Controversial internet personality and former kickboxer Andrew Tate landed in the United States on Thursday (February 27) along with his brother Tristan, after Romanian authorities lifted the travel restrictions imposed on them.
In 2023, Andrew Tate was charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women as part of an ongoing investigation in Romania. His brother was also charged with related accusations, with both of them denying wrongdoing.
Despite the accusations, Andrew has continued to attract attention online. With 10.7 million followers on X at present (his YouTube and Facebook accounts were removed a few years ago), he counts among the most influential personalities on the internet this decade.
Tate has positioned himself as a motivational speaker of sorts, mostly targeting young men as an audience. He is often deemed anti-women or “misogynistic” – a label he openly embraces. What are the allegations against him, and how did Tate amass a dedicated following? We explain.
What are the allegations against Andrew Tate?
The Tates are dual US-British citizens, with Andrew residing in Romania since 2017. Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIOCT) alleged that the brothers and two others formed a criminal group in 2021 “in order to commit the crime of human trafficking” in Romania as well as the United States and Britain.
According to the Associated Press, “The agency (DIOCT) alleged that seven female victims were misled and transported to Romania, where they were sexually exploited and subjected to physical violence by the gang. One defendant is accused of raping a woman twice in March 2022”.
In December 2024, a court ruled that the case could not go to trial because of multiple legal and procedural irregularities, but it remains open. DIOCT said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors approved a request to change the Tates’ travel restrictions.
Separately, multiple British women have also alleged they were victims of sexual violence and lodged civil cases against Andrew to demand damages.
Who is Andrew Tate?
Tate, 38, runs a website called CobraTate and refers to himself as “King Cobra”. It said his boxing titles include an ISKA Kickboxing world championship crown, and that he was a commentator for Real Xtreme Fighting, a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) promotion company in Romania.
In 2016, he appeared on the UK reality show Big Brother but was removed after an earlier video emerged of him appearing to hit a woman, which he denied.
He has been steadily gaining popularity through his unique brand of self-help advice (which he calls “Tate speech”) on career, finances, personal life and mental health. Teenage boys also form a significant part of his audience. Tate is perhaps the most popular of other similar personalities from the West, called “Men’s Rights Activists”, who have claimed to empower men in the last few years via numerous YouTube channels and podcasts.
By June 2022, he was googled more often than Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump. Parts of his videos or interviews are turned into short clips and then posted on TikTok or Instagram, where they are seen by millions of people, all over the world.
Why is Andrew Tate so popular, and controversial?
Though it’s difficult to give an exact reason, a big appeal of influencers like Tate is that they seem to identify some of the genuine problems that many men seem to be facing – what it means to be a man or to be masculine today, questioning one’s self-worth and identity, and frustration because of a sense of aimlessness in matters of career or personal life.
Tate hooks viewers in through the mythology he has created around himself. On his website, he states, “In a previous life, I lived 5,000 human years atop Wudan mountain. I remember every lived second. Life is competition. Competition is violence… If you do not struggle to become an exceptional man. You are a nobody. And every female will prove to you – you may as well not exist.”
He frequently invokes quotes from the famous US sci-fi film series The Matrix, which talks about people rejecting a world where their life isn’t theirs to control. But in offering men a feeling of community and the secrets of wealth creation (at a price), Tate only furthers the idea of people being worthless if they are not “successful”, with a successful life only limited to gaining immense power or money.
Tate’s rise can also be read as part of the larger backlash against recent progressive movements for the rights of women and marginalised communities, seen at odds with a traditional and conservative view of society. His pinned post on X is a video endorsing the re-election of Donald Trump and saying the next four years will be great for “winners”.
Among other things, he has said that if a woman ever cheated on him, “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her up by the neck,” and that women who report sexual harassment and rape bear some responsibility for the crimes. He was banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for such comments, only to be reinstated on Twitter (now X) once Elon Musk took control.
Tate has pushed stereotypical and outdated ideas about society, where men are the only providers in a household, and women are to only focus on raising a family. Young men being charmed by his philosophy and programs (as there is no age limit on enrolling for his courses) has, therefore, been pointed out as a matter of concern.
This explainer is an updated version of an article first published in 2022.
Andrew Tate speaks to the media upon arrival from Romania in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S. February 27, 2025. (REUTERS/Maria Alejandra Cardona) 
Share
