While capitalism is a scam in itself, as I argued in yesterday's post, I'd like to now briefly highlight one of the many scams by which millions of people have been defrauded out of their hard-earned money. It's the one I already mentioned yesterday; Andrew Tate's "Hustler University".
source: YouTube
Andrew Tate is an ex-kick-boxer who decided that poverty isn't for him, and that he'd become filthy rich. If you watch some of his interviews, guest appearances, and indeed his own videos on YouTube or Tik Tok, he's very open about this fact; getting rich is his primary goal, and the means by which to get rich are only a secondary consideration. I can't stress enough how indicative this mentality is for the late capitalist society we occupy right now; it used to be that when you ask young children what they want to become when they're grown up, you's get answers like a fire fighter, a policeman, an astronaut or a doctor, while now increasingly the answer you get is something that'll make them rich (and famous). It's not their fault though. Our entire system is set up that way, starting at school. When a child says he or she wants to become a dancer, an painter or some other kind of artist, we grown-ups are fast to say that that's all well and good, but first learn something that makes you money. Since its inception, school isn't so much a preparation for life, nor a place to develop a child's talents and interests, but a place where obedient workers are created who know their place in the hierarchy and are able to follow orders.
And it doesn't stop there of course. All our media are filled with examples of people who've "made it" and live a life of luxury and ease. The people who've made it in our society make money simply by having a lot of money. They can lean back and watch the money come rolling in, having to do nothing else but wake up every day. This lifestyle has been idealized and is the extreme depiction of the division between the owner class and the working class; workers want to earn as much money as possible for doing the least amount of labor as possible, while bosses want the workers to do as much labor as possible while paying as little money as they can come away with. The distribution of money, profits and wages in the capitalist system is realized in a way that sets up against each other members of those classes. Andrew Tate saw this and decided he would become a member of the receiving side of this toxic equation. This in itself says something about him and about this mindset. Instead of using his energy to do something about this unjust system, he decided instead to exploit it for all it's worth.
Andrew Tate is someone who, after having been scammed by a snake oil salesman, decided to become a snake oil salesman himself. His particular kind of snake oil is called "masculinity", and he's thereby exploiting a social problem men have been struggling with for a couple of decades now. You see, it used to be that men needed only one thing to offer the opposite sex, and that's a job. Before women's liberation it were the men who did the work and brought home a paycheck. Before women's liberation, getting a divorce was difficult and looked down upon. This trapped millions of women in toxic relationships with abusive men who expected their wives to do the housekeeping, cook the meals and take care of the children. Gender roles were simple and highly hierarchical. Men in 2023 have lost that simple straightforward access to the opposite sex. Women nowadays demand more from men than just the ability to pay the rent. So yes, women are now free to choose the man they really want, and can take care of themselves should they not find one right away. The influencers from the "manosphere", of which Andrew Tate is a leading member, advocate for a return to the traditional gender roles women have fought so hard to get rid of.
Tate is an extreme example of this reactionary movement, as he's built a small empire around the use of women to make money in the sex industry. He started a web-cam business where he set up his girlfriends to seduce and scam men who are dissatisfied with their results in the "dating market" or with their existing relationship. He moved to Romania with the explicit goal of being in a country where the laws around sex-trafficking are not so strict as in his native country of England. That's no surprise as he's, once again, very open about his misogynist practices and his crimes. He got filthy rich not only by exploiting women, but by selling his course to become rich to young men with his "Hustler's University". People who sign up for this course pay $50 per month and according to Tate himself, at least thousands have signed up; he once claimed to make $5 million per month on this scam. The men who fall for this scheme believe that the best way to become rich themselves, is to send their money to Andrew Tate; I hope you see the irony there...
I'll leave you with a video by Shaun who, as always, explains exactly why this "masculinity scam" is so pernicious, and why masculine traits aren't harmful or toxic in and of themselves, but that they only become harmful or toxic when used in the way Tate and his peers advocate for.
Andrew Tate: How to be a Real Man
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