Photograph: Channel 4
Andrew Tate has built a career on saying the quiet part out loud. And, allegedly, on trafficking women and other crimes, but we will get to that. It’s the first bit that enabled the alleged rest.
Tate, a former kickboxer, capitalised on his notoriety in the ring – along with his unpleasant but undeniable charisma – to build a career as a powerful online influencer. He is known for his misogynistic rants and espousals of male superiority (“Female self-defence is a joke. What the fuck are you going to do when your face is collapsed?” he says after miming punching a woman in the face). He promises his followers that he can reverse the feminisation of modern society. His fans enrol in their thousands for his “university” courses to learn how to emulate their hero.
All this and more is told over an exhausting, depressing hour in Channel 4’s documentary I Am Andrew Tate. It was supposed to feature direct interviews with the subject, but, just as filming was about to start, Tate and his brother, Tristan, were arrested in Bucharest on suspicion of trafficking and other crimes, allegations they deny. This is despite Tate having chosen Romania as his base of operations for his webcam business because “the police are kind of weak”. There is also the matter of lawyers lobbying for the reopening of the investigation into multiple rape claims against him in the UK a few years ago, after complaints that police mishandled the women’s reports.
So there are no direct interviews. Instead, the documentary reconstructs Tate’s story from the copious material already out there. There are hundreds of hours of existing recordings of Tate ranting on podcasts and radio shows about his brilliance as a businessman, his philosophy of life and his upbringing. “I NEVER SAW MY MOM ASK MY DAD TO DO DISHES!”, he shouts triumphantly at one giggling, titillated male host. “I NEVER SAW HIM TAKE SHIT!”
There is plenty of footage of him detailing the trappings of his success – the money, the cars, the cowed women. He has, as he describes it, the dream life of “a flashy teenage boy”. It would be pitiable were it not built on the apparent suffering of women and were it not clear that he runs on hotly festering rage. When asked why he keeps a machete by his bed, the bathetic image quickly changes when he replies: “Machete’s on the floor, her panties are all wet, you’re going to fuck her, that’s how it goes. Slap, slap, grab, choke, shut up, bitch, sex.” A Tate “graduate” is on hand to assure us that this is a “funny part” that has been taken out of context.
Against Tate’s version of his story is the testimony of two women from the original UK investigation, who alleged that he strangled and raped them. They heard little more about their case until Tate appeared as a competitor on Channel 5’s Big Brother in 2016.
We hear from Cassidy Pope, a teacher in Texas whose video about Tate’s sway over her 14-year-old male students garnered support from educators globally, and from the antifascist campaigner Joe Mulhall, who was instrumental in shedding light on Tate’s activities and proclivities.
But the documentary relies on Tate damning himself with his own mouth, which he certainly does. That said, without more interrogation of how Tate came to be such a phenomenon, the programme is in danger of becoming the liberal equivalent of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Two Minutes Hate. We get to shake our heads in disgust and feel good about being so horrified, then go back to work, purged and righteous.
Why is the ground on which Tate’s teachings have fallen so fertile? What void exists in men that he is filling so successfully? From my side of the fence, Tate and his fanboys look like the embodiment of the adage that when you are accustomed to privilege, any move towards equality feels like oppression. But has modern life left men (not all men, yes, yes, yes) adrift in an important, underacknowledged way that shows itself violently if left unaddressed? Or is it the embodiment of another adage – that shit rolls downhill?
Tate is like Trump; it’s not enough to dismiss him and his fans as deplorable. If we want to prevent the rise of others of his ilk, we have to look beyond him and ask what led to his popularity and how we can prevent this from happening again.
I Am Andrew Tate is on Channel 4
