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17 December 2024
10 December 2024
07 December 2024
Evidence that dozens of women were groomed into online sex work by members of influencer Andrew Tate's "War Room" group has been uncovered by the BBC.
Leaked internal chat logs identify 45 potential victims between March 2019 and April 2020 but the total number is likely to be higher.
Tate’s views may appeal to teenagers, but he is currently detained, awaiting trial for rape and human trafficking. He denies all allegations, and has pledged $100m (£85m) to start a charity in his will for men faced with false accusations.
Tate was banned from Twitter for saying women should “bear responsibility” for being raped.
Counter-extremism workers have warned of a rapid rise in the number of cases being referred to them by schools concerned about the influence of the self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate.
Incidents include the verbal harassment of female teachers or other pupils and outbursts echoing Tate’s views, which are disseminated and spread mainly on social platforms TikTok and Instagram despite him being banned from them.
'I spent weeks inside Andrew Tate’s online business course – originally called Hustler’s University, it has since been rebranded to “The Real World”. The course costs £40 a month and poses as a get-rich-quick scheme with courses in e-commerce and cryptocurrency. But beneath the surface is a capitalist cult of over 220,000 young men who worship Tate and are being indoctrinated by the far-right who have infiltrated the online business course.'
Daria Gusa was 16 and still at school, when she says she received a private message on Instagram from Andrew Tate, a high-profile influencer almost 20 years older than her.
"It just read 'Romanian girl' and he put some flirty emoji," Daria told me. "I was confused because I [only] had 200 followers, and it was a private account."
She is one of two teenagers who have described to the BBC how Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan approached them online, apparently using a standard formula.
But assertions that Tate’s rise is a product of today’s young men and their views are wrong. In fact, Tate repeatedly failed to build a personal brand until TikTok gave him the means to saturate news feeds.
Archives of his website show that his business and his pitch to young men was the same four years ago as it is today. As far back as 2019, his website promised courses that would “have your girlfriend obey every command”.
So if Tate’s ambitions and pitch to young men have stayed the same, what changed? The answer lies in how Tate learned to game TikTok’s algorithm, allowing his content to flood millions of news feeds.
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