The unfair digital execution of Andrew Tate (ft. Daz Games)
Self-proclaimed "success coach" Andrew Tate has been the victim of a growing movement to deplatform him, due to his "misogynist" influence on his primarily young audience
Welcome to recodedpixels on Substack, a newsletter which I honestly don’t know how often I’ll be using. I literally have no idea how this site works apart from the fact that you can pay people…so pay me now, I guess.
Either way, in today’s epic article on slightly better bootleg WordPress, we’ll be discussing a sort-of dead topic I covered a couple of weeks ago on YouTube…but in a slightly more professional manner, that also doesn’t focus on just one video (although the podcast link above does). That is…the (sort-of unfair) digital execution of Andrew Tate by social media. I stole that from my podcast title, which was in turn stolen from another podcast, but that’s besides the point, so let’s start.
Disclaimer: I wrote this randomly on a Saturday afternoon just so I could have something on my Substack page, please ignore the numerous errors you may notice.
Disclaimer 2: I will happily eat my words if this entire article ends up being untrue at some point in the distant future.
Context on why this article exists
Abridged from recodedpixels: the podcast on Acast
Emory Andrew Tate III, an American-British online celebrity and former professional kickboxer, was born on December 14, 1986. Tate started selling premium memberships and courses through his website, such as the Hustlers University-branded courses, after retiring from kickboxing, and he eventually became well-known after switching to influencer marketing. Tate was suspended from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as a result of his provocative and allegedly sexist comments on subjects including sexual assault.
English YouTuber Darren "Daz" Black, better known online as Daz Games, was born on August 7, 1985, and is currently aged 37. He is also recognised for his time spent on Vine and his second YouTube channel, Daz Black. The 8 million subscriber YouTuber published a viral video on August 18, 2022 with the simple title of "DAZ WATCHES ANDREW TATE." Although titled to be supposedly part of his 'Daz Watches' reaction series, the video was instead structured as a "serious" exposé video of sorts, and due to the controversial nature of many of his opinions, the video was well-received, despite the fact that personally, looking into it, it was more of an politically charged opinion piece that shouldn't have got anybody banned, let alone by Meta (Instagram and Facebook) for "dangerous individuals" - perhaps the most vague term possible.
Today, we’ll be debunking many of the claims made against Tate, as well as discussing why censorship isn’t the best way to combat ideas.
Andrew Tate…the wife beater?
In June 2016, conservative British newspaper outlet The Sun published a video of Andrew Tate, then 29, whipping his Ukrainian ex-girlfriend with a belt, which reportedly led to him being prematurely removed from that year’s series of Celebrity Big Brother.
Tate has claimed otherwise, saying it was instead because there was “no way” he would wait for security, opting to defend himself in case a housemate hit him, and obviously, when you’re a ISKA championship winner…there’s obviously going to be safety concerns.
Channel 5 said the following in the wake of the incident:
Channel 5 and the producers reached the view that Andrew's position as a housemate had become untenable after a video was brought to our attention by The Sun.
Nobody apart from the show’s producers are currently aware if the video was just used as an public excuse to remove Tate for security reasons, but that isn’t the relevance of this section.
Rather, it’s that there’s, like, a 99% chance that this story was fabricated as a hit piece on to further exacerbate the hate and pressure on social media companies to take down someone they disagreed with politically.
Two days after The Sun published their article on Tate, the Daily Mirror re-published a clip1 posted to Tate’s Facebook page, in which the girl involved in the situation said:
Hi, everyone. I just wanted to say something about the video that has been released recently of me and my ex-boyfriend, Andrew Tate.
He is still a great friend and what you saw on the video is just something we used to do. It was pure game. He is a great guy and would never hurt anyone - unless he is [professionally] fighting.
I just wanted to let you know that this has all been a huge misunderstanding. I heard he got kicked out of the house because of it, which I find really unfair because it really was just pure game. That's what we used to do.
This was accompanied with Andrew Tate posting images on Twitter of the girl, who had a tattoo of Tate’s name (advice: don’t get tattoos of anyone’s name, in case your relationship doesn’t last). She also held a belt that read “but I love when Tate spanks me,” accompanied with the hashtags #BBUK, #BBAndrew and #PutHimBack2.
This led to an unsuccessful social media campaign to try and reinstate him onto the show, with some bringing up alleged double standards from the Paramount and Endemol production staff, as earlier on that week, Marco Pierre White Jr. asked to be choked while engaging in a sex act with Laura Carter.
