Andrew Tate insists he wasn’t really singing Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler.’ Others who were with him are doubling down.

British-US former professional kickboxer and controversial influencer Andrew Tate addresses the media in Bucharest, Romania, Aug. 4, 2023. Photo by Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images

(JTA) — A group of far-right influencers caught on tape singing along to the Ye song “Heil Hitler” has been split on how to respond to the allegations of antisemitism that have followed.

“Manosphere” brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate have distanced themselves from the footage, though not from the influencer who was filmed performing a Nazi salute.

Others have doubled down or flouted the criticism. Myron Gaines, who did the salute, posted a video in which he was dressed as an Orthodox Jewish man, wearing a tallit, fake beard and black hat, and dancing to a song with the lyrics, “Oy vey, the goyim know, time to shut down the entire show.”

The split responses come days after a video of the influencers alongside Sneako, Clavicular, Justin Waller and the avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes ignited controversy and recriminations in Miami. The group was on camera during an hourslong live stream that included multiple plays of Ye’s song — once during a drive to a Miami nightclub, and again inside the club.

In a podcast appearance on Tuesday, Andrew Tate absolved himself of blame, pointing out that he was not dancing or repeating any of the song’s lyrics, which include the phrase “Heil Hitler” repeated numerous times.

“I didn’t want to go to the club, I said I don’t want to go, I said this is bulls–t, they said it’s Nick [Fuentes’] first-ever time, and I truthfully believed I could get in and out of this dump in 15 minutes,” Tate said on the Patrick Bet-David Podcast on Tuesday. Bet-David, a prominent conservative media personality, has hosted figures like Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his podcast.

“I’m sorry to anybody who was offended,” Tate added. About the allegations of antisemitism dogging him, he added, “If I had played the song myself, and danced around to it, sure. [But] I was in a car.”

Tate’s brother, Tristan, wrote on X that neither brother was involved in playing the song.

“Everybody on the bus saw @sneako take the phone from Justin wallers hand, turn off the country music and put on HH,” Tate wrote. “I normally wouldn’t ‘tell’ on him but it was LIVE streamed to 50,000 people in HD.”

The stream showed Waller handing off the phone to Sneako so he could add a song to the queue.

“I think you know what to play,” Gaines, smiling, said repeatedly.

Gaines, Sneako, Fuentes and Clavicular all sang along to the song, while Tristan Tate bobbed to the rhythm and Andrew was out of frame. Gaines, whose real name is Amrou Fudl and is Sudanese-American, did the Nazi salute multiple times.

“Jews mad! Jews mad!” he said.

The incident came amid rising concern on the right about antisemitic rhetoric and figures such as Fuentes, who has become more prominent since his interview with Tucker Carlson last year. The Tate brothers, meanwhile, have added considerable antisemitism and intensely anti-Israel content to their streaming content in the last few years; Mother Jones reported in 2024 that the Tates’ criticisms of Israel segued into “antisemitic claims clearly rooted in the blood libel.”

Andrew Tate acknowledged a rise in antisemitism online on Tuesday, which he said “must be scary” for Jews to encounter. He distanced himself from the Miami episode, saying that he had no say in the music being played — but he also denied that antisemitism was to blame for his fellow influencers’ actions.

“I don’t think that any of them are deeply antisemitic genuinely, and I don’t think that any of them really thought it through,” Tate said. “Honestly, I think they’re just kids. I think they’re just kids, it gets a reaction, they think they’re funny, they’re on the internet, they need a reaction, they want likes, and they did some f—ing dumb s—t.”

Adam Sosnick, a Jewish internet personality who is Bet-David’s co-host, pushed back against Tate’s framing, pointing out that Myron Gaines is nearly 40 years old. Tate’s comment mirrored J.D. Vance’s response to Hitler jokes and racist and homophobic slurs used in a Young Republican group chat; Vance had said the officials, who were reportedly between the ages of 24 and 34, were just “kids” doing “stupid things.”

“This,” Sosnick said, imitating the Nazi salute which Gaines did during the stream, “that ain’t no kid stuff.”

Tate replied that Gaines is a “great friend” of his, and that he has “a whole bunch of friends who do a whole bunch of s—t that perhaps I would not do myself, or I may not 100% agree with.”

Like Gaines, Braden Peters, who is known as Clavicular and sang along enthusiastically to the Ye song, doubled down over the weekend.

“I am not sorry. I don’t apologize for what I did,” he said. “I would do it again today.”

He added, “I would rather have free speech and the ability to make jokes and do content, a thousand times over, rather than being a little b—h who has to censor himself and do all that s—t.”

Sneako, whose real name is Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, posted a video criticizing the Tate brothers for shifting blame to him, and denied that he was the one who played the song.

A sharp Israel critic, Sneako also criticized Tate for joining the PBD Podcast, which had previously hosted Netanyahu.

Fuentes, on the other hand, defended the Tate brothers on Tuesday, who he said are in a more delicate position because they are “quite literally under the gun in a few jurisdictions.”

Prosecutors have accused the Tate brothers of trafficking more than 30 women in Romania, where they’d been banned from leaving from 2022 until the ban was lifted in 2025, which was widely seen as reflecting the influence of the new Trump administration. They’re also facing criminal charges of rape and human trafficking in the United Kingdom, and have been under investigation by U.S. Homeland Security anti-trafficking agents since 2023, according to the New York Times.

“I do understand, not everybody is in the same place in their career,” Fuentes said. “He may not have the same license to say controversial things as everybody else.”