Another Take: What’s Andrew Tate’s appeal?
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Al Jazeera Podcasts. Hi, I'm Amy Walters, a senior producer with The Take, back with another take, where we bring you episodes from our archives.

Andrew Tate, a well-known right-wing influencer under investigation for human trafficking, arrived in the United States from Romania after his travel ban was lifted. Influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, are in the U.S. after prosecutors granted them permission to leave the country. But they are now also facing a criminal investigation in Florida.

He's accused with his brother Tristan of trafficking minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, and money laundering, all of which they deny. So what's behind this influencer's influence? A journalist we spoke with in Romania explains. This episode originally aired September 19th, 2023. All dates and references are from that time.

A warning, this episode contains strong language and descriptions of sexual assault. I will stand up right here and say I am sexist. That's Andrew Tate, a British-American reality star, former kickboxer, and a self-proclaimed misogynist. The only women who don't love misogynists are the women who are too ugly to get f***ed by a misogynist.

He's very popular. He's amassed 7.8 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, and billions, yes, billions of views on TikTok. Men are still out here building the modern world. But when they come home now, the girl's like, oh, why should I cook for you? I think women are failing in their role. I think women are failing. Eventually, Tate was banned by Meta and TikTok for violating policies regarding dangerous individuals, hate speech, and hateful ideology.

Offline, Tate relocated his business empire. He moved full-time to Romania alongside his brother Tristan. Then the seedier side of his empire came to light. The brothers are now awaiting trial for charges of organized crime, human trafficking, and rape. Tate denies it all. I've done nothing wrong. God knows I've done nothing wrong. In my heart, I know I've done nothing wrong. I think the people at home who with a functioning brain understand we've done nothing wrong.

But for the teens who are still his fans, none of that matters. He's got this army of young boys and men posting his stuff across a range of different platforms. It's all part of a phenomenon across the world, including in Romania, of young men subscribing to Tate's brand of toxic masculinity. So what's the appeal? I'm Malika Bilal, and this is The Take. ♪

The interest in documenting the Andrew Tate piece came from my own lived experience. I grew up in Romania, 17 years of my life, but then moved all over the world. Yet everywhere I was in the past two to three years, I've interacted with Andrew Tate in a way or another.

Radu Stokica is a freelance journalist in Romania specializing in tech, labor, and society. He reported on Tate's popularity there for Al Jazeera.com. It was impossible to avoid him, basically. Impossible to avoid. Okay, so then we have to hear this story. How did you first come across Andrew Tate? ♪

I think just by scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, maybe YouTube, I forgot the exact platform, but the algorithm targeted me very well. I was a man. I was interested in fitness for some time. I was, I don't know, researching something about masculinity, an idea that definitely has been on my mind for the past five years. And all of a sudden I got this bald guy with sunglasses and smoking a cigar indoors, talking

talking to me about how he thinks the world works. He believes that there is a certain Western viewpoint, philosophy, let's say, quite tolerant of sexual minorities that impose their viewpoint over us. I never took him seriously, personally. I thought it was a one-time phenomenon and I thought this is just another guy online because the internet is full of them.

But he kept coming back, and my friends kept referencing him. And the people where I grew up, in a very small Romanian town by the name of Pucoasa, it's only 15,000 people, it's in the south of Romania, kept talking quite positively about him. When did Romanians hear about Andrew Tate? He's been present in Romania for some long time already. He's been coming here, I think, since 2012.

But he's become a household name only in the past one to two years. Everyone, not everyone, but let's say a great majority of people at least know their name. So at least when they hear the Tate brothers or Tate or Andrew Tate or the American living north of Bucharest, they understand who they're talking about. So it's almost like a topic that's impossible to escape in this country.

Okay, so for those people who may not be in the know, for an audience that's never heard him before, or maybe they've heard his name and never bothered to look more into him, why does he have such a huge following?