Tate hinted at a lack of interest in relation to returning to the show, as he said on Facebook:
The question is this: do I even wanna go back and live with those f***ing morons?
And in respect to the allegations of him being a “wife beater” due to his clip, this is what he said to The Sun:
This tape is a kinky sex video and we’re acting out a roleplay. A longer version of the video shows us laughing and I’m hitting myself saying ‘it doesn’t hurt.’ I’m still friends with her and she’s in the UK with me now. I would never hit a woman.
It was then argued that the girl was manipulated into saying the information by Tate under the threat of violence - a somewhat valid point, if you look at the fact that that later in the original video, he allegedly threatens to “f***ing kill” her if she is found messaging other people. It would also be a fair conclusion if it was a one-off confession, and there was no more additional context…but if there wasn’t any context, Tate would probably be in jail right now, and my article and video on this situation wouldn’t exist.
Before we take a look at the recent information, let’s first look at the context given at the time of incident, so those mischaracterising events cannot claim that they were not aware of said information.
The original article from The Sun claims that the video originated from one of his friend’s WhatsApp pages, as Tate had sent the video to them, before quickly spreading around where he grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire. The friend said this:
It was pretty shocking when I got the message on my phone through WhatsApp as it had no context. It looked like he had caught her messaging men and he was pretty angry about it. I couldn’t work out whether it was consensual or not and the slaps sounded pretty loud. Overall it was pretty shocking and looked violent.
The friend keeps open the possibility of the activity being consensual, and within the context of Andrew Tate living in a different country to the people he sent it to3, if it was truly unconsensual, he’d probably be the most stupid guy alive; he would have just sent a video of him committing a crime to someone he would be way too far away to concretely threaten or fight in relation to sharing it with others, or perhaps law enforcement.
Another point in his favour is that as recent as last week, the girl has continued to defend Tate in relation to the supposed “wife-beating” allegations. In mid-August 2022, Tate had published his “final message” video after being banned from all mainstream social media platforms4, and the Ukrainian girl said that the beating was a “pure game that Tate and [her] used to make and Tate didn’t beat her on purpose.”
In relation to Tate’s character, she also said this:
Tate is not a person as we see it, it is the media that depicted a bad image of him just for the sake of entertainment and to gain some views. He was a great help to me and people should not give their opinion to someone they didn’t know.
The original clip was filmed when Tate was in the UK, and if the woman truly felt she was victimised, she likely would have reported it at this point, especially if Tate was in another country and was unable to threaten her. This again isn’t 100% proof, especially as there are many semantics to take into account e.g. statute of limitations, Tate being unable to be charged in a different country, but its definitely more likely than not that this was consensual [read footnote]5.
Andrew Tate: the human trafficker?
This will probably be the shortest segment of this article, as there isn’t too much to say. Left-wing American news outlet The Daily Beast reported that on April 11, 2022, Tate’s house had been raided by police, themselves quoting a domestic newspaper in Romania who had reported on it.
Video from the raid showed police officers armed with rifles milling among the Tates’ sports cars, with a neon “TATE” logo on a wall in the background. Andrew and his brother, Tristan, were then driven away in police vans. The country’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism said that the crimes being investigated included “crimes of human trafficking and rape,” after initial police reports referred to a woman being held at the Tate house against her own will.
Obviously, such massive claims would probably require the involvement of the United States, as its allegedly one of their citizens who has been allegedly trafficked.
The U.S. State Department said this:
We are aware of reports of a U.S. citizen held against their will in Romania. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.
Tristan Tate said this:
No girls were found in my house, and nobody was arrested.
Two somewhat contradicting claims, to be sure. There’s obviously no public evidence for an ongoing investigation, and therefore, there’s no way for me to make a determination on the case without it possibly aging badly, and therefore I won’t. It’s also true that anyone being held against their own will wouldn’t say anything about the Tate brothers, good or bad. If the Tate brothers did participate in human trafficking, they definitely deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, as should anyone else who commits such actions.
However, in 2022, especially on Twitter, if someone’s public enemy #1, you could basically accuse them of raping and murdering 25 people and still get, like, 50% of the website to believe you.
In addition, although the reporting by the Daily Beast is factually correct, there’s clearly a political agenda to them reporting this story, and this has nothing to do with just Tate.
