Influencer Andrew Tate returns to US, bringing his misogynistic antisemitism with him
Far-right content creator, who has praised Hamas as ‘masculine resistance,’ couldn’t leave Romania since 2022 due to rape charges, but prosecutors lifted ban in possible gesture to Trump
JTA — In returning from Romania this week, the far-right influencer Andrew Tate has brought back to the United States his extreme brand of misogyny mixed with antisemitism.
Tate and his brother Tristan had been banned from leaving Romania, where they face prosecution for rape and sex trafficking, since 2022. But Romanian officials have lifted the ban, in a move widely seen as reflecting the influence of the new administration of US President Donald Trump. On Thursday, the brothers flew to Florida by private jet.
Whether they remain is an open question. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump ally, has said they are not welcome in his state, and the United Kingdom is reportedly seeking to extradite the brothers, who are dual US-UK citizens, over tax evasion charges.
But local Republican groups in Florida have welcomed Tate, and the brothers’ millions of online followers have cheered their arrival in the United States.
Those followers, who number over 10 million for Andrew Tate on X alone, have for years been served a steady diet of hateful content about women. In recent years, the one-time professional athlete and “Big Brother” contestant, a self-identified misogynist, has added considerable antisemitism and intensely anti-Israel statements to his streaming content.
Recently, he accused the Romanian authorities of being part of “the Soros network” — a reference to Jewish billionaire George Soros, whose large donations to liberal causes make him a frequent target of right-wing ire. Last year, Mother Jones magazine reported the Tates “have increasingly pivoted to criticisms of Israel that promptly segue into antisemitic claims clearly rooted in the blood libel.”
Tate opened up vociferous anti-Israel criticism after October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. Almost immediately, Tate announced to his followers he was raising money for Palestinians.
Declaring that Israel was “genociding the Palestinians,” Tate — who in 2022 claimed to have converted to Islam — has also celebrated slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as “defiant in the face of evil,” calling his death in October “heroic.” When asked last year if he would condemn Hamas, Tate responded, “No, I’m not going to condemn the masculine spirit of resistance.”
He has also recently held interviews with Candace Owens, the far-right influencer whose own journey of punditry has recently pushed her into Holocaust denial.
Last year, Tate also began flirting with Holocaust revisionism, writing on X, “If they lied to us about Gaza and Israel… Do you think they lied about [the Second World War]?”
He added that the war “was such a large cultural event,” and was being used by governments to “psyop the populace” — a reference to psychological operations — into believing “bad guy = Nazi.”
“I think you should at least understand why the war really happened,” said Tate.
Tate has also defended Elon Musk’s Nazi-like salute earlier this year, writing “Stop crying over the Hitler crap” and imploring his followers to “go on the offensive” and deliver it as well.
“I’m kind of thinking we should bring the Nazi salute back,” said Tate in a video. “If you don’t want to see the Nazi salute because it offends you so badly, just don’t call Elon a Nazi… Lean into it, double down. I am all the things you say I am.”
After rapper Kanye West returned to X to push antisemitism and swastika merchandise earlier this month, Tate seemed to express an interest in contacting him.
And after being raided by Romanian authorities last year, Tate reposted an antisemitic message from white nationalist Nick Fuentes defending him. “Just 2 days after Andrew Tate said that ‘the Matrix’ is really just the Jewish mafia—his house was raided and he was arrested again,” the post read.
Tate’s arrest was seen as having been triggered by a different streamer, Adin Ross, who disclosed on his own stream that Tate was planning to leave Romania.
Ross, who is Jewish, said in 2022 that he had declined to host Ye on his Twitch stream after the rapper told him, “You Jews aren’t going to tell me what I can and can’t say.” The next year, he hosted Fuentes. In 2024, Ross hosted New York Jets star Sauce Gardner when the football player said Jews “run the world,” and later in the year he hosted Trump, as the then-candidate praised Ye as having “a good heart.”
Tate has found popularity with religious conservatives in Jewish as well as Muslim and Christian circles. Orthodox podcaster Nate Mandel had his own Jewish journey regarding Tate over the course of the past 16 months, initially arguing in favor of some of his masculinity-focused messaging in an October 2023 episode. Mandel’s co-host Shoshie Reiter, the mother of four teenage boys, said her sons were followers of Tate.
By this January, Mandel had revised that opinion in a new episode, proclaiming that Tate’s credible allegations and bragging about abusing women made him a “piece of shit.” Much of this revision, Mandel said, owed to Tate’s declaration that Israel was committing “genocide.”
The Anti-Defamation League has an extremism entry on Tate that doesn’t mention his antisemitism.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.