Andrew Tate: The Real Problem Behind the Controversy

As a man, I care deeply about making the world safer for boys and men. Lately, I've been pondering what to do about a person like Andrew Tate. Should I do or say anything at all. Then I realized, Tate is a problem, not the problem. The problem is populism and the deep societal problems it reveals.

 

THE WHAT AND WHY OF POPULISM

As you've most commonly heard the word, populism is a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. Think, Nazi-ism, Traditionalism, Birtherism, Black Nationalism and Religious Fundamentalism. All of these ism's ask you to blindly follow the plan based on how it makes you feel and to be a part of in group.

"Psychology has an important role to play in explaining the rise of populism because it provides the theoretical tools for examining the three key facets of its appeal, showing how: 1) the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ taps into core intergroup dynamics, 2) economic and cultural processes are construed in terms of basic status concerns, and 3) collective emotions become mobilized in political communication."

Sandra Obradović, Séamus A Power, Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington

Understanding the psychological appeal of populism - ScienceDirect

 Not everyone in a populist group truly madly deeply believes the tenets in their heart but they identify with or feel connected to it regardless. That sense of connectedness makes populism extremely seductive to the highly social animal that is us humans. Plus, the underlying feelings are often valid, despite the anti-social expression of them.

 

GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE

People are lonelier, stupider, greedier, and more animalistic than they are purely evil for evil's sake. We know this because literally everyone is/has/will embrace some populist bullshit at some point. Yes, you and me, too.

Religion and cults are the oldest populist movements on earth. Multi-level Marketing, Crypto Bros, Hyper-veganism, Girl Bosses, Most Dating & Life Coaches, LLC Twitter, your workplace, Manosphere, Bodybuilding, Work-is-a-scam, Flat-Earth, Incel Culture, TERFs, Anti-Socialism and Black Excellence are all populist. Men are Trash, We were kings and queens in Africa, Black Lives Matter, We’re the daughters of the witches they couldn’t burn, Trans > Cis, Straights are a plague, I Support Everybody Black, God Bless America, Back The Blue, Don’t Tread on Me, and literally every pro-identity slogan is a populist message. Taken even broader stanhoods like the Beyhive, Barbz, Lambily , BTS Army, and Little Monsters are also examples populism. We don't have a problem with the ones we feel connected to, and we highly overstate the damage of the ones we disagree with.

We join our groups for the same reasons people join Tate-ism, we want to belong. We all want to hear positive things about stuff related to us – partially why I’m writing this. We all want to feel powerful. We all want a leader or world view that can make this chaotic life feel just a little more stable – partially why you’re reading this. Yes, we even want to feel better than other people because we're in the know. In other words, we're dealing with deep, base level emotions that're as human as breathing.

 

THE ECHO CHAMBER PROBLEM

These messages and groups can be dangerous because we live in echo chambers where these messages become collective emotions and identities. In our echo chambers we don't see our compatriots as people but oppressors, opponents, and characters in our narrative. We minimize other's humanity to elevate our own status and sense of self-worth. We ignore their struggles. We simplify big, complicated emotions and real situations to being just their fault.

I'll say as a liberal, humanist, black, gay, fat, autistic man who grew up poor, every distinct group I'm in has valid concerns that need to be addressed at a systematic and social level. Then again, we also have delusional group talk that's greedy, selfish, myopic, and intellectually dishonest, but feels good to say.

That's why Tate, Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, and many other pro-male populists have a space to spread their bullshit. No one wants to feel like the oppressors. Being intellectually honest, no one is THE OPPRESSOR™ in 2023 America. We all actively accept how our privilege hurts others and deny the extent of its effect. We all shit on other people to make ourselves feel better and avoid tackling tough internal problems that we can control. But, in our echo chambers, no one is willing to step in and break the collective delusion.

 

LOVE CRITICALLY

This is where we come in. To help save a red-pilled person and us, we need to show some critical love. When people buy into these movements, they admit that they feel unloved, unwelcome, unseen, unvalued, underappreciated, and vulnerable to influence. Although we typically react in anger and shame, that will only make them entrench more. You're proving that people outside the group are unsafe.

Instead, help them find their power and sense of safety. Challenge what's an actual social issue, an annoyance, or a self-inflicted wound. Help them unwind their frustration and shrink their boogeyman to a workable level. But to do that you'll have to be honest with yourself.

 

MEN'S ISSUES ARE REAL

This male dominated world isn't so welcoming or beneficial to boys outside the ideal, i.e., disabled, poor, weak, small, emotionally expressive, queer, or not the right skin color. You might not realize this, but the "non-ideal" boys account for most boys. But they're primarily ignored for support at all levels of society. They're essentially the middle child of society, expected to figure it out with a smile because the younger and older kids require more attention.

From childhood, society expects boys to accept physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect to prove their strength. From circumcision to abbreviated childhoods to premature sexualization to criminalization to boys don't cry to covert incest to military trauma to parental rights to compulsory provider-hood to homophobia to shorter life expectancies to being shamed for declining sexual advances, our bodies, lives, & minds are not our own.

As society’s middle child, our experiences are routinely ridiculed, minimized, and disregarded publicly and privately. We're met with guilt, shame, and outrage when asking for help cause other people always need our help first. Historically we've got centuries of war, jail, HIV, slavery, and work trauma that remains unresolved. Plus, boys are currently living in a time where the social contract has been changed dramatically, they’ve been given no new guidelines to follow, and everything they choose to do is wrong. It's a horrible experience that deserves compassion, not ridicule.

 

THIS IS OUR FAULT

All of this is true without an atom of hatred. These are just the facts that men are living under. We, as a society, have chosen to ignore boys’ suffering while blaming them for all the world's problems and it must stop. Until we're willing to do that, we are literally begging for more Andrew Tates to rise and grab the attention of our boys.

If you want to fight future Andrew Tate-style populism, help create a world where all boys can feel seen, heard, valued, and understood as wholly complete and autonomous people divorced from what they can offer to the world. Take accountability for this part of society that we have collectively fumbled. We all deserve it.