Reading through their article, this is clearly seen several times. Here are a list of such examples:
…bringing new attention to Tate’s ties to leading figures in the American MAGA movement.
He shared a meal with far-right cable news commentator Jack Posobiec and Infowars host Paul Joseph Watson, and appeared multiple times on Infowars shows.
In Trump’s Washington hotel, Tate posed for a picture with Brexit advocate Nigel Farage, and sat in a group in the Trump hotel lobby with the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and future Jan. 6 protest organizer Ali Alexander. Cernovich visited the Tate brothers in Romania later that year, describing them as his “friends” in the description of his podcast.
Andrew Tate’s pro-Trump colleagues—Cernovich, Watson, Posobiec, and Alexander—also didn’t respond to emails from The Daily Beast.
The raid on the Tates’ villa isn’t the first time that the “manosphere6,” the far-right men’s online community that Tate belongs to, has been tied to serious criminal activity. In December, a prominent manosphere personality went on a killing spree in Denver, murdering five people before being fatally shot by a police officer.
The Daily Beast doesn’t necessarily hide their bias, but there’s literally no reason to bring up these points if they aren’t trying to paint everyone seemingly associated with Trump or the political right7 as a potential rapist, rape apologist, or murderer. Andrew Tate should be held responsible for his own wrongdoings as an individual, rather than bring in every single right-wing figure he may have spoken to, in order to try and slate them too.
The most that many of the other people mentioned here are guilty of is being conspiracy theorists, or potential liars, in their previous speeches - nothing on the level of human trafficking.
Misogyny
Many people who have argued against Tate’s online presence have said that the seemingly false allegations made about him do not even matter, and that he should be banned. Before we tackle the issues with online censorship, let’s address these claims.
This topic is more of a subjective one than objective, as it is true that many comments made by Andrew Tate could be argued to be misogynistic8. For example, these statements that he made on Twitter (which also got him permanently banned) on October 18, 2017, are very questionable at best…
Harvey [Weinstein]. Creep? Obviously. But women have been exchanging sex for opportunity for a very long time. Some did this. [They] weren't abused.
Next point, if you put yourself in a position to be raped, you must bare some responsibility.
He then continues, claiming that rape is “[not] OK” adding that no women should be abused, but that “with sexual assault, [society] want to put zero blame on the victim whatsoever.”
If you go out, meet a guy, take his drinks all night, go to his apartment drunk, start to kiss him. Then he grabs your [breasts]: not harassment.
If I left a million dollars outside my front door – when it got stolen people would say: “Why was it there? Irresponsible.”
Take some personal responsibility. This zero blame game is damaging to the female cause as a whole. Protect yourselves.
source: Twitter/@cobratate; October 18, 2017
There’s also some slightly out-of-context9 clips of him saying he dates younger girls in order to make an “imprint” on them, as well as hypocrisy, and the supposed reasons why he moved to Romania, which are also fairly critiqued online. I don’t think I’m one to tell others how they should interpret certain quotes, as there’s loads of factors that go into that.
However, what I will say is that this doesn’t necessarily justify any of the social media bans, nor should silencing become the main way to deal with people you disagree with, like it seemingly has become for the left nowadays10.
Censorship
Meta banned Andrew Tate from their platforms (including his Instagram with over 4 million followers, which was the only mainstream social media platform he actively posted on), for allegedly violating the company's polices on dangerous organizations and individuals.
As per Meta’s own policies, these are their descriptions of “dangerous” individuals and organisations:
Terrorist organisations and individuals, defined as a non-state actor that:
Engages in, advocates or lends substantial support to purposive and planned acts of violence,
Which causes or attempts to cause death, injury or serious harm to civilians, or any other person not taking direct part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, and/or significant damage to property linked to death, serious injury or serious harm to civilians
With the intent to coerce, intimidate and/or influence a civilian population, government or international organisation
In order to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim.
Hate organisations, defined as an association of three or more people that:
is organised under a name, sign or symbol; and
has an ideology, statements or physical actions that attack individuals based on characteristics, including race, religious affiliation, national origin, disability, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation or serious disease.
Criminal organisations, defined as an association of three or more people that:
is united under a name, colour(s), hand gesture(s) or recognised indicia; and
has engaged in or threatens to engage in criminal activity such as homicide, drug trafficking or kidnapping.
