Someday, perhaps even soon, the "big men" who run the world will crush us. The connection between the Tate brothers, alleged sex traffickers from Romania, and Elon Musk and Donald Trump, reveals a disturbing picture of global misogyny and a dangerous worldview that only "larger-than-life men" are worthy of running the world—even if it comes at the expense of women and other men.

Last week, brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate were released from house arrest in Romania and flew on a private jet to Florida. They landed in ostentatious style—smoking cigars worth $800 each, wearing custom-tailored suits costing thousands of dollars, and sporting wristwatches worth $30,000. Just a few months ago, both were charged with human trafficking, sexual assault, money laundering, and establishing a criminal organization.

At the same time, a young American woman trembled throughout her body while speaking with her attorney. She is one of the brothers' victims who, in 2021, believed she was in love with Tristan Tate—a former kickboxer turned "internet personality" who spreads toxic masculinity and misogyny. According to a report in the Daily Mail, she flew to Romania expecting a romantic vacation but found herself imprisoned in a compound that was essentially a sex farm, along with other women who had fallen victim to the brothers.

The Tates forced the women to have sex, film themselves on sex cameras for paying clients, and forbade them from leaving the compound without permission. They monitored their diets to prevent weight gain that would "damage the product", and forced them to upload sexual content to social media. Only when the young woman managed to contact her parents, who alerted Romanian authorities, was she released in April 2022 along with the other women. Now she fears for her life in light of their early release and arrival in the U.S.

The connections between the Tate brothers and senior officials in the Trump administration appear tight. Both cheered for Trump on social media and according to reports even visited Mar-a-Lago as honored guests. It is believed that intervention by the administration made their early release possible. Today they are "living the dream" in Miami, residing in a luxury apartment and posting videos of themselves in upscale nightclubs with bottles of champagne worth hundreds of dollars, and even appearing in videos with naked women while treating them as objects.

It's hard to ignore that these British-American men are among the most extreme misogynistic influencers on social media. Their views on women and men who don't meet their definition of a "real man"—namely, a muscular woman-hater—are among the most extreme. Their dangerous influence was demonstrated last July when Kyle Clifford, a British man who murdered his girlfriend Emma and her sister, "gave credit" for his anger toward women to content created by the Tate brothers.

While their former victim is described by an American organization assisting victims of sexual exploitation as "paralyzed with fear", and her parents are "terrified to the depths of their souls" at the possibility that the Tates might come to their home, it seems the authorities prefer to "protect the privacy" of the brothers. In Romania, strangely, it was simply decided that the brothers could leave house arrest and fly to the U.S. to "solve family problems".

The extreme misogyny of the Tate brothers does not exist in a vacuum. It aligns well with the worldviews of the most powerful people in the world right now—Donald Trump and Elon Musk. "The populist-conservative messages that are now receiving a prominent and dominant platform—six weeks into Trump's entry into the White House—echo the deep messages that glorify misogyny and hatred of women expressed by various groups in the population", says Dr. Yael Proactor, an expert on gender equality (according to messages published in the 'Walla' system).

She adds: "This is especially so after Trump supporters include citizens belonging to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys. And yes, because part of President Trump's election strategy was appealing to a male audience—especially young men who historically tend to vote less in elections".

Trump and his people used the election campaign to participate in podcasts aimed primarily at men, in which messages were conveyed—explicit or implicit—criticizing concepts that support gender equality, presenting women's advancement as coming at the expense of men, and creating an atmosphere of male brotherhood whose "pride has been taken from them".

"These messages fell on receptive ears mainly due to socio-economic changes that the male population—especially young men—are facing", explains Dr. Proactor. "For instance, issues of lack of economic-social mobility among men, difficulties in the labor market, erosion of their wages, health problems among men, and challenging social situations such as social isolation, economic situation, and even high suicide rates. And since there was no reference to these issues from the Democratic-liberal side, the content and messages that arose in them seeped deeply and created great identification".

Figures like the Tate brothers entered this vacuum. Andrew, in particular, does not hide his admiration for Trump, whom he called "cruel in a good way" and "bulletproof". He even boasted to his 11 million followers on X-Twitter that he is "very close to the Trump family" and spoke with Barron, the president's youngest son.

The connections between the Tate brothers and the Trump administration appear clear—one of Tate's lawyers, Paul Ingrasia, works for the current administration, and Don Jr., the president's 47-year-old son, called the brothers' house arrest "absolute madness". Meanwhile, Elon Musk restored Tate's X-Twitter account after it was suspended by the previous management of the social network because of his extreme and violent views toward women.

The Tate brothers, who offer "real men" the chance to "learn to be free" for $8,000—apparently also through porn services with exploited women—have found refuge in the new reality where the White House publicly embraces chauvinism and misogyny disguised as nostalgia for "masculinity of the past".

Beyond the fact that toxic masculinity has become one of the pillars of Trump and Musk's politics, the release of the Tate brothers reflects a broader message that Trump is sending to the liberal and democratic world. As a serial cheater on his wives, accused of sexual assault and rape, and having paid hush money to a porn star, the president promotes a worldview in which the "traditional" roles of women and men are a value to be "preserved" and "nurtured".

Trump's current struggle against transgender people clearly aligns with Vladimir Putin's fight against liberal values that "distort gender and sexual reality" and with the positions of Xi Jinping, the president of China, who has also spoken out against Western sexuality, while his regime makes life difficult for the LGBT community in the country.

In many ways, Trump is closer to the worldviews of the leaders of the world's largest dictatorships than to those of any other American president in history—and this connects to his positions on issues of workers' rights, minority rights, and human rights in general.

Trump's central ideology seems simple: there are men who are "larger than life"—and there is everyone else. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and other dictators are seen as "larger-than-life men" in Trump's eyes, and therefore he seeks their proximity. With them, he can sit and determine the fate of the world.

From Trump's perspective, "big men" expand their territory, and this explains his obsession with annexing Greenland—as if in the 20th and 21st centuries, small territorial states that are economic giants, like Israel, did not emerge. In his world, "big men" do not need to dwell on concerns for women and the victims of other "big men".

Trump sees himself as a man who will leave a mark on history, as do Putin and Xi Jinping, and therefore they are, in his eyes, equal and more important than simple people without great ambitions—that is, more than 99.99% of humanity.

In the past, when similar narcissism, which may be pathological, met key positions in government—the results were devastating. Totalitarian leaders in 19th-century Europe adopted the "Great Man Theory", which holds that only heroic and great men drive the wheels of history. In the 1920s, the Nazis adopted and distorted Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch" (superman), which saw the superman as the goal of humanity.

From the perspective of these "supermen", other people are simply unimportant—especially if they lack money or voting rights. Thus, in the past, three rulers of European empires could sit together and decide on a joint struggle against liberal changes in European society—a decision that ultimately led to the deaths of millions of soldiers in the brutal battles of World War I. After them, "great men" such as Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler treated their citizens as tools in their imperial chess game.

Liberal democracies, which emerged from a world almost completely destroyed by fascist forces, created states in which the individual is protected from government by a system of laws and norms, which allowed for the creation of the most peaceful and prosperous period in human history. The leaders—and often female leaders—of these democracies were always public servants, not egomaniacs operating outside the law and accepted norms.

This period, it seems, is coming to an end. The world is again divided into "larger-than-life men" for whom everything in the world is secondary to their ego—and everyone else, meaning us. And from their perspective, we are just game pieces. Objects at best, ants in their path at worst.

Photos: Reuters and AP News, according to Section 27a