Elon Musk has taunted influencer Andrew Tate after tweets from his social media account blamed “The Matrix” for his arrest in Romania.
Tate was arrested on Thursday on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group, and is currently in prison.
One tweet from Tate’s account seemed to respond to the arrest, saying: “The Matrix sent their agents”. Another said: “The Matrix will only tell you what The Matrix needs you to believe.”
In apparent response to these, Twitter CEO Elon Musk posted a meme with the words: “What if I told you the only way to escape The Matrix is to unlearn everything that you have been taught and rebuild your entire belief system based on critical thought and analysis.”
Tate, a British citizen, is known for spreading misogynistic views online and has previously been banned from social media platforms for hate speech. He was arrested with his brother Tristan and two Romanian suspects.
Prosecutors said that the four suspects “appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpse of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost.”
Six women have been sexually exploited by the suspects, prosecutors said.
Tate has previously said that he believes that we live in a ‘Matrix’ - referring to the dystopian Keanu Reeves sci-film where people are led by computers to work until they die.
In a recent exchange with climate activist Greta Thunberg, Tate posted a bizarre video in which he accused Ms Thunberg of being a “slave of the Matrix”.
He said: “She doesn’t realise she’s been programmed, she doesn’t realise she’s a slave of the matrix. She thinks she’s doing good.
“Someone has sat her down and convinced her, to beg you, to beg your government, to tax you into poverty to stop the sun from being hot.
“And then, because I called her out on it, the global matrix got this bot farm to like, retweet and comment to try and pretend that she’s somehow teaching me a lesson.”
