Andrew Tate has long credited his father, Emory Tate, as his biggest inspiration. “I would argue I had the best father on earth,” he said on a podcast in 2023. “He bestowed upon me the honours and principles and morals I live by today.”
Tate is a self-described misogynist and his morals and principles include advocating for male supremacy and celebrating violence against women. He was under house arrest in Romania, facing human trafficking charges, but arrived in the US this week after Romanian prosecutors lifted him and his brother Tristan Tate’s travel ban.
Tate claims he was “raised perfectly” and “could not have hoped for a better father”. Emory Tate’s career as a chess master and his political and cultural opinions can be seen in his son’s philosophy on life, which encompasses things like discipline, aggression and the denigration of women.
An abusive childhood
Born in 1958 in Chicago, Emory Tate II was one of nine children. In a Facebook post in 2015, he described his father, Emory Tate I, as “the most savage man in the universe” who frequently abused him. “Beating with the leather belt was all he knew,” Emory wrote, adding that he chose not to beat his children. “I ended the abuse in my generation. My kids were raised with only love.”
Emory served as a sergeant in the United States Airforce and met Englishwoman Eileen Ashleigh while he was in Bedfordshire. After moving back to America the pair married in 1985 and had Andrew and his younger siblings, Tristan and Janine.
Andrew Tate’s own account of his childhood conflicts with his father’s claims. “Did I get hit if I made a mistake? Yes, of course. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” he told Vice journalist Matt Shea, who made a documentary about him, adding that his father’s parenting style was “authoritarian, but that’s not a bad thing”.
In a video posted to his followers this week, Tate told a story of how his father punished him aged eight for criticising a girl’s violin performance at a school talent show. “He beat the f*** out of me for running my mouth and having an opinion about something I could not do myself.”
The family were living in Indiana when Eileen and Emory divorced in 1997. Eileen moved to Luton, England with the children, and lived on Marsh Farm, an infamously rough council estate which Tate has described as the “worst area of the worst town”.
Eileen worked as a dinner lady to support her children, who only saw their father once a year. How did Andrew feel about this? “My father did care, he was just very busy,” Tate insisted to actor turned therapist David Sutcliffe in 2023. “I think my father raised me by not being there,” he continued, explaining that since Emory was out there “doing fantastic things”, it in turn showed Andrew that he “can't be his son and not be fantastic.”
A mad but brilliant chess master
Emory Tate learned to play chess as a child and quickly rose through the ranks. He was one of the top 100 players in the USA at his peak and became an international master (one level below grandmaster) aged 49. He was a five-time winner of the United States Armed Forces Chess championship while serving as a sergeant, and frequently beat grandmasters.
Andrew Tate once said on a podcast that his father was dismissed from the military after being diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Emory then took up chess full time, and his style was known to be aggressive and entertaining to watch. After he died in 2015, tributes from fellow players flooded in about Tate, which were detailed in an obituary on chess.com.
"Emory Tate was absolutely a trailblazer for African-American chess," said American grandmaster Maurice Ashley. “His super tactical style as well as his incredibly entertaining post-mortems were legendary.” Emory Tate was known to dissect a match after it happened, in a style which fellow international master Daniel Rensch described as “colorful, hilarious and very often crude (bordering on vulgar)”.
Other players suggested the prowess was tinged with madness. "Tate was a lunatic, a creative genius,” said former US champion Stuart Rachels. “He definitely was a person who treaded that commonly described fine line between brilliance and insanity,” added grandmaster Sam Shankland.
Emory’s aggressive style of play seems to have had a big impact on Andrew in his own career. "When I was first learning to kickbox he would get mad at me for having my hands up. He would say I’m not a turtle and I have nothing to hide from. We focused on offense. I still fight with my hands down and head movement. All out attack," Tate told chess.com.
The origins of “Tateism”
While Andrew Tate may be banned from Facebook, his father’s profile still exists for the public to see. Emory Tate was a prolific user, sharing multiple posts every day up until his death. His opinions are difficult to pigeonhole.
During the European refugee crisis of 2015, he wrote: “Why has not the USA offered to take in the refugees flooding Europe? We dropped the bombs. There is plenty of room here.” He also called for the government to “legislate against police beatings and torture,” saying that he had been tortured “three times at least”.
Elsewhere, he spouted homophobic and misogynistic opinions, calling model Cara Delevingne “self-obsessed” for being open about her sexuality. In another rant, he asked why it was a crime in the US for men to have sex with underage girls who have reached puberty. “If I Join Donald Trump as a Vice-President... I will release all non-violent drug offenders, and all consensual sex with women post-pubescent would not be a crime, retroactively,” he wrote.
Emory Tate saw himself as an alpha male and often posted Facebook statuses about his school of thought, which he called “Tateism”. One such status, written in 2012, said: “How to break the cycle of Work, Consume, Die? Become something more than yourself. Find something and leave your mark on it. A sport, a discipline or even a society. Tateism. ” There are clear echoes of his father’s philosophy in Andrew Tate’s own tenets about self-discipline and mental fortitude.
Emory Tate died of a heart attack aged 56 while at a chess tournament in California.
“People called him crazy. But I understood him. And regardless of his abnormal thinking he turned me into a brilliant person. You can't argue with the methods if the result is flawless,” wrote Andrew on Facebook at the time, full of characteristic humility.
“Tateism” was passed down father to son, and has reached more people than its originator may ever have imagined.
