The Andrew Tate discourse has now reached the “‘left eating itself “stage, with some ostensible leftists blaming his success on the failure of leftists and feminists to speak to the desires and insecurities of 14-year-old boys.
On Twitter, self-described “libertarian socialist” and “ultrafeminist” Vaush, the YouTube livestreamer, laid out the case against the “unnecessarily repellent” left.
Others concurred:
Some called explicitly for an “alternative Andrew Tate.” In a reply to Vaush, one wrote,
But the idea of an alternative or “leftist Andrew Tate” is a contradiction in terms. Even aside from the trafficking allegations, Tate is a douchebag, a manipulator, a sociopath. He wins over teenage boys by playing the bad boy and exploiting “girls” the way many adolescent boys wish they could. He plays to their insecurities, telling them that, yes, indeed, they are the victims of an evil feminist conspiracy. He feeds their persecution complex. He attracts would-be bullies by being a bully himself. In short, he represents everything that leftists and feminists are or at least should be against. What would a leftist or feminist Andrew Tate even look like?
Some on Twitter pointed out the absurdity.
But if we don’t need an “alternative Andrew Tate,” we do need alternatives to Andrew Tate. We need to put forth a healthy vision of masculinity to combat the toxic masculinity that Tate embodies. We need to promote a non-exploitative sexual and social ethic. We need to address the problems faced by young men without telling them that they’re the biggest victims in the whole wide world.
Of course, to no small degree, this is what the feminist left is doing already.
Could we do a better job of it? Of course we could. Would it be helpful if there were a number of charismatic “good guy” celebrities out there embodying feminist ideals? There are a few, but of course, there could be more.
Should we beat up on ourselves because we have no “Andrew Tate” of our own? No. We don’t need one, and frankly, neither do the 14-year-old boys of the world.
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Vaush is completely wrong. There are alt-right people directly targeting young men for recruiting purposes, selling them victimhood and someone to blame (women/feminists). Plus the social media algorithms favor extremist right wing propaganda for engagement and clicks. Also, it has been shown that right wingers are more likely to be drawn to this extremist disinformation and propaganda.
Lastly, they need to get off the internet and learn to interact socially instead of just sitting in manosphere/incel forums crying about your persecution complex.
“We need to put forth a healthy vision of masculinity to combat the toxic masculinity that Tate embodies.”
Wil Wheaton springs immediately to mind. Successful, famous, smart, funny, happily married to a beautiful woman… and a feminist. But of course he’s not going to tell the budding edgelords what they want to hear, so I guess he’s out.
Seeing Vaush of all people accusing the left of being “unnecessarily repellent” is one of the funniest things I’ve seen so far this year. For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with him, his whole shtick is basically taking the “debate-bro grifter asshole making nine-hour YouTube videos” format of people like Ben Shapiro and then trying to import it over to the left-liberal audience demographic in order to manufacture a niche he can milk money from, complete with being relentlessly and petulantly unpleasant to anyone who lightly bruises his incredibly inflated and brittle ego.
Right now I think his popularity is in fairly steep decline because people a.) got sick of him for being an egotistical bully, b.) realised that behind all the progressive-sounding jargon his actual politics are basically 70% Reddit libertarian and 30% Bush-era neocon, and c.) started getting really skeeved out by his regular, often entirely out-of-context tangents about the age of consent. The reason he’s saying the left needs its own alternative Andrew Tate is undoubtedly because he wants the job.
@Pope of Discord
The anarchist types in the communities I take part in were sure he wasn’t nearly as progressive as he claimed to be, but I never thought he’d be quite that forthright about his real goals.
On that note, I found a rather interesting zine for the more radically inclined folks here documenting the links between misogyny and the promotion of state violence within radical movements. Take a look if you wish, it’s rather fascinating.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/courtney-desiree-morris-why-misogynists-make-great-informants
Listen, if anyone really desperately wants to get their ego and place in the hierarchy boosted, it’s 12 year old boys.
@Pope: Your last sentence leaves me… completely unsurprised.
Is this the same Vaush that used to be a pickup artist and bragged that he didn’t wipe his ass? Because it seems like nobody remembers that part and it makes me feel old.
I own a small online business so unfortunately I’ve seen thread after thread in my online communities about Tate’s “Hustler University” over the past year. The posters are always young men still in school/college who think this paid course will make them rich. Some come to report they lost all their money when they followed the crypto course.
