How the king of toxic masculinity corrupted a generation

Andrew Tate is regularly seen online posing with beautiful women, mountains of cash and a fleet of supercars. It’s a lifestyle that earned him millions of followers on social media.

But this cigar-smoking, gun-toting, champagne-quaffing kickboxer from Luton is most notorious for his violent and abhorrent views on women, rape and manhood, and he stands accused of inflicting his malign influence on an entire generation of young men.

Tate — and his dark side — first came to public attention in 2016 when he appeared on Channel 5’s Big Brother. He was the first housemate to be expelled from the reality TV show after videos surfaced of him beating a woman with a belt and asking another how many bruises she had.

He later claimed these had been part of consensual BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) sex-play and went on to leverage the notoriety he’d gained from Big Brother to build an online presence.

As the internet burgeoned, Tate became notorious for his inflammatory diatribes against women on sites such as YouTube and then TikTok.

In one particularly shocking online rant he argued that women ‘must bear some responsibility’ if they put themselves ‘in a position to be raped’. In another, he said ‘my sister is the property of her husband’.

Men accused of cheating by their girlfriends are advised to ‘bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b***h’.

The more controversial his videos, the more they were manipulated by social media algorithms and his audience, particularly teenage boys, grew exponentially.

With no fewer than 12.7 billion social media views, and more Google searches last month than Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian, to the under-30s he is now the most famous man on the planet.

Which is why social media giants are scrambling — but so far failing — to curb the online content of the man dubbed the ‘King of Toxic Masculinity’.

Last week 35-year-old Tate had the dubious honour of being the most high-profile person to be permanently banned from the Big Four social media sites TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

But that has barely made a dent in his online presence, with hydra-headed duplicate accounts and a legion of ‘Soldiers’ — or followers — who will go to war for him popping up all over the internet.

Days after his TikTok ban, a search on the site brought up at least 20 fan accounts, all with more than 10,000 followers each, dedicated to spreading Tate videos.

Arrogant and gauche, Tate made a final ‘goodbye’ video last week, insisting he is ‘not the number one villain on Earth’ and that he had been ‘unfairly vilified’.

Last week 35-year-old Tate had the dubious honour of being the most high-profile person to be permanently banned from the Big Four social media sites TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. But that has barely made a dent in his online presence, with hydra-headed duplicate accounts and a legion of ‘Soldiers’ — or followers — who will go to war for him popping up all over the internet

So how did this man come to possess such abhorrent views on women, and how has he reached such stratospheric levels of fame?

Andrew Tate was born in Chicago, the son of Emory Andrew Tate Jr. a U.S. Air Force sergeant, who became an International Chess Master, and Eileen, a catering assistant.

After his parents separated, his mother, now 61, moved with her three children to Luton, where she raised them on her own.

Home for her these days is a terrace house on Marsh Farm, Luton’s most deprived estate.

A notorious crime hotspot, with gang shootings and arson attacks a regular occurrence, it stands in stark contrast to the millionaire lifestyle flaunted by her son.

Mrs Tate, who formerly worked at the local Roman Catholic secondary school, comes across as a veritable pillar of the community.

She regularly donates to children’s hospitals, and to child poverty and cancer research charities, and her social media profile displays images of her children when they were young. But yesterday she was unavailable to comment on her son’s misogynist views, and a neighbour said: ‘She’s been through enough.’

It was in Luton that Andrew took up kickboxing and, over the course of his teens and twenties, became a four-times world champion.

In 2015, Andrew’s father died suddenly at the age of 56. He made his ill-starred appearance on Big Brother the next year, and in 2017, shortly after spending two days in a cell as police investigated him over abuse allegations, he moved to Romania.

He has admitted that ‘40 per cent of the reason I moved to Romania’ was because rape laws are more lenient there. ‘I’m not a f****** rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want,’ he said in one now-deleted video.

Andrew Tate was born in Chicago, the son of Emory Andrew Tate Jr. a U.S. Air Force sergeant, who became an International Chess Master, and Eileen, a catering assistant. After his parents separated, his mother, now 61, moved with her three children to Luton, where she raised them on her own

In April this year, his compound in Bucharest was raided by Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism. They had been tipped off by the U.S. Embassy about a girl being held against their will at a property owned by Tate and his brother Tristan.

Romanian media reports suggest that they found a 21-year-old from the U.S. and a young Romanian woman, who were both allegedly being held against their will.

And this week police sources told the Mail that there were two other Romanian women in the compound. However, Tristan Tate has previously disputed that police found women in the house who were there against their will, saying: ‘No girls were found in my house, and nobody was arrested.’

The sources said the house was full of cameras and, according to police, was being used as a webcam studio.

The Romanian Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation following allegations of unlawful deprivation of liberty, and later expanded it to cover human trafficking and rape allegations. But the Tate brothers say they ‘have never been arrested’.

And still the internet is humming with Andrew Tate appearances.

Earlier this month, primary and secondary school teachers in Britain warned against his ‘dangerous misogynistic and homophobic abuse’, highlighting how ‘young boys seem to be the most influenced’.

Teachers in Australia said Tate, whom they referred to as a ‘toxic male influencer’, was responsible for the rise in sexual assaults by boys against girls in private schools, while the internet is awash with posts by teenage girls making such claims as: ‘Andrew Tate made my boyfriend hate me.’

Central to his cult status as a hero who knows ‘how to be successful as a man’ is Tate’s supposedly self-made fortune, and his promise that all who follow him can achieve similar riches.