So Andrew Tate came to this level of fame only in the past years, basically because he's become this internet talk show celebrity, almost this podcaster, this everything, basically, because he was present everywhere, having takes, basically describing parts of his life, saying what he thinks about the world, the way he views the gender relations.

But at his origins, Andrew Tate and his brother, who was also very important in this story, Tristan Tate, are two Anglo-American people that have done kickboxing, at least on the Andrew Tate side. And then both of them have tried to get into British reality TV shows. Andrew Tate tried to get into Big Brother, was there for a couple of days, and then he got kicked out.

And then he tried to create this online realm of webcam girls in the United Kingdom. I first became a multi-millionaire by running a webcam studio. So I had beautiful women sitting on computers talking to guys on webcams from all around the world.

Then he moved to Romania, where he further polished his business, I could say, and got involved in other activities at the intersection of webcam, online activity, gambling, as well as just building this multi-level marketing scheme, which was his university, as he called it, the Hustler's University. I mean, it's emblematic that this university was called Hustler's University because that's what he believes in.

He wants you to hustle, to pick yourself by your bootstraps and take yourself out of the comfort zone. And for him, that means making money, basically, while promoting his message at the same time. Wow. Okay, so he has this massive fan base because all of what you have just described appeals to a certain segment of populations around the world.

But then in late August 2022, Tate was removed from TikTok, YouTube and the meta platforms for hate speech, glorifying abuse and misogyny. The decision has been hailed by a number of campaign groups which claim Mr. Tate poses a genuine threat to young people. What exactly was he accused of at that time? And how did that impact his popularity in Romania?

Well, he was definitely accused of having incited, I would say promoting at least, violent speech online, claiming that there is a clear hierarchy between men and women in society, giving off the example of his father, that his father was a well-achieved international master in chess.

And he often gave the example of his mom being, in a sense, below his dad. There exists a clear power relationship. He's used homophobic terms multiple times on Twitter, racist terms as well. And he was suspended from Twitter multiple times in the past. He's had multiple accounts suspended. So what happened to him in August 2022 was of a bigger magnitude just because he was so much more famous than

But his behavior was nothing new to the platform in any way. And many people, I would say, saw it coming. But in Romania, Tate believed he would be safe from any consequences of his rhetoric or his actions.

He liked Romania because it was way more corrupt. It allowed him to get away, or at least to believe that he can get away with many things. Because in the West, if there is the case of a rape, I'm not quoting him precisely, but I'm trying to repeat what he said. If a woman accuses you of rape, the police will put you in prison, while in Romania they will ask for CCTV evidence, they'll ask for visual evidence of the action.

People say, why didn't Romania? And I explain my five reasons. One of them is the Me Too era. They go, oh, well, you're a rapist. I say, no, I'm not a f***ing rapist. Basically hinting to the fact that the Romanian justice system, in his viewpoint, is more favorable to what he believes to be the truth. Because he's obsessed with this idea of the truth. But Tate has been accused of more than just sexist opinions.

As recently as this June, it came out that four women are pursuing a civil case in the UK for rape and sexual assault. One woman alleged rape following a date with Tate in 2014. We went to my room to have sex and whilst we were having sex, he put his hand on my throat and strangled me until I lost consciousness.

It was a bit confusing at first because you don't really know what's happened when you kind of pass out. But he was still having sex with me when I kind of came back around again. After the break, an arrest. And why that didn't matter to many of Tate's fans. Get your news in less than three minutes, three times per day with the Al Jazeera news updates. Just ask your home device to play the news by Al Jazeera or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

So that's who Andrew Tate was. But when most of the rest of the world heard of him, it was in a whirlwind toward the end of 2022. You could call it Hurricane Andrew. First, he got in a Twitter spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg. Then it came out that he had apparently converted to Islam in October. At that point, few people knew he was in Romania. Then the arrest.