Multiple-victim violence and multiple murders
We consider an event to be multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence if it results in three or more casualties in one incident, defined as deaths or serious injuries. Any individual who has committed such an attack is considered to be a perpetrator or an attempted perpetrator of multiple-victim violence.
We consider any individual who has committed two or more murders over multiple incidents or locations a multiple murderer.
Hateful ideologies
While our designations of organisations and individuals focus on behaviour, we also recognise that there are certain ideologies and beliefs that are inherently tied to violence and attempts to organise people around calls for violence or exclusion of others based on their protected characteristics. In these cases, we designate the ideology itself and remove content that supports this ideology from our platform. These ideologies include:
Nazism
White supremacy
White nationalism
White separatism
So as per Facebook’s own guidelines, making a few poor taste jokes on women is on the same level of Nazism, murder and bloody ISIS.
The vagueness of the final section - “hateful ideologies" - also just allows Meta to strike down anything they want granted enough people see it as hate speech.
The last person to be completely de-platformed off the internet like this was Alex Jones, an alt-right political commentator and host of InfoWars, a show that led to a defamation lawsuit against him after he claimed for years that the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 was a hoax carried out by fake actors. He has also pushed many other unfounded conspiracy theories on his show. These are, of course, disgusting claims, as well as once that likely did deserve legal action and compensation11, considering the stress that families associated with allegedly “acting” as victims went through.
Many free speech proponents argued that this was the point that we should stop, but now, if a few politically incorrect views that have no effect on anyone12 are enough to get rid of someone forever online, what is next?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
source: German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), on the dangers of indifference
In my opinion, the solution to questionable views is moderation, education and debate. Parents who, understandably, may not want their children to be viewing content such as Andrew Tate’s should probably monitor their children more. The self-proclaimed “most Googled man on earth” is not going to go away just because he’s been banned off certain platforms, although the constant smears of any platform that dares to respect free speech may hinder those efforts.
If you genuinely think someone’s content is supposedly a danger to society - or at least people you know - then talk to them about it; de-platforming being your go-to solution may make it somewhat harder long-term for some casual internet users to find a person, as they may not be willing to find new platforms, but to others, they’ll just seem like a martyr of unfair mainstream backlash, and therefore, appear even more appealing to some people, defeating the entire purpose of your “silencing of dangerous views.”
In addition, for those claiming that Andrew Tate is legitimately “breaking human rights” - maybe you should realise that freedom of speech is also a right, although my YouTube comment section told me I’m not allowed to have opinions on laws, so, sorry.
It is indeed true that users do technically agree to a website’s terms of service during sign-up, and also true that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does enable companies to remove whatever content they wish, when 57%13 of the world is using, at most, 6 main social media services - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat - maybe there should be some sort of oversight as to what content14 should be moderated on these sites. Any reasonable person would realise hosting content on a platform with such limited alternatives does not translate as endorsement.
YouTube, in their defense, at least does try somewhat to defend free speech, such as refusing to remove the likes of PewDiePie, as well as conservative commentator Steven Crowder amid their own controversies, which carried huge public pressure. However, they did choose to remove Tate for violations of their terms of service “by posting a video while there was an active strike and suspension associated with the account” - a barely enforced policy which YouTube only weaponises when they have absolutely no way to ban you for violating their Terms of Service.
TikTok, on the other hand, is just a CCP mouthpiece with crappy security that seemingly lets you violate any TOS rule they have if you pay their staff enough money15 - but if you don’t, you can be banned for pretty much anything.
They, of course, still let users search #andrewtate, but kill the videos in their algorithm almost immediately. Let’s just hope that their “technology” that they’ll use to remove duplicated clips” of Tate doesn’t advance China’s face recognition machine.
Tate claimed in his mid-August “final message” video that although he wasn’t necessarily “angry” about his Instagram ban, short-form video apps, such as short-form video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels helped perpetuate “wrongfully defam[ing]” claims about his character, as they did not provide additional context that a full YouTube video could. He also told Mirror Fighting immediately after his ban that he “was playing a comedic character” when making hyperbolic statements like this:
Slap, slap, grab, choke, “shut up, b*tch,” sex.
You can certainly choose not to believe him, and that this is just the stereotypical response to being called out online - because many people have indeed done that online before - but at least have valid reasons to do so.
This article is an abridged version of the recodedpixels video essay “debunking the daz games hitpiece on andrew tate,” which is available on YouTube now.