I try not to be unkind generally but I have to admit I have been stunned at the gullibility, naïveté, arrogance and stupidity of those posters.
To me Tate was a grifter selling a get rich quick scheme to easy marks but when I later learned more about him I wasn’t too surprised.
His appeal is that he tells young men it’s possible to have a successful business [without education or experience or capital] and lots of ‘hot babes’ [and also a submissive wife and children] and make millions passively through crypto and NFTs [so you don’t have to work] and have the body of an action figure [regardless of genetics, athletic ability, free time] and all of your current insecurities and problems are the fault of women/feminists/society.
Let’s not fool ourselves that it’s about “talking about masculinity” It’s 100% the easy fix and the blame game. Oldest tricks in the book. Nothing is your fault and you can have everything you want without any sacrifice or work – if you pay me to tell you the secret 😉
A man who is to the left or even moderate will not sell that pack of lies. Will not pedal tired, disgustingly misogynistic tropes because they are not trying to soften up a “mark” before selling him a $49 course.
They will give advice that requires work, sacrifice, soul searching, discipline, acceptance of one’s unique strengths and weakness and will not throw any group under the bus. That doesn’t sell.
The left cannot fix a society where men still defend Tate today and justify it with “he’s not all bad” , “he’s just an entertainer” , “but feminists”, “he’s really smart but not a good human” Mind you they will also agree that they would not want their daughter to marry a man like him, they would not play his videos to their daughter/sister….but he tells them what they want to hear so they will hear it. They’d turn on him too if he changed the message, removed the sexism and told them you can’t get rich quick and are never going to live on an island with a harem and a crypto fortune.
Lucky for me these guys make up the bulk of my competition. The numbers of people operating a store like mine are scary but 80% of them are these dudes following a Tate course. They crash and burn and whine on forums while I keep my head down and earn a decent second income. Has they listened to my advice they likely would have had a better shot at making a go it.
@Kirry, or anyone who knows the answer…
What is with the ass thing? I’ve seen it floating about (usually second-hand, not with “I don’t wipe my ass!” –my name is Vaush/RooshV/Andrew Tate and I approve this message) for ages but never why, nor am I certain it’s a real fact. This may absolutely be a thing but what’s the given logic?
The only non-ass-wipin’ men that I am factually certain of are pro weight-lifters and bodybuilders, and that’s because at a certain point of musculature, they become actually incapable of reaching their bums. It was mentioned in an interview that sometimes, partners far more… loyal? loving? ass-tolerating? possessing some characteristic I do not… wipe their butts for them. There was no mention of what happens to gentlemen who lacked such devoted significant others.
But these guys aren’t that jacked, this is a “I don’t wipe my ass, because I choose not to wipe my ass” situation, for what earthly reason?
Isn’t Vaush the same one who had the “debate” with Peterson?
Anyway I am so tired of them expecting feminists to do emotional labour for boys and men. What are all these men doing to help young boys instead of expecting women to labour for them?
@Pope of Discord
So that’s an important issue to him? Something about how some people are really, really mature for their age? Talk about repellent.
Also this notion that there could be a “leftist Tate” who would somehow be better is wholly false. As is the notion that this is something specific to young white boys (Tate himself isn’t even white – he’s black/white birracial).
I spend a lot of time in black spaces and a lot of the men in those areas, while being completely “with it” when it comes to many civil rights issues and some are even somewhat economic leftist – when it comes to women they’re regressive af and place a huge part of their identity on their ability to subjugate women.
There is not guarantee a left-wing Tate would be any less of a misogynist.
@Kat
He’s become fairly infamous for regularly doing the “just asking questions” routine about child porn and whether the age of consent is necessary as supposedly abstract ethical issues, a lot of the time shoehorning it into completely unrelated topics, to the point that it’s clearly something he’s weirdly invested in. It’s deeply suspect to say the least.
They’re just faux-radicals who always know SO better they need not DO anything but complain. They’re just assholes, and behind their boring bluster is envy and admiration for successful bullies and hatred for anything reasoning and compassionate.
That’s why they’re online, and online only. I’ve literally never met one in the flesh.