It all centered around a premium service that he was offering called The War Room. Influencer Andrew Tate's all-male society, The War Room. It costs close to $8,000 that you can join this war room and where you, I don't know, sit by his side, discuss politics, whatever. No one knows what's going on inside the war room. The BBC has uncovered evidence that dozens of women were potentially groomed into online sex work

We saw Andrew alongside his younger brother, Tristan, detained near Bucharest in Romania as authorities investigated them for suspicion of organized crime, human trafficking, and rape. Investigators say seven female victims were misled and transported to Romania where they were sexually exploited and subjected to physical violence.

Can you explain more how these charges went down in Romania? How were they perceived by people? So December 2022 was definitely a rupture moment because while he was still popular, new content created by him was nowhere to be found in any way because he was detained.

While the investigations were still going on, so we only got the recycled old videos of him. But in my circle, at least, which is made up of, I would say, people that are more sensitive to issues that concern women equality and inequality, people were happy to see that he's detained.

They felt that a sense of justice was there, not only against him and against the people that he might have done something against, but also to the general people. Because the belief was that, at least in my circles, he might have done something for sure, but he has inspired other generations to maybe do something quite similar to him. But there are many people as well that believe that.

He was wrongly accused that the justice system will prove him innocent. And he went on this rampage of words on Twitter through all of his communication from his prison time, saying that the Matrix is here to get me. The Matrix has attacked me.

I want to make sure I have this timeline right. He and his brother were arrested in December. They were held for about three months in jail in Bucharest. And then they were under house arrest from March till about August. This August, they were released from house arrest. What's their status now? What is happening?

They're creating content. Wow. So go on TikTok and Instagram right now or any of the meta products, YouTube. Where is he creating this content? I mean, he still has a website. He still has this platform where he promotes his videos and his ideas. And aside from that, he also has this war room. But you can find it on his website.

Just to underscore how popular he is. So I'm on X, formerly known as Twitter.com right now.

He tweeted on August 4th, the day that he was released after house arrest, after 10 months, three in jail, seven at home, after 15 million euro of asset seizures, after an indictment based on nothing, the file was passed to a judge who has ruled it weak and circumstantial. I've been released from house arrest but must remain within Romania. That tweet got 11.3 million views and...

His account on X has 7.8 million followers. So this is not nothing. Exactly. Radu, you wrote this piece for Al Jazeera.com looking into the phenomenon of the Tate followers. And it included interviews with two teenage boys out of Romania who still follow him. Before we get into what you learned, I know that you grew up in Romania. Yes.

Can you explain for our listeners, based on your upbringing and what life was like, what people might see in him? What might a different version of you have seen in him? Yeah, I mean, growing up as a young boy in this country, men were still supposed to be tough providers in some way or another, to be resilient against any danger that happened to them in life, against any injustice, against anything.

But most important, I remember quite clearly, is that you have to be as tough as a rock to survive. And the way he appealed to people is that so many boys were directionless, I would say. And it's quite hard to understand the general public because Romania has become a more unequal playground than when I was going to school here. And the same is with regards to the future. They do not know where they see themselves. The boys have no idea about what's going on at the same time because it's also a hyper-stimulated environment.

society in which we live. Because we live with the American dream. It's on TV, it's on TikTok, it's on Instagram. We see it, we watch it. We're like, don't be able to do it all. But then you wake up and you're in Romania. So tell me about the people that you spoke to. Two teenage boys. One is an aspiring basketball player and the other is a homeschooled teen from Bucharest. Tate is this

disgraced former boxer, kickboxer. He's now been charged with some pretty terrible crimes, including creating a human trafficking group, sexually assaulting several women. And yet, when you spoke to these boys, they said that he had impacted their lives in a positive way. What did they tell you? So they made a clear difference between Andrew Tate on screen and Andrew Tate in reality, both of them.

