Robert explains the weird cult Andrew Tate created with a wizard and former pick up artist to rob young men and abuse women at scale.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Step away from the computer screen, touch grass, go to therapy.
No, I don't want this guy to go do anything.
That's fair.
The real dude is an American named Miles Sonkin, right? That's the actual guy who uses the name.
I don't know. All right.
I don't know.
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Chapter 2: How does Andrew Tate's War Room operate?
Weird little guy. Okay.
When the BBC got access to a bunch of leaked chats for its documentary, The Man Who Groomed the World, the journalist behind it, Matt Shea, came away with the opinion that Sonken is the brains and the ideological weight behind Tate's whole war room operation. And he makes a pretty good case. Okay. I disagree with aspects of it. Shay has put more time into this than I have.
And he spent a lot of time around Tate. He's met Sonken in person. He's met a number of key figures here. So I'm going to yield to his expertise, even though I'm not sure I agree with him entirely. And we'll talk about who this guy is. But first, let's talk about who our advertisers are, other than great people, which they are.
Sonken was born in Chicago, 1961, and he's been described in interviews by family members as a smart kid. And here's the most dangerous word we ever use on the show. He was also an autodidact, right? So he's this kid who learns a lot on his own and doesn't really go to high school, but educates himself. Now, unfortunately, when you do that, there tend to be holes in your education.
I feel like you can get pretty siloed into some weird shit. Yeah.
Yeah. This is one of our great problems is that if the things you're interested in wind up being worth a lot of money, you can get by never learning about anything else and also convincing yourself that you understand the world because you've made a lot of money. And I think that's kind of what's going to happen to Sanken.
And he pays an initial he pays initially some like consequences for it because he immediately gets sucked into two different cults.
I just sent Ian a picture of the guy. That's why his face is doing that. Oh, yeah. He does.
He does look like a wizard.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Real World platform?
When a former member described the war room as a bunch of telegram chats, some for business or girls or money, but there are more prestigious rooms that users who have already put in thousands of dollars are expected to shell out thousands more to join.
In messages on the war room telegram, we can see Sanken posting a Semmelweis and giving the same advice Tate gives from that speech we listened to earlier. And this is a message from him to war members. Isolating her from her family, friends, past is the kindest thing you can do for her if you are taking responsibility for having sole authority over her. And then in another post.
Then we punish her for her transgression, real or imagined, by having her get our name tattooed on her, leaving her family's home apartment town country. Webcamming and stripping, walking the track for us, getting us girls, escalate, escalate, escalate. So this is really Keith Raniere stuff. They're doing the branding thing, right?
Where you have to get tattoos or scarify yourself with the name of this guy. Yeah.
It's pretty gross.
It's pretty gross. Now, I think it'd be wise if you wanted to do so, to view the war room and the real world as kind of a modern day answer to the Church of Scientology. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
There's so many parallels. I was thinking of this the entire time.
Ton of parallels. And obviously, Hubbard is a reflection of the big self-help. culture of his time. Scientology starts off as an offshoot of the self-improvement movement with a book called Dianetics, which instructed readers on a series of exercises that would clear them of trauma and bad habits and make them superhuman.
One of the dominant subcultures of the early internet age, as I've said, was the pickup artist scene. And the inherent scamminess of a lot of this culture influenced the growth of the modern YouTube scam economy, as well as the ecosystem of far-right content creators who helped birth the Trump administration.
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