Is it even true that the left isn’t reaching teenage boys? It seems like Bernie, at least, is pretty popular with teens. Also exit polls show that Democrats had an overwhelming advantage with 18-25 year olds in the US. I haven’t seen that broken down by gender but it would surprise me if Dems were underwater with men aged 18-25. Also polls show that Gen Z is the most LGBT-friendly generation ever recorded.
Tate supporters might make up a small but loud faction of teens and young men. Perhaps the solution, then, is not to create some leftist Tate doppelganger, but for the existing majority of men who oppose him to show their disdain.
@Kirry
I’m pretty sure Roosh V is he of the unwashed ass. Former PUA/professional sexual predator turned Orthodox Holy Roller when he couldn’t find anyone desperate enough to go home with him anymore.
Vaush… I’ve never heard of until now, to my knowledge. So it’s possible he shares that predilection, but I don’t know.
@Big Titty Demon
It’s something I’ve seen come up in subreddits like NotHowGirlsWork, BadWomensAnatomy, etc. (Like you said, mostly secondhand) where former partners of the guys will mention it, usually as one of the multiple reasons the guys are *former* partners. Apparently the guys who are of that mindset tend to be so insecure and homophobic that they’re convinced doing anything that involves any guy’s ass, even their own, would make them “gay”.
It’s a variation on the myth that the Trump phenomenon is driven by economic dislocation rather than white and male resentment. That myth claims that Democratic “identity politics” drove “working-class” voters to the Republicans, but it suspiciously defines that demographic as blue-collar jobs dominated by white men, excluding service jobs where many more women and non-white people work. The solution offered is, of course, Democrats throwing women, minorities and LGBTQ people under the bus. It accuses Democrats of ignoring economic issues even though that’s been the party’s focus for decades.
The vulnerability of 14-year-old white boys to haters like Tate is more than just adolescence. They’ve been socialized with attitudes of racial and sexual entitlement. With the latter, not just entitlement to social rank based on sex but also entitlement to women’s bodies. Tate just takes the message a step further, telling them they’re not just victims but that they’re being denied things they supposedly deserve.
I don’t think disdain would be the best approach. It would wrap up all their imaginary detractors with real ones.
The problem is that the solution to their woes is, in fact, as simple as they’d like to think. It is simple. 10 thousand hours … of practice.
Piano scales, voice lessons, guitar chords, athletic, gymnastic, juggling, other circus skills, maths or science skills, tennis-football-hockey-cricket or any other sport, calligraphy graffiti or sketching, parkour skiing or mountain biking, chess. It really doesn’t matter.
If it requires skill and/or knowledge to display or develop skills high enough to earn competition prizes, trophies and, preferably, an income sufficient to live on, then it needs 10000 hours. Preferably crammed tightly or spread neatly into five to 12 years.
10000 hours. And you have to keep the pressure on thereafter, and pray constantly that your innate ability, stamina and physical & emotional strengths will continue to carry you through. Simple – but not easy.
We absolutely need more positive male role models, but a) that’s a thing that men need to do so these guys should stop asking where the role models are and be the change they want to see in the world, and b) no honest person can quite do the same thing a grifter like Tate does because he’s a grifter who promises every boy a life full of sex slaves, riches, and unicorns. Acting like the left is failing by not making those same false promises ultimately just legitimizes Tate.
There’s only one thing that has ever made anybody rich, and that is winning the lottery. Whether than be the pick-six-numbers kind, the genetic kind, the born-to-the-right-family kind, the right-place-right-time-first-mover kind, or whatever.
There are only so many spaces at the top of the wealth distribution, given fixed planetary GDP, and far more people wanting those spaces. All the education, hard-work-and-effort, or grifting classes in the world won’t increase the number of spaces, so even if every aspirant does those things there still won’t be any more of them who actually become rich and which ones do will be down to luck.
The most it would be fair for someone to expect in the way of income is the planetary GDP per capita. In a state of perfect communism (undoubtedly not attainable, mind) that’s precisely what each and every person would receive. The most it’s realistic to expect is near the current median income in whatever place they live, likely lower. The most plausible route to raising it is to either contribute a technological innovation that significantly grows per-capita productivity (and that’s another lottery; not every person or even every educated person could simultaneously have been, say, James Watt) or being part of a social movement to bring about fairer income distribution.
