Andrew Tate

Bio
Emory Andrew Tate III (born December 1, 1986) is an American-British media personality and former professional kickboxer. Following his kickboxing career, he began offering paid courses and memberships through his website and later rose to fame as an online celebrity. His misogynistic commentary has resulted in his suspension from several social media platforms.

Early life
Emory Andrew Tate III was born in Washington, D.C. on December 1, 1986, the son of white English catering assistant Eileen Ashleigh and black American chess player Emory Tate (1958–2015). He has a brother named Tristan and spent his earliest years in Chicago before the family relocated to Goshen, Indiana. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother and brother to England, where he was raised as a Christian in his mother's hometown of Luton. He learned to play chess at the age of five and competed in adult tournaments as a child.

Kickboxing
Tate started practicing boxing and martial arts in 2005, and worked in the TV advertising industry to support himself. In November 2008, he was ranked the 7th best light-heavyweight kickboxer in Britain by the International Sport Kickboxing Association (ISKA). In 2009, he gained his first championship when he won the British ISKA Full Contact Cruiserweight Championship in Derby, and was ranked number one in his division in Europe.

In 2011, Tate won his first ISKA world title in a rematch against Jean-Luc Benoit via knockout, having previously lost to Benoit by decision. In 2012, Tate lost the Enfusion championship tournament to Franci Grajš. Before his loss, he was ranked second best light-heavyweight kickboxer in the world. In 2013, Tate won his second ISKA world title in a 12-round match against Vincent Petitjean, making him world champion in two different weight divisions. He has since retired from combat sports.

Big Brother and online ventures
In 2016, while a guest on the British reality show Big Brother, Tate came under scrutiny for his homophobic and racist comments on Twitter. A video apparently showing him hitting a woman with a belt caused him to be removed from the show after only six days. Tate and the woman both said that they were friends and that the actions in the video were consensual.

Tate's website offers training courses on accumulating wealth and "male–female interactions". According to the website, he also operated a webcam studio using his girlfriends as employees. Tate and his brother Tristan started the webcam business, employing as many as 75 webcam models to sell "fake sob stories" to male callers, claiming to have made millions of dollars doing so. He later admitted that the business model was a "total scam".

Tate operates Hustler's University, a platform where members pay a monthly membership fee to receive instruction on topics such as dropshipping and cryptocurrency trading. The website employed an affiliate marketing program, where members received a commission for recruiting others to the platform. Tate became highly prominent during 2022 by encouraging members of Hustler's University to post large amounts of videos of him to social media platforms in an effort to maximize engagement. As of August 2022, its website had amassed over 100,000 subscribers. That same month, the Irish-American financial services company Stripe pulled out of processing subscriptions for the platform, and Hustler's University shut down its affiliate marketing program. Paul Harrigan, a marketing professor at the University of Western Australia, stated the affiliate program constituted a social media pyramid scheme.

Social media presence
Tate received attention for his tweets describing his view of what qualifies as sexual harassment amid the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases and for tweeting several statements about his view that sexual assault victims share responsibility for their assaults. In 2017, he was criticized for tweeting that depression "isn't real".

Tate initially became known among online far-right circles through his appearances on InfoWars and acquaintances with far-right figures such as Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and Paul Joseph Watson. He became widely known in mid-2022 and was searched on Google more times than both Donald Trump and COVID-19 that July. He has described himself as "absolutely a sexist" and "absolutely a misogynist". He has stated that women "belong in the home", that they "can't drive", and that they are "given to the man and belong to the man", as well as claiming that men prefer dating 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds because they are likely to have had sex with fewer men.

The White Ribbon Campaign, a nonprofit opposing male-on-female violence, has called Tate's commentary "extremely misogynistic" and its possible long-term effects on his young male audience "concerning". Hope not Hate, an anti-extremism advocacy group, has commented that Tate's social media presence might present a "dangerous slip road into the far-right" for his audience. In response to criticism, Tate stated that his content includes "many videos praising women" and mainly aims at teaching his audience to avoid "toxic and low value people as a whole". He further stated that he plays a "comedic character" and claimed that people believed "absolutely false narratives" about him.

Social media bans
Three of Tate's Twitter accounts have been suspended at different times. In 2021, an account that he created to evade his previous ban was verified by Twitter, contrary to their policies. The account was subsequently permanently banned, and Twitter said the verification occurred in error. In August 2022, following an online campaign to deplatform him, Tate was permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram, losing 4.7 million followers from the latter. Parent company Meta claimed he had violated their policy on "dangerous organizations and individuals". TikTok, where videos featuring Tate's name as a hashtag have been viewed over 13 billion times, also removed his account after determining that it violated their policies on "content that attacks, threatens, incites violence against, or otherwise dehumanizes an individual or a group". Shortly thereafter, YouTube also suspended his channel citing multiple violations, including hate speech and COVID-19 misinformation, and he later deleted his own Twitch channel.

Tate responded to the bans by saying that, while most of his comments were taken out of context, he takes responsibility for how they were received. Media personality Jake Paul denounced Tate's sexism, but criticized the bans as censorship. Tate's content continued to circulate on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok after the bans via fan accounts. Following the bans, Tate moved to Gettr and Rumble, making the latter briefly become the most downloaded app on the App Store.

In November 2022, after the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, Tate's original Twitter account was unbanned.

Personal life
Tate resides in Bucharest, receiving criticism for a since-deleted YouTube video in which he said that he moved there partly because Romanian police are less likely to investigate sexual crimes. On April 11, 2022, his home was raided after Romanian police received a tip that an American woman was potentially being held there against her will, sparking an investigation into human trafficking. He was released after being interrogated by authorities. He later denied any wrongdoing, calling it a case of swatting.

Tate was raised Christian and joined the Romanian Orthodox Church after moving to Romania. He previously tithed £16,000 (around 89,000 Romanian lei) to the church on a monthly basis and said, "The church in Romania is very powerful and I like having church friends, so I give them a lot of money." When a video of him praying at a mosque in Dubai went viral in October 2022, he announced on his Gettr account that he had converted to Islam.