start an argument.”
When knowledge of Tate began to circulate among teachers, she said “a lot of teachers did purposely ignore it when it was brought up”.
“But it dawned on us that it is somewhat irresponsible to ignore it,” she said, “because it’s something they’re talking about and living through.
“So I started to engage in conversation with this and let everyone have a voice but before having the conversation, made it clear that it had to be respectful.”
She said that “some of the boys definitely think that Tate is ridiculous”, but warned that “there would be a few students who definitely would agree with him”.
However, she feels that the “majority bring up Tate just to be controversial”.
“Some students will make comments just for the sake of it and they may not necessarily even agree with what they’re saying, and they’re just bringing it up to start controversy with a female teacher or other female students in particular.”
However, a male secondary school teacher from Co Monaghan, who also wished to remain anonymous, told The Journal that some of his students have been “impressed” by Andrew Tate.
“I think it’s more so the junior students who bring it up,” he said.
“They’re very impressionable and you can see they’re using the same language that Tate uses.”
He adds that is can be difficult to fully push back against at Tate, given the severity of what he is charged with: “You always try to adapt the conversation to the class. If it’s a senior class you are discussing it with, you can be a little bit more open, but obviously you have to be a little bit more mindful of what you’re saying if it’s a more junior group.”
He said Tate is “symptomatic of a much larger problem”, adding: “Tate is the current bogeyman on the internet but I think there’s a big problem with content online that young, impressionable minds access without realising the severity of it.
“With social media, but Tik Tok in particular, you’re getting little sound bites that are edited but are incredibly persuasive.”
He also expressed concern that it will not be possible to persuade every student that Tate’s views are harmful and misogynistic and that “some will go on to share some of those beliefs and views”.
The female teacher from Co Kildare said it was disappointing to see male students target females by quoting Tate, and also mentioned a worrying mindset among some male students in response to high profile incidents of violence against women.
She noted that following high profile incidents, some students discussed the use of the hashtag #NotAllMen on social media rather than discuss the incidents themselves and how they might occur.
“I tried to open their eyes to the fact that, of course people don’t believe that all men behave like this.
“But it’s concerning that so many men do feel very attacked when a woman is speaking about problems or a problem is brought to light.
“It’s something we need to open our eyes to and try to help students to open their eyes also.”
The Journal also spoke to a female philosophy teacher in Wicklow, who also spoke anonymously.
She described philosophy classes as “a space where students can explore the concepts that they want to talk about”.
She said the figure of Tate is often quoted and crowbarred into discussions.
“We were talking about the meaning of philosophy, and how ‘Philo’ and ‘Sophia’ means the love of wisdom,” she explained.
“And I asked them for examples of wise people, and Tate comes up. So basically, it doesn’t matter where I go, he seems to be cropping up all the time, especially with second year boys.”
She too thinks that the issue goes deeper than being an attempt to antagonise female teachers.
“They’re taken by the whole fantasy world, and they’re always looking for somebody to look up to, especially the boys.”
She added that subjects like philosophy offer a great venue to discuss controversial topics like this.
“It’s really important that we listen to the boys and not just tell them ‘that’s bad’, or ‘you can’t say that’.
“Philosophy is a place where you’re not attacked for your opinions, it’s kind of a safe space.”
However, she also pointed out, like the female teacher in Kildare, that some boys feel like they are under attack.
The Wicklow philosophy teacher said some boys claim that Tate “doesn’t express hate towards women but that he just hates feminists”.
She added: “They think this it is fair enough because feminism is kind of threatening the traditional masculine ideas.
“So I think that’s the root of it, that they feel under threat. I have a lot of empathy for the boys. I can understand why they feel under attack in some ways.
“I’m not saying it’s justified, but they’re so young, and they really don’t have enough time in the class day to work through these ideas.”
The Journal also approached the Teachers Union of Ireland about the influence of Andrew Tate, and a spokesperson said: “TUI’s strong and consistent position has always been that school communities must provide a positive, safe and inclusive environment for all students and staff, and therefore any form of misogyny should not be tolerated.
“The current updating of the SPHE (Social, Personal and Health Education) curricula for Junior Cycle and Senior Cycle also has the potential to further emphasise this unequivocal message in classrooms.”
While the Wicklow philosophy teacher said that a lot of males in second and third years “have concluded that some of the stuff Tate says is just to get popular, some agree with what he says about masculinity”.
“I guess they feel that boys get in trouble easier at school and somehow because girls get in less trouble that they have life easier.
“Boys also feel that they can’t talk about their mental health problems in general to each other; they can at school to adults, but not with each other.
“The most important thing is to build empathy with the boys and just see where this is coming from, so in a way, we can use Tate as a kind of learning opportunity.”
However, she added that “there is something going on that I haven’t seen before, some sort of frustration”.
“Tate is really dominating a lot of conversations the boys have with each other, so that is a problem and it’s lasting longer.”
She said those in education “have a responsibility to challenge them, but also to listen and see what’s going on at that age”.
“Nobody’s actually sitting with them and listening to what they think about it and they’re afraid of looking stupid.
“They don’t need an adult telling them what is right and wrong,” she added.
“What they need is more time with peers in a structured, thinking routine, where they can get used to looking at what the root is of these views.
“We need to try and understand better what’s going on and create more opportunities in the curriculum to let boys air those concepts and ideas about masculinity, with their peers and with female peers.”
Caolan Faux is the Director of Youth Work Ireland in Cavan/Monaghan.
He has also spent time as a young men’s development specialist and still works in this field.
He warns that young men are often a “willing audience for some of the misinformation that appears online”.
Faux says the reason for Tate’s level of infamy is most likely down to him having viewpoints “that are probably more extreme than a lot of his contemporaries”.
“It seems that in today’s ages disgrace simply creates a greater platform,” opined Faux.
While he said reports that young people are “manipulating teachers” by bringing up Tate in lessons are concerning, he added that there is more to the situation.
“I think there’s something behind the fact that young people are saying this. By being exposed to this often enough, a certain amount of it breaks through. I think it’s something a little bit darker than it being purely to trigger teachers.”
He warned that “there’s enough people presenting these kinds of right wing views to certainly cause significant concern amongst professionals working with young people”.
When asked how teachers and parents can combat Tate without going into details that are possibly too mature for young boys, he advises: “What we can really say to young people and to children specifically, is, ‘that was said by someone who is completely disgraced’.
“And without getting into the specifics of it, he is currently in jail. So he’s not someone that young people would aspire to be.
“The guy sitting in a cell at the minute, looking at four walls, that’s not a future that any young people aspire to.
“So without going into the specifics of his crimes, he is in disgrace and if I see someone sitting in a cell, I’m not going to listen to their philosophy, especially not when I know that the vast majority of people says he is a disgrace.”
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