Andrew Tate, self-proclaimed “trillionaire”, self-proclaimed “misogynist” and the most ubiquitous man on the internet, always said this would happen. “First they attack your character and cancel you, then they put you in jail,” said Tate, 36, in an interview on YouTube in October.

According to him, the “Matrix” — a group of elites that control the world — is threatened by his fearless free speech. And they are out to get him.

He continued: “I like to think that if anyone sees a media article where I’ve been locked up, for whatever it is, they’ll look at it and go: ‘This is bullshit, Tate didn’t do that.’ ”

Last week, Tate and his brother and business partner, Tristan, 34, were arrested at their home in Bucharest, Romania, on allegations of human trafficking and rape. According to reports, six women were being held in a property outside Bucharest and forced to perform in pornographic content under the threat of violence. The Tates, who run a webcam business, are being held by police and no charges have been brought.

“The Matrix sent their agents,” said a post from Tate’s Twitter account after the arrests. Like a successful conspiracy theory, the arguments against him were built into his original pitch.

Who is Andrew Tate? One of the most googled people in the world who you may never have heard of, he was born in America, the son of a chess champion father, and raised in Luton by a single mother. He is believed to be worth £100 million.

He is a man who has made his brand by talking about slapping and choking women, whom he likes young (“they’ve been through less dick”), and who says depression isn’t real and women should “bear responsibility” for being raped.

How has he, within a year, become one of the most recognisable men on the internet, seemingly universally known by teenagers, talked about in playgrounds and classrooms, proliferating on Instagram and TikTok? And how did we create a world in which he can exist? What is the message? Andrew Tate is, in essence, a social media influencer. He instructs young men — or “military-aged males” — how to be physically strong, wealthy and sexually successful.

It is “aspirational misogyny”, according to Andrew Bernard, the founder of Innovative Enterprise, which runs workshops in schools.

Tate went viral over the summer, posting about his cars, yachts, watches and women, and how others could get them too. He has posted on Instagram (4.7 million followers until his account was removed for violating its policies on “dangerous individuals and organisations”); on TikTok (#AndrewTateQuotes videos have 1.1 billion views, despite his personal account having been removed due to “a hateful ideology”); and on Twitter (4 million followers — his banned account was reinstated after Elon Musk took over the company). He also charges for online courses on how to get rich quickly — by trading cryptocurrency and NFTs, and through ecommerce.

But really, there are two Andrew Tates: the man he and his legions of fans believe him to be and the man his opponents (the “Matrix”) see.

The former is a self-made “trillionaire”; a bad boy who tells it how it is; a bastion of free speech and banter. He is a “traditional man” who thinks women should “obey blindly”; an alpha male willing to defend his status.

The latter is a misogynist who spreads hate speech about women online, a man formed in the porn culture Petri dish, a figure of gross wealth for the sake of selfies, a jacked-up, cigar-chuffing professional wind-up merchant who made money from soundbites about domestic violence (“Slap, grab, choke, shut up, bitch, sex”) and in the process, some experts believe, “radicalised” lost young men in need of instruction for how to be.

It is a successful business model. The ideological separation of each side — and their inability to understand the other — protects him. Andrew Tate profits because of division, not in spite of it.

And his brand is everywhere. Teachers told The Sunday Times that pupils imitate how he sits, bridges his hands and talks. Some schools have set up specific PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) lessons in order to address his views. Michael Conroy, founder of Men at Work, which also runs workshops in schools, said Tate’s name has come up in every session since September. “I can’t think of a single male figure who is as ubiquitous,” he said.

Tate’s identity “couldn’t exist without porn”, Conroy argues. “ ‘Have money, have sex, be strong’ — that is the message,” he said. “We’ve gone backwards.”

How he makes money

One of Tate’s main revenue streams is his online academy, Hustler’s University (£39 a month, 127,000 members at its peak), which teaches get-rich-quick schemes. An investigation by The Observer revealed its “affiliate marketing” model: “students” were given financial incentives to share his content in order to drive more subscriptions. The model was suspended, but it meant that Tate’s content became decentralised, making the suspension of his personal social media accounts obsolete.

His War Room is an “elite” group — a chatroom of people who can teach you how to be a millionaire ($4,497 joining fee), claiming to “free the modern man from socially induced incarceration”.

