A Note on the Promotion of Andrew Tate

From GB News on Wednesday morning:

Andrew Tate has taken a swipe at Greta Thunberg and her green agenda in his latest series of tweets.

…Tate has mocked the activist by sharing an image of himself filling up his Bugatti with petrol and asking for her to send him an email address so he can detail the “enormous emissions” his cars let out.

…He responded later with a video of Thunberg speaking at the United Nations where she famously lambasted world leaders by telling them “This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here”, the clip has been edited and features clips of Tate driving his supercars and boarding private jets.

The article is credited to a “senior digital producer” at GB News, which is a title indicating something less than journalist – the channel specialises in rent-a-gob commentary and rarely if ever has an investigative scoop, and as such its general online news coverage tends to be derivative to the point of near-plagiarism (1).

In this instance, however, there wasn’t even a story – taunting environmental campaigners online by boasting about wasting energy or creating needless pollution is hardly remarkable or original. The main reason GB News chose to write up Tate’s Tweet was because they wanted to promote him, and perhaps in turn gain attention from his social media audiences. Thus the article also mentions that

Earlier this year, Tate appeared on GB News and called Meghan Markle’s race accusations disrespectful to people who have genuinely suffered from racism.

That was in June, although Tate made a second appearance earlier this month in which he was billed as a “social media sensation” after Elon Musk restored his Twitter account. In conversation with Dan Wootton, he described Covid as an “imaginary pandemic” – elsewhere, he has announced that he avoids sex with vaccinated women, a policy that I suspect is equally agreeable to such women, and in another clip he claims that Covid vaccines were created in order to control the population as a check on freedoms arising from the internet and cryptocurrencies (conspiracy influencer James Melville commended the clip, although he also made clear that he’s “not particularly a fan” of Tate).

The GB News article also included one other detail:

Thunberg is yet to respond to the tweet.

That was early on Wednesday morning; later that day, however, she replied with a mocking Tweet that went viral:

yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com

This one got picked up by the media, although for some reason GB News now thought the matter beneath their notice. In contrast, in the USA the Post-Millennial used Tweets from Matt Walsh and Iain Miles Cheong to try to build a narrative that Thurnberg had made herself look foolish by giving that as her supposed email address, which was also Tate’s own face-saving interpretation.

GB News’s promotion of Tate as a voice to be heard reflects his broader acceptance among conservative activists: at the 2019 CPAC conference he socialised with the likes of Paul Joseph Watson, Jack Posobiec and Candace Owens, and got photo-ops with Nigel Farage and Donald Trump Jnr. In the same year Mike Cernovich visited Tate’s residence in Romania, and Tommy Robinson is another friend. (2)

This embrace of Tate has occurred despite a history of unambiguous and coarsely expressed misogyny. He openly boasts about using predatory seduction techniques to recruit women into webcam work, and he has even filmed himself engaging in sadistic sexual role-play. Perhaps this was seen as primarily performative, but things have now taken a darker turn; as reported by BBC News:

The controversial British-American influencer Andrew Tate will be held in detention in Romania for 30 days, after a court agreed to a police request.

Tate was arrested alongside his brother Tristan on Thursday as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape, which they deny.

Tate was previously arrested in April, and an investigation has apparently been going on for some months. Someone Tweeting on Tate’s behalf has alluded to “the Matrix” as an explanation, and his supporters allege that he is being persecuted, perhaps as a result of his Tweets to Thurnberg. There is a striking contrast between activist readiness to accuse “elites” of involvement in sexual criminality based on conspiracy theories and the doubt and scepticism being expressed now.

(H/T @CarlEveCrime for alerting me to the GB News article)

Note

1. At one point last year it seemed that GB News had a real story about about bonuses at Channel 4, but it turned out that someone had simply sexed up two Press Association articles (used without credit). GB News oversold the story by alleging “corruption”, but then toned it down before deleting it.

2. In 2019 Tate engaged in some copycat harassment of Mike Stuchbery after Robinson made a night-time visit to Stuchbery’s home.

One Response

  1. “…In this instance, however, there wasn’t even a story – taunting….”

    Oh, wait….!

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