The Mirror is the only outlet with an easily accessible link to the story, and with Tate being permanently banned now from all Meta platforms for being a “dangerous individual,” there’s not really any way for me to directly link to the original post.
The imagery was described rather than shown, because while it is true that this topic is more mature than probably any other topic I’ll cover here (which I’m willing to be proven wrong on, since this is my first post), the images are already hosted at the articles linked to in this article, and I don’t want slightly NSFW hooker images on this Substack page either.
Not fully sure on this, but reports claim that he moved to Romania at some point between 2016 and 2017. If he hadn’t moved countries, the point would still hold validity, as this video evidence would probably be enough for a criminal charge, if not conviction.
The main point here is mainstream, Tate now streams live on Rumble on a near-daily basis, where he has over 400,000 followers on his ‘TateSpeech’ account, and increased traffic to the website by approximately 60%. Part of the traffic is said to have come from his interview on Fox Nation show Tucker Carlson Today, where he first announced the move.
If the girl was a victim, it would be more likely that she would stay silent - although I’ve never experienced such things and don’t know how it would go. Either way, the United Kingdom has no statute of limitations apart for summary offences e.g. speeding, so if the girl truly felt she was abused, she could probably report him even today and get him arrested; Romania collaborates with INTERPOL.
The “manosphere” is described by Wikipedia as a community of people promoting “masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism,” which include, but are not limited to “men's rights activists, incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA) and fathers' rights groups.” In internet terms, it’s basically your “alpha-male” types, alongside relationship channels, such as (great) YouTuber Think Before You Sleep.
Before sending me anything, don’t act as if you knew all of that before you read this. The term is so broad as well, so it’s likely not fair to paint everyone in this community as a misogynist.
The category of the post is literally ‘Trumpland’ as well, with the article’s title calling him the MAGA ‘King of Toxic Masculinity.’ Tate has indeed likely met Trump several times, but he hasn’t built his brand off mainly being a Trump supporter, which you could somewhat argue for the other people mentioned, who are conservative political commentators. There is also an argument that it would be fair to inform the people that Tate was involved in such actions - especially if they have extra information and could distance themselves from Andrew - but by adding that they didn’t provide comment, it sort of looks like the Daily Beast are trying to paint those mentioned in the article as human trafficker protectors, at the bare minimum.
Not including the abortion stuff, unless killing babies in the womb is really a crucial human right. Note: if your right to kill babies is so essential that you want to move countries to do it (i.e. Pokimane), then maybe you’re the problem.
Left-wing commentary Ethan Klein, part of the h3h3productions duo (which used to be funny) interpreted Tate’s statement as one where he is saying younger girls are easier to take advantage of. Others have said this statement this just means that “older women” (late 20s - early 30s) have been through multiple partners, which some people i.e. Leonardo DeCaprio probably wouldn’t appreciate. Upon watching the clip, both interpretations seem fair.
A YouGov poll published in October 2020 revealed that 24% - or basically a quarter - registered Democrats (mostly those with left-wing political views) would not even be friends with “very different political views” from them, which essentially means right-wingers and registered Republicans. This was a 14% rise from results by YouGov during the September 2016 US general election. Republicans had a 2% rise in the same view point, shifting to 12%. There’s likely other studies showing this viewpoint too, but I’m writing this on a Saturday morning, and can’t be bothered to do that. Main point: left-wingers are the ones promoting this move in censorship of opposing views.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, received $4.1 million for “emotional trauma,” and another $45.2 million in punitive damages - also known as a bad behaviour warning. However, Jones had been taking his companies in and out of bankruptcy during the trial in a scumbag manner in order to get them dropped from the lawsuit, and therefore reduce the amount of money he would have to pay.
Nobody blames pornography for the exacerbation of rape culture, so why should we blame online political commentary for “radicalising” children?
Research from Statista says that as of June 2022, 4.59 billion people worldwide use social media at least monthly.
By the way, pornography doesn’t count as free speech in the United States, but rather as “free expression,” with ‘obscene content’ still having some regulation within the country.
If you’ve used the app for more than 5 seconds, you’ll see numerous fraudulent/impersonated verified accounts - obviously bought - that TikTok fails to moderate, and which lead users to scams. There’s also numerous amounts of porn - even in Subway Surfers videos, aimed at children - and from personal experience, I know a few people who have fundraised on Patreon to successfully get their accounts unbanned (i.e. @ego on TikTok - don’t say I sent you).