‘I’m a trillionaire, world’s first,’ he said earlier this year. ‘I made my first million when I was, say, 27, and then I had 100 million by the time I was 31, and then I became a trillionaire quite recently.’

Tate’s carefully cultivated rags-to-riches image has raised eyebrows, as have his claims that he is a ‘trillionaire’. His actual wealth is a bit of a mystery, but various internet estimates put his fortune at anything between £16 million and £300 million

Tate’s main business venture is Hustlers University, an online ‘community where me and dozens of War Room soldiers will teach YOU exactly how to make money.’

Two iterations of the business’s website have already been shut down due to the backlash against Tate’s views, but last week he was back with Hustlers University 3.0, boasting that ‘our youngest student is 13 years old. He is making +$10,0000 [sic] a month. So age does NOT MATTER.’

Almost 130,000 people — many of them British schoolboys — pay £39 a month to be taught by ‘12 multi-millionaires’ on copywriting, e-commerce and crypto-currency trading.

Bu Tate’s carefully cultivated rags-to-riches image has raised eyebrows, as have his claims that he is a ‘trillionaire’. His actual wealth is a bit of a mystery, but various internet estimates put his fortune at anything between £16 million and £300 million.

Whatever the truth, the Mail uncovered some surprising facts. According to financial documents lodged with the Romanian Ministry of Public Finance, at the end of 2020, one of the Tate brothers’ companies, Talisman Enterprises SRL, posted assets of £468,000, debts of £732,000 and a turnover of £344,000. It is not known what other companies Andrew Tate has and how successful they are.

The brothers’ ‘Tate HQ’ compound in the affluent Bucharest suburb of Pipera, with its home cinema, pool and neon ‘Tate’ signs featuring Andrew’s signature chess knight logo, is widely regarded by his internet followers to be worth at least £25 million.

But luxury properties in Romania cost an average of £1 million, with even the most expensive valued at less than £10 million. And for a man who sells himself on his business acumen, Andrew Tate’s personal finances appear at odds with the luxury lifestyles portrayed by the self-proclaimed ‘Beast of Bucharest’ and his brother Tristan, 34.

Tate — and his dark side — first came to public attention in 2016 when he appeared on Channel 5’s Big Brother. He was the first housemate to be expelled from the reality TV show after videos surfaced of him beating a woman with a belt and asking another how many bruises she had. He later claimed these had been part of consensual BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) sex-play and went on to leverage the notoriety he’d gained from Big Brother to build an online presence

Andrew Tate, who is a director of a company called The Cannon Run Ltd — registered to his mother’s council house in Luton — which operates driving tours throughout Europe and sells used sports cars, has numerous County Court Judgments (CCJs) against him for unpaid debts. Under his full name, Emory Andrew Tate III, he has had three CCJs made against him since 2018, totalling £3,962, £268 and £270.

A further two CCJs are outstanding against The Cannon Run directly, totalling £4,518 and £1,416, both made last year.

The supercar business also received two Coronavirus Bounce Back Loans from the UK government — designed to aid struggling businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic — totalling £50,000.

In Austria, law-makers were forced to launch a court case against him for his failure to pay a £280 parking fine.

And according to Romanian media, the Tate brothers are not self-made millionaires but inheritance beneficiaries, having apparently ‘inherited a hotel in Thailand from their father, through which they would have amassed . . . millions of euros’.

Yesterday Tate rebutted allegations that he had created a false image of exaggerated wealth, stating that the debts against his name related to ‘an old credit card bill’.

But if he and his brother have created a distorted online reality in order to make profit, it would not be the first time.

Their webcam-girl business in Romania is one of their longest-running ventures, and earlier this year Andrew Tate brazenly told a newspaper it was a ‘scam’. An investigation in March revealed how the brothers run a studio in which 75 lingerie-clad models take calls from fans paying £3.40 a minute, men who often believe they have a relationship with the girls after falling for fake sob-stories about their lives.

‘It’s a total scam,’ Andrew told the newspaper, stating that the venture was, nevertheless, legal. ‘I have real professionals who are fluent in English behind the scenes getting men hooked, finding out their interests, the name of their dog,’ he revealed.

One man reportedly handed over his £20,000 inheritance after being seduced in such a ‘scam’.

On one of his websites, Tate boasts, without irony, that ‘I am an expert on all male-female interactions’, explaining: ‘I’ve been running a webcam studio for nearly a decade. I’ve had 75 girls work for me.

‘Over 50 per cent were actually my girlfriend at the time . . . NONE were in the adult entertainment industry before they met me.’

But he insists none of his behaviour is criminal. ‘Regarding any allegations to crimes,’ he said, ‘they are simply not true otherwise we would be in jail.’

Last week, perhaps in a desperate bid to clean up his image, Tate released an hour-long video announcing the launch of ‘The Tate Foundation’, which promises to help women suffering from domestic abuse and men with mental health issues.

‘This is a chance to move my social media purely to my charitable acts’, he said. Begging Instagram to reinstate his account, he promised to ‘donate the 1.2 or 1.3 million dollars’ to two as-yet unnamed charities if it did so.

Tate said ‘not a single woman has come forward and said I raped her or hurt her, not one’, but admitted that he ‘had some responsibility to bear’.

Only time will tell whether he gets his social media platforms back, whether he has truly reformed his views and what the outcome of the Romanian authorities’ investigation will be.

But as Dr Joe Mulhall, director of anti-extremist charity Hope Not Hate, said: ‘I think the harm that has been done in the last six months by Andrew Tate online is going to take years to unpick.’