The Tate brothers also have a webcam business, employing a roster of women to engage in online sex work. In a post that has since been taken down, Andrew Tate said: “My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together.”

His mansion in Romania is filled with tellies, guns and dollar bill artwork

Five years ago, the brothers moved from the UK to Romania, where they live in a “mansion” — a converted hangar on an industrial estate, filled with enormous tellies, enormous guns, leather sofas, “artwork” made from dollar bills and a control room for his armed security guards. “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want,” he said on his decision to leave the UK.

”Organised criminal group”

In April, his home was raided, reportedly prompted by a tip-off that a 21-year-old American woman was being held against her will at a video studio nearby. The brothers were questioned by police and then released. Last week they were arrested as part of the same ongoing investigation into an organised criminal group, international human trafficking and rape. The Tates are being held at a detention centre for 30 days, alongside two others, one believed to be a former policewoman.

A spokesperson for the Tates told the Daily Mirror: “Andrew and Tristan Tate have the utmost respect for the Romanian authorities and will always assist and help in any way they can.”

Prosecutors allege that the victims were recruited using the “lover-boy method” — luring women to Romania by professing love and an intention to marry them. The women were then transported to buildings in the Ilfov countryside and forced to perform pornographic acts that were filmed, the footage being uploaded online. Coercive methods reportedly included violence and “intimidation, constant surveillance, control and invoking alleged debts”. “They were essentially kept under house arrest 24/7 like prisoners,” a source told the Daily Mail.

“Sadly this is not a unique case,” said Vanessa Morse, chief executive of the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation.

“The investigation to which Tate is connected exposes the stark reality that human trafficking and the production of online pornography are horrifically intertwined.”

Chess grandmaster father

Emory Andrew Tate III was born in Washington DC in 1986. His father, Emory Tate Jr, was a Chicago chess grandmaster who has been described as a “trailblazer for African-American chess”.

His mother, Eileen, was a catering assistant.

The couple met in the UK while Emory Tate was serving in the US air force and emigrated to the US, where they had Andrew, followed by Tristan and Janine, 31, a Kentucky-based lawyer estranged from her brothers, who describe her as a feminist.

His parents divorced when Tate was 11 and his mother moved with her children to Luton, where at one point, Tate has claimed, they were homeless, going to KFC to claim other people’s leftover chicken. His father, whom he saw once a year, died in 2015.

Tate worked as a television producer in his twenties and became a four-time world champion kickboxer. In 2016, he appeared on Channel 5’s Big Brother but was kicked out after a video surfaced appearing to show him hitting a woman with a belt. He later said it was a consensual sex game. A second video showed him telling a woman to count the bruises he is alleged to have given her.

From there, Tate made his name as an online provocateur, appearing on Info- Wars, the podcast of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, associating with far-right YouTubers, Donald Trump Jr, Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson). Last month, Tate tweeted the 19-year-old climate activist, Greta Thunberg: “Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.” She replied shortly after: “Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”

Her response has become one of the top ten tweets of all time, gaining more than 3.8 million likes.

Tate frequently talks about young men feeling alienated. “There is a large contingent of men out there,” he said in one video, “who don’t want to be told they are toxic because they want to go to the gym, who want to drive nice cars, who want to have money, who want to have hot chicks. And there’s nothing wrong with us — we are not evil, we are not bad.”

Most extreme theories are initially rooted in a genuine societal concern, said Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and the author of Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pick-Up Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All. “But what he is doing today online fits every international definition of radicalisation. It takes a situation where there is a power imbalance and suggests that the one with the power is actually the minority. It is how all radicalisation works. These young people have been groomed.

“It starts with a viral YouTube video of a takedown of a feminist argument. It starts with a picture of a woman with a black eye. It is a drip, drip, drip, which eventually leads to real-world consequences.”

It is a bind. Ignoring Andrew Tate means his message proliferates unchallenged, but taking him down only strengthens the argument that he is the victim of an attack. Suspending him from social media stops him spreading hate speech, but it turns him into a martyr (“Banning me only inspires more internet hate mobs,” he has said).

It is important not to frame his arrest as an attack on teenage boys, added Bates: “That’s exactly what he wants. To speak out against him is not to villainise all boys — it’s about fighting for them and giving them an alternative.”

@MeganAgnew Camilla Long, Comment, page 25