Two of the largest social influencers online engaged in a battle of words this week over Twitter.
Key Details
- On July 18, Dr. Jordan Peterson retweeted allegations against influencer Andrew Tate that suggested he was guilty of sexually abusing women by forcing them to engage in a webcam sex business. “Pimps, electronic or otherwise, are the lowest form of life,” says Peterson.
- Many of Dr. Peterson’s followers disagreed with the tweet, with many bringing attention to the fact that his daughter Mikhaila Peterson dated Tate in 2018. “Your daughter disagrees,” says one commenter.
- Tate subsequently retweeted a meme criticizing “fake conservatives” for being “gay” and for saying negative things about him. He also reshared tweets that suggested the accusations against him were false.
- Tate recently appeared in an episode of Tucker Carlson’s show Tucker On Twitter, giving a nearly three-hour interview attempting to defend himself and his stances, garnering 94.4 million views and being celebrated by Elon Musk for its high viewership.
Why It’s Important
Both Peterson and Tate are among the most popular and politically controversial social influencers of the past half-decade, but both men have very different reputations and beliefs that are diametrically opposed to one another.
Both men’s popularity is tied to real issues ongoing in Western culture at the moment, including the issues surrounding millions of young men feeling lost and struggling to build careers or marriages in a culture they feel is hostile to masculinity. Both men have built brands to help men develop better self-images, but they diverge philosophically—with Tate’s opinions being considered more extreme and misanthropic.
Both men have sizable audiences, with UFC champ Israel Adesanya publicly praising them in April for “pushing men to be accountable” and saying that society is designed to “make them feel emasculated.”
Backing Up A Bit
Jordan Peterson became famous in 2016 for hosting a free speech rally at the University of Toronto after publicly decrying Canadian Bill C16 as an anti-free speech bill with dangerous implications for personal liberty. He has since become a bestselling author and celebrity psychologist with billions of YouTube views for his lectures on the psychology of religion and meaning.
Andrew Tate is a former kickboxer and social media influencer who subsequently rose to prominence for promoting an ultra-masculine luxury lifestyle, offering “misogynistic” cultural commentary about the dangers of the West being feminized, and publicly converting to Islam in October 2022. The Romanian government arrested him in December 2022 with charges of human trafficking, but he has repeatedly claimed that he is being wrongly persecuted and held under house arrest for his controversial viewpoints.
Notable Quote
“Andrew Tate is accused of sexually exploiting, emotionally manipulating, pimping, raping, and beating women. Much of which he admitted on the montage below. The webcam sex business is how the Tate brothers built their massive wealth. That is what *they* said. Tucker Carlson, a supposedly traditional family man, left Tate off the hook. Even elevated him. So do many conservatives online who constantly degrade and berate women for being ‘whores’ and ‘materialistic’. Total hypocrisy,” tweeted journalist named Alessandra Bocchi, whom Dr. Peterson retweeted.