They did not care about his life, his actions, and believe that even if he's proven to be guilty, then they still do not care in a way. I mean, they still believe that what he said, but definitely cannot comprehend fully who he is because of the amount of things he said online, the amount of interactions, fights he's had. But for those boys, just what they've seen, those TikTok videos, those Instagram reels,

Andrew Tate was a guy that motivated them to get off the couch, to work out, to try to hit the gym. Welcome to the Tate Fitness Course. Now, this fitness course has a very unique angle to it. To be more militant about the causes they might believe in with quote-unquote LGBT propaganda,

you know, non-binary movement. You can name it anyway. You know, there is always a word. There is always a definition. There is always a weird construct that defines something that's happening in the quote unquote West. So they liked him. I think he was the voice they needed to hear, basically, to feel that they belong in this world. Was there anything in your conversation with the two boys that really surprised you?

So one of them is Ioan and the other one is Marius. Ioan is the aspiring basketball player and Marius is the homeschooled kid from Bucharest. Both were quite knowledgeable about what's happening in the West when it comes down to, let's call them gender issues. And they knew a lot about gender affirming care. They knew a lot about the LGBT, quote unquote, whatever that meant for them.

And there was this belief that the world has now been silenced and that if, at least in Yuan's words, if you walk through San Francisco or any other city and if you misgender someone, let's say they identify as a they-them and you call them a he, there's a chance you may be put in prison. Hmm.

Wow. For the record, for all of our listeners, that doesn't happen. That is not a typical thing. There was almost a sense of fear I identified. That surprised me because none of them have been to the United States. None of them. They've only seen it through the screens. Interesting. So you also spoke to a clinical psychologist, Raul Lupasch.

And you asked him if Andrew Tate were to disappear tomorrow, would someone take his place? And he was reluctant to say no. Can you tell me about that? I think the way I read that conversation was

was that we, in fact, cannot predict the way the future will work because there is no way we understand the algorithm. Some of us that are specialists in social media have an idea about the way they might work, but they may change overnight and Andrew Tate's content may be pushed all the way to the bottom and be basically forgotten by the majority of the internet.

I think why he was a bit reluctant to say no was because there is also a sense of hope that if he's gone, something else which is a bit more empowering actually for the boys from a perspective of them being emotional, them being more community driven,

might take his place at the field. Because at the end of the day, we're all fighting for attention when we post on social media. But Raul is also quite hopeful that he sees more examples of positive masculinity in the media right now, at least in Romania. We have the feminist organizations that are fighting against this hateful speech. We have Centrofilia, Feminist Romania,

We have a collective sisterhood, the girl up. There are plenty. I mean, there is also like almost a male awareness, I would say. You become aware of your power, of the power imbalance in the society. And you also question your own masculinity, which has been quite toxic, let's say, for the past years or decades in which you were told just to be a rock, careless, no emotions, just survive.

Following your reporting on this, you published your piece. How do you feel? Oh, how do I feel? I do feel fairly optimistic regarding the future. I don't want to lose hope in that sense.

I am quite hopeful that change, beneficial change is there to come. And this comes from all of our individual actions. It comes from friends of those young boys. Can talk to them, can listen to them. Can at times even nod when they say some things that we may not agree with and offer a place where conversation can occur and progress can be made. Because at the end of the day, men don't really talk.

Yeah, well said. Thank you.

Raju, thank you so much for delving into this world for us. I think it's going to be eye-opening for a lot of people. It has been for myself. I went out of my way to not have to consume Andrew Tate news until it was time to report this episode. So thank you for being my entryway in. I learned a lot. Thank you, Sue. It was a pleasure, honestly, doing this. And that's The Take. We'll pop a link to Raju's reporting in our show notes.

This episode was produced by Sonia Bagat and Chloe K. Lee, with David Enders, Ashish Malhotra, Zaina Bazir, Amy Walters, Miranda Lin, Sari El-Khalili, Faranisa Kampana, Khaled Soltan, and me, Malika Bilal. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Alexandra Locke is the Take's executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back.