Rage Against The Machine – But Only When On The Receiving End?

“The water I am drinking is not clean”, Andrew Tate tweets. “I am an American. Innocent until proven guilty.”

Tate and his followers (Taters?) have been screaming for anyone they Other to be locked up. But now that Tate himself is behind bars he complains about what it’s like to be behind bars.

He was happy to traffick women. And children. For sexual exploitation. But now that he’s being held, pending deporation to the UK to face trial for more of his crimes, suddenly the very system he tried to wield as a weapon towards others is a system he finds unjust. The same cage he would happily have others in is now a chamber of horrors because he is in it.

This is the problem with fascists and their supporters; they revel in cruelty as long as they’re the ones meting it out, or at least cheering from the sidelines.

If anything demonstrates their lack of empathy, it’s this: They’re capable of seeing that oppression is wrong. That torture is wrong. That inhumane treatment is wrong. But not until it affects them.

Advocates of dominance frameworks like Tate rarely acknowledge systemic flaws in detention systems until they experience restrictions themselves. And Tate is getting the light version. He isn’t sleeping in a literal chain link cage with lights on 24/7, given only a thin bit of foil as a blanket and being denied medical treatment. But thousands of children are, in ICE detention, at the same time he’s playing on his phone complaining about how rough he has it.

U.S. Magistrate Lauren Louis set a detention hearing for Aug. 13 to determine whether the Tates – Andrew and his brother Tristan – should stay in prison or be released during what could be a months long extradition process.

Jackie Perczek, one of their attorneys, said the Tates have shown they are not a flight risk because they return to Romania every month after they were accused there of luring women for sexual exploitation. “For three years they have not fled,” she said. “They’ve traveled the world and every month they return to Romania.”

In other words she’s saying they should be let out of prison because while they globetrot and spread more of their misogynistic hate, living the high life and apparently committing more crimes sex trafficking women and children, hey at least they abide by their parole in Romania for their previous crimes.

Yeesh.