Spotting and Avoiding the Personality Cult

Andrew Tate. This guy has been creeping up the trending lists on newsfeeds and google searches for the past few years. First coming to notoriety as a loud-mouthed kickboxer, He quickly began amassing a following as an “Alpha Male” type influencer. Now, he’s facing charges of engaging in organized criminal activity, human trafficking, rape and violence Romania. Why do so many volatile and contentious figures keep gaining these cult-like followings and why are so many surprised when allegations like these come to light?

Now, with a guy like Andrew Tate, from a legal sense, we always need to come from the position of “innocent until proven guilty,” so we’re not making any statements about what he definitely did or did not do regarding his charges. What is completely factual is that he, himself, has publicly been saying that he was doing all of these things for years.

More recently, he has been saying that those, and the many other clips with similar claims and statements, were taken out of context and clearly not to be taken seriously. Whether joking or not, Tate was making money off of the image that it was all real. In fact, he created an online PHD course – that's “Pimpin' H**s Degree” - where he would “teach” men in the art attracting high quality women, making multiple women loyal to you by “keeping them on lockdown” and a number of other “Real G” techniques. Tate describes himself as the ultimate man and what the rest of us are all aspiring to be or aspiring to be with. Now, when we say all of this out loud, in successive order like this, it all sounds too ridiculous to be true, and yet even amidst his criminal allegations, Tate continues to attract new followers and apologists into his cult of personality. So, it’s no question that all of his blustering and billowing is attractive to a lot of people. The real question is, why?

Andrew Tate is just one in a long line of highly polarizing figures who has found a way to draw a crowd and convert them into a rabidly loyal following. This kind of personality cult seems to be increasingly easier to build with the internet and social media making it easier to both reach millions of people around the globe while also algorithmically being designed to feed us exactly what we want to see and hear, leaving us in an echo chamber ideas. All of this is only multiplied when the louder, crazier, more controversial a person can be, the more engagement they’ll get which only increases their visibility within the platform algorithms. Basically, we have created a system which rewards increasingly unhealthy behavior for the sake of greater engagement, more views, more clout and greater influence. In this environment, people who would have been otherwise been seen socially maladjusted or potentially dangerous can rise up as online influencers and point to their growing popularity and financial status as evidence of the success of their lifestyle and methods. This not only attracts other socially maladjusted individuals who see in this person a beacon of hope and an affirmation that “I’m not the problem, everyone else is,” but also anyone seeking wealth, power, clout and influence. You can imagine, that’s going to be a lot of people. Now, does that mean that wanting success in any of these areas is automatically bad, or that every social media influencer is a conniving cult-leader in the making? Obviously, we would have to say “no,” otherwise that would include us and everyone we like to watch and follow, as well. So, how can you learn to spot the cult leaders and not get sucked in by their attractive messages promising you everything you’ve ever wanted?

Toxic influencers like Tate – whether he was saying it in truth or in satire, his content was still extremely toxic – are appealing because they offer a glimpse of what your life could be if only you learned to become like them. It’s easier to buy into what they’re selling when they seem like they also are coming from the same place you are. Tate, for example, segued his base of followers from combat sports fans, to young entrepreneurs, to far-right social conservatives, to Christians and then to Muslims. When his worldviews changed, he was always able to forcefully explain away why he had never actually been wrong, he was just more right than he had previously been. At whatever point his followers had joined the bandwagon, he was quickly able to gain their favor and trust by appealing to their most hardline positions, taking them on as a new champion for the cause. Very soon, however, he was back to spouting the same old rhetoric and showing how his new worldview was in line with his wealth, fame, success, female subjugation core. For Tate, he was never a true follower of Christ, never a true social conservative, and probably not even a true Muslim now. Tate worships Tate. He will adopt whatever position seems to suit his desires at the time, but at the end of the day, he is his own – little g – god. This is proven in how he demands and expects the worship and adoration of everyone else and becomes extremely volatile and unstable when his positions are questioned and his flaws are exposed. This is a common characteristic for those pulling people into their cult of personality. They hate to be questioned or called to account and they really need everyone else to know how great they are. When their façade starts to break down, they become increasingly hostile. In many of Tate’s videos, you will notice how quickly he escalates his own hypothetical scenarios into threats of violence and uses that as the be-all-end-all for every confrontation – if he can beat you up, then he is right. End of discussion.

So, how do we resist this type of influence? In this world, and especially online, we are going to be constantly bombarded with people telling us to follow them and they’ll lead us into the life we’ve always wanted. These are false gospel messages, promising heaven but leading to hell. We withstand the constantly changing winds of culture and resist the temptations of false teachers by remaining rooted in the true Gospel of Jesus.

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

Colossians 2:6-15