Andrew Tate, small god to incels, was arrested for rape and human trafficking in Romania in December. He is now under house arrest pending the outcome of the investigation. He granted an interview to the BBC last week to defend himself against accusations that he spreads misery among young women and misogyny among young men. I watched the tape: I think the perennially terrified man is not Tate’s ideal acolyte (he has 6.8 million Twitter followers) but Tate himself.
He met the journalist Lucy Williamson in a sitting room that looks like the Ministry of Sound. “You know I’m innocent,” he shouted at police as he was arrested. A mistake: Romanian policemen aren’t really his constituency.
Perhaps the BBC is? Not so. Williamson was immune. She read his own words back to him: “My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, get her to fall in love with me to the point where she’d do anything I say and then get her on webcam so that we could become rich together”. If this is true, he is a pimp, which is not heroic. He is also, technically, a sex worker since he uses his body to make money and my feminist heart grieves for him.
“I’ve never said that,” he said. “Your website, your words,” she said. “It’s not my website”. “Yes, it is”. “No, it’s not”. He then claimed he is not a misogynist, which, considering he once said, “I am absolutely sexist and I’m absolutely a misogynist,” bombed too. Surely Alpha masculinity involves taking responsibility for your own speech?
Williamson said the BBC had been briefed by a woman who claimed Tate emotionally manipulated her. He called the woman, “Sophie, fake name, no face”, which is interesting: Tate has always talked about women as if they were possessions. He invited “Sophie, fake name, no face” to pursue him in the courts, and then called her “this imaginary Sophie”. That might be the most profound thing he has ever said because his women — young (19 is his ideal age, he is 36) and thriving on webcams — are fantasies, until someone calls the police. But he doesn’t know that.
Williamson didn’t believe a word of it, so he patronised her. “I’m doing you the favour as legacy media of giving you relevance by speaking to you,” he said, unaware that populist demagogues really are like buses, which is why I allow the cliché. I suspect the BBC will outlive him.
I think Tate is popular not for his toxicity but for the toys that accompany him: or did, until the Romanian police impounded his cars. Perhaps he will now travel by bus, and that will break his heart? If liberal democracy came with a Maserati that might be the most Googled thing on the planet too. But there are things money can’t buy: self-knowledge and knowledge of what a woman is. Most of the discourse around Tate is advertorial and notoriety is barely disguised laughter. I add to the list of things he doesn’t know.
Why close the Jewish Museum?
The Jewish Museum in Camden, which holds the national collection of Judaica, is to close due to a lack of funds, though apparently it will move to another site in future: we will see. I am Jewish, and I am bewildered that there are millions of pounds for another Holocaust memorial in Westminster — there is already a memorial in Hyde Park, and the Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Museum — but not enough to keep a townhouse in north London open.
It makes me fear that people are less interested in Jewish life than Jewish death.
Any fool can go to a cemetery, look at a grave. But who were the living people, and what did they love? What did they die for? I think a much better answer would have been found in Camden than in Westminster.
Why the question is not even asked I do not know.
