Blowback over accused sex criminal Andrew Tate’s interview with the BBC earlier this week continued, as the kickboxer-turned-influencer stomped his feet on social media over what he described as a “sucker punch” from the network, and advocates raged at his claim during the sitdown that one of his alleged victims is “imaginary.”
The self-styled “king of toxic masculinity,” arrested in Romania last year on charges of rape and human trafficking, threw a Twitter tantrum on Saturday—insisting the BBC had promised him softball treatment, then thrown him a curve ball.
“They then sat down, threw all of this away and attacked me instantly, an ambush,” the internet celebrity wailed in an extended tweet, entering his third day of online whining. “A hit job attempt. They attempted to sucker punch me. They failed.”
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Tate, who has been caught on camera hitting women, wasn’t the only unhappy one. The Sun reported that multiple leading activists for women and abuse victims were outraged at Tate’s insistence in the interview that the case against him is “utterly fabricated” and that one of his accusers is a media fiction.
The activists also assailed Tate’s efforts to downplay the denigrating remarks about women in many of his internet posts.
“I am deeply concerned about the impact of this on victims more broadly who may feel that platforming an extreme misogynist accused of violent acts towards women is a slap in the face for them,” Dr Charlotte Proudman, the director of women’s organization Right to Equality, said in an interview.
Deniz Uğur, Deputy Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, argued that Tate’s behavior is typical of abusers.
“The tactics we saw being used in this interview are nothing new and just the latest in a long line of men using their profile, status or power to dismiss victims and trivialize violence against women,” The Sun quoted Uğur saying. “That perpetrators continue to regurgitate tired victim-blaming tropes—including discrediting survivors and those who support them— demonstrates the pervasive harm gender inequality has on women’s lives, and on our wider society.”
