The Manosphere's Worst Influencers Might Finally Be Going Down

Andrew and Tristan Tate have been accused of horrible crimes. Their supporters aren't going away.

Andrei Pungovschi/Getty Images

Andrew and Tristan Tate have created a social media powerhouse over the past 10 years, pandering to disaffected young men with a combination of tough-love motivational speech, aspirational extravagance, and misogynist gender politics. But off camera, the brothers are, according to prosecutors in several countries, the worst kind of monsters that men can be.

As the Associated Press reported today:

Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate have been charged in Britain with rape and other crimes, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The charges were authorized in January last year and news media at the time reported on arrest warrants issued against the Tates, dual U.S. and British citizens who moved to Romania in 2016. But the Crown Prosecution Service said this was the first time it confirmed the two had been criminally charged in Britain.

Andrew Tate, 38, faces 10 charges related to three women that include rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain. Tristan Tate, 36, faces 11 charges related to one woman that include rape, human trafficking and actual bodily harm.

These are not the first charges that the brothers have faced: they are both currently defendants in a Romanian court case that alleges similar misdeeds, most of them connected to a sex trafficking operation in which the brothers allegedly personally lured in women by promising them relationships, then kept them in a compound in Romania and forced them to film porngraphic videos. The British charges also span separate allegations by four women who say that Andrew Tate raped and abused them.

All of these cases are still in progress. After the Romanian case concludes, the country’s prosecutors said it would extradite the brothers to Britain. The brothers briefly visited the US in January, but even Florida prosecutors opened up an investigation into them.

There is an easy version of this story, which is that horrible men are finally, at long last, facing justice. But the Tate brothers’ broad and fervent popularity, I think, speaks to something darker at play in society.