A security expert previously tasked with protecting MPs from extremist threats in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder says children watching Andrew Tate videos are a “red flag”.
Philip Grindell, who worked for the Met Police for 30 years, played a leading role in preventing an assassination attempt on then-MP Rosie Cooper who was targeted in a murder plot in 2017 by neo-Nazi Jack Renshaw, who was jailed after buying a machete to kill the West Lancashire MP.
Mr Grindell told The Independent he was worried about loners who obsessed over the Tate brothers as much as any loyalist to far-right or Islamic extremism traditionally associated with targeted attacks.
“If you have a young child following the Tates for example and watching their videos I would consider that to be a red flag. That is emulating somebody who is dangerous,” he said.
Tate, a self-described misogynist, and his brother Tristan left Romania for the US late last month. They are under investigation in the eastern European country for crimes including human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering. They have denied all wrongdoing.
Mr Grindell also said the UK was seeing an increase in targeted attacks, like the murders of young girls carried out by teenage killer Axel Rudakubana in Southport.
“They are cold, calculated and planned – there’s no emotion involved. These lone actors always start with a grievance and they decide that the only way they can resolve this grievance is violence. These people don’t make threats to their target – there is no warning,” Mr Grindell said.
The counter-terrorism expert joins a growing chorus of voicing its fears over harmful online influences, as former England manager Sir Gareth Southgate on Tuesday warned “callous, manipulative and toxic” operators were fuelling a “crisis” facing a generation of young men.
In January a leaked Home Office report identified misogyny and and violence against women as gateways to extremist beliefs. The concerning behaviours identified included spreading misinformation, influencing racism, and involvement in “an online subculture called the manosphere”, according to a copy of the review commissioned by home secretary Yvette Cooper following the summer riots triggered by misinformation spread after the Southport attack.
BBC reported in January that Ms Cooper disagreed with some of the central findings of the report and will push the Government to continue to focus on Islamist and far-right extremism.
Last week it was revealed jailed crossbow killer Kyle Clifford “turned to Andrew Tate” the night before he murdered ex-partner Louise Hunt, her sister Hannah Hunt and their mother Carol Hunt.
A jury heard the murders were fuelled by the “violent misogyny promoted” by Tate, after it emerged that Clifford searched for the controversial social media influencer’s podcast before carrying out the killings of the three women.
Mr Grindell said: “The two Tate brothers are definitely toxic. They are inspiring and developing a system of misogyny, which is already a problem, and now they’re trying to make misogyny legitimate.
Mr Grindell said it was “irrelevant” whether the extremism was based in extreme Christianity, school shootings, or misogyny: “It’s the same thing it’s still manipulation of people’s minds. It’s why as parents you have to know what your children are watching.”
“The irony here is if we saw that same child watching an Islamist preacher we would be getting excited by that saying they are clearly being groomed into terrorism. But these other people are doing exactly the same thing but not the same subject matter. It’s exactly the same process, the emulation. They are being inspired by someone online filling their minds with poison,” he said.
He said that while someone like Osama Bin Laden clearly carried a greater threat [than the Tates] because of his intent and capabilities to carry out a mass atrocity, “Tate poses a different level of threat as his intent and capabilities are different.”
Mr Grindell, who set up his own security firm Defuse after leaving the Met Police’s Specialist Operations Unit, now works to identify threats to his clients before they escalate to violence in real life.
With death threats flooding social media, he said tech companies scrapping their fact-checking departments will only make their sites “hostile and more unpleasant” in the future.
Philip Grindell shares his advice on personal security in his new book called ‘Personal Threat Management: The practitioner’s guide to keeping clients safer’ now available on Amazon.