Who Is Worse? Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes

Andrew Tate sold hope wrapped in Bugattis. Nick Fuentes sells hopelessness wrapped in Catholicism.

A friend of mine sent me an email that he allowed me to publish as the guest post below. He is very familiar with the manosphere world. He has the pulse of what’s going on with young men. And while I don’t believe he’d describe himself as a devout Christian, he attends an evangelical church as you will see. These are his observations - Aaron.

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The Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes fan groups don’t seem to overlap that much - Tate’s was far bigger at its peak, and he’s still popular among his base - and it seems to me that Tate is a much more hopeful, future-oriented guy. If you follow his advice, you’ll get women and money and fast cars. Money, muscles, game. The standard manosphere ideas, just more vulgar and bling-bling - and with a social media sized audience, so the bling-bling is a natural result of the visual nature of social media. And anyway, bling-bling naturally comes out of peacocking - the famous old-school pickup artist Mystery would have done the same if he had come along later.

Fuentes is something very different and darker - there’s no hope for the future, no self-improvement tips, no ways to build a life out of the failures of the current world. Fuentes is, unfortunately, a much more 2025 figure.

There’s a hopeless nihilism in his message which connects well with an “idolatry of the family” evangelical message, the “go in the corner and quietly live little lives” message that I’ve seen a lot of recently. So inspiring for disaffected young men!

I’m not sure that old-school pickup artists, of whom Tate was the final flowering, were actually more cynical about society, but they very much had an enjoy the decline approach. Fuentes is more nihilistic precisely because there is no enjoy the decline - it’s all revenge. His followers want revenge for what was done, rather than taking advantage of the moral chaos. Perhaps taking advantage of the moral chaos isn’t hopeful and future-oriented as all that, but its a very different approach than Fuentes.

For your average man, say 80% of men, having a wife and family is the best it can ever get. Most careers suck. But the church says wanting the best you can ever get is “idolatry?” And you should quietly live in the corner without a wife or family and like it?

There’s a reason why Fuentes is growing in popularity. Also, my sense - not that I can back this up - is that Fuentes is way more popular among church teenage boys than Tate was. What does it say about the church that the influencer with the most moral congruence to their young men is a nutcase Hitler lover? Tate, whatever his other issues, would never in a million years say that hating Jews is better than chasing women. Fuentes obviously believes that. Which makes it all the worse that listening to him seems like a legitimate self-defense to the doubtful consolations of Christian community.

I’ve also been talking to some youngins the last year, juniors and seniors in high school and undergrads. They are very friendly if you seek them out, mainly friends of my nephew and others who go to the church I normally attend - a fairly conservative SBC church with a big school attached.

The things that surprised me talking to the guys was how much they - the sons of divorce, at least - hate, hate, hate the therapeutic blended family stuff they hear in church. I doubt these guys will see in the inside of a church when they graduate. Of course this cannot be discussed openly.

Andrew Tate photo by By Anything Goes With James English/Wikimedia, CC BY 3.0