Tate’s not good looking but he thinks he is. Even if the Left had a good looking, ripped “Top G” type out here triggering fascists he wouldn’t be able to sell boys and young men the dream of getting rich from doing something “edgy” like becoming an Only Fans pimp. Which is what Tate advised them to do and laid out a plan for. Nor would a Left Top G stoop to creating an online “Hustler’s University” that takes money from them to teach them how to drop ship. Their dreams of avoiding college (just another extension of horrible high school for them) and jumping right in to making millions is also what draws them. They want an alternative to the long, slow march through institutions and regular jobs. They know that they can’t become Only Fans Emperors but they are hoping to at least become Top G Drop Shippers.
I don’t know who this guy is, but cute hat. FTR, before anyone jumps in to explain who hevis, I’m not interested and if I were, I have internet access and could find out on my own.
It’s not just a matter of providing positive male role models either, but also one of teaching boys and young men how to actually identify them in the first place. The critical thinking that lets someone distinguish between good role models and bad ones is a learned skill like any other. Without that skill, the unfortunate reality is that a lot of teenage boys are inevitably going to end up easily suckered in and radicalised/groomed by grifters who know how to present themselves as embodying a basic trait that their targets desperately want to acquire (usually “strong” or “smart”) and weaponise social media algorithms to make sure their content’s getting rammed down those targets’ throats whenever they pick up their phones.
Not to overcook the point, but I don’t think someone like Vaush wants the young-male-in-search-of-a-role-model demographic to develop that skill, because the objective isn’t to make them into better people but to get in on the grift by redirecting them as an audience from one set of grifters to another.
@Steph Tohill
“Also this notion that there could be a “leftist Tate” who would somehow be better is wholly false. As is the notion that this is something specific to young white boys (Tate himself isn’t even white – he’s black/white birracial).”
— His mom is white and his dad is bi-racial, so basically Andrew is white.
“I spend a lot of time in black spaces and a lot of the men in those areas, while being completely “with it” when it comes to many civil rights issues and some are even somewhat economic leftist – when it comes to women they’re regressive af and place a huge part of their identity on their ability to subjugate women.”
— YEP! Hence “BWE/Black Women Empowerment” and “Swirlers” and “Divestors” and “Quiet Quitting the BC”. Pick-me’s like Crimson Cure and others jumped on the Kevin Samuels bandwagon and sure, black men gave them some props, but do you know who it is black men are claiming to be Samuels’ heir and the head of the Manosphere (the black manosphere is basically the The Manosphere on Youtube now)??? None other than a really, really pasty white plain jane called Just Pearly Things. Which proves Cynthia G right.
The other thing is, there’s already been a string of attempts to try and create “leftist” versions of the far-right influencer/grifter complex, bodged together by people who bought completely into the horseshoe myth that the far-left and the far-right had enough in common to form an alliance and tried to manufacture a so-called “anti-woke left” in the belief they could pick up a whole load of these alleged disaffected working-class Trump supporters.
The closest thing to a “successful” example has been Jimmy Dore, who’s now basically just a D-list Republican pundit abandoned by 90% of whatever left-wing audience he had. Next down the list is Caleb Maupin who I don’t expect anyone who doesn’t follow this stuff closely to have even heard of, who crashed and burned after a string of abuse allegations, and something called “MAGA Communism” which turned up a few weeks ago and then sank without a trace.
It’s been tried. It hasn’t worked.
In every single one of these cases all they’ve managed to create is a bootleg own-brand knockoff of standard right-wing social ultraconservatism with a vague “leftist” aesthetic, and none of them worked because any actual leftist saw them as crypto-fascist weirdos and anyone who supported social conservative ideology had no interest in a more ineffectual version of the same thing with a thin veneer of garbled pseudo-Soviet kitsch.
The entire concept is a dead horse and yet a weird number of people are still hell-bent on flogging its skeleton to powder. I think some of them just really want to be right-wing but don’t think it has enough intellectual cachet or realise it’ll lose them a lot of friends, and instead of dealing with their own reactionary tendencies they just tie themselves in endless knots trying to work out a way to claim being an evangelical conservative in all but name is actually the real Marxism and it’s all the other leftists who are wrong.
About that “no ass-wiping” flex. Yes, they actually think it’s a flex. Kevin Samuels started off giving self-improvement and style advice to Black men, but he remained largely unviewed and poor. As soon as he switched his grift to bashing Black women, he became a “top G” overnight and crowned “the Godfather of the Black Manosphere”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8KJCAlNS0M