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Chapter 1: What makes Andrew Tate a controversial figure on the internet?
Andrew Tate has become one of the most influential and controversial figures on the internet. To his supporters, he's a champion of free speech and traditional masculinity. To his critics, he's a dangerous misogynist who has helped normalise extreme attitudes towards women.
A major new investigation in The New Yorker examines the world of Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, their online empire, the criminal allegations they face, and the extraordinary network of political, media and online influence that has grown around them.
The reporting also raises broader questions about the power of social media, the rise of the so-called manosphere, and the impact that these figures are having on boys and young men all around the world. I'm joined now by the journalist behind that investigation, Heidi Blake. Heidi, good morning and welcome.
Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.
First of all, what prompted your investigation?
Well, I was fascinated by the vast influence that the Tate brothers have been able to command over the past few years, but also by the case against them in Romania and also in the UK. You know, they are subject to very serious allegations of human trafficking and rape, both of them. and have been indicted in Romania on those charges.
But since the election of Donald Trump, have managed to get themselves freed from the bail measures that they were being held under in Romania and are now travelling freely around the world. Romanian prosecutors succumbed to pressure from the US and released them from their travel ban.
And since then, the brothers have been saying that they are totally innocent, that the case against them is a political smear campaign and that is all going to crumble and fall away and they will not face any consequences. And that that narrative was beginning to gain quite a lot of traction. And so I really wanted to get behind it and find out what was the evidence involved.
against the brothers, what was the case against them built on, and to really understand how they built the vast fortune that has allowed them to build this enormous following on social media. That's kind of how I got started.
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Chapter 2: What prompted Heidi Blake's investigation into the Tate brothers?
He describes himself as a shepherd leading the sheep. And he also also recruited a team of enforcers who worked for him and he told them to keep the farm animals on task. That was the way that he referred to the women that he recruited in this way.
Now, he was there at the very birth, I suppose, of web porn, where I suppose ordinary people could stream stuff from whether it's a basement, a bedroom, a hotel room, whatever it is, and basically sell it online for cash.
That's right. Yeah. At the time that he started out in 2014, webcam porn, which is now a multi-billion dollar industry, was really just getting started. And he viewed himself as a kind of pioneer. He figured out that this was a very low investment way to start making money. He considered starting a strip club or something like that, but the upfront investment was just too much.
Whereas with webcam porn, all you need is a webcam and a space in which to broadcast and a woman who is going to go on camera for you. And Andrew Tate, that's how he started. He put a girlfriend of his, who at the time was only 17 years old, on camera in 2014 and quickly started making huge amounts of money from her before.
performances and in his own telling, keeping all of the money that she made. It's actually illegal in the US and the UK and many countries to make sexual images of somebody under 18. But what Tate did was create a profile in which this woman was presented as being a Russian woman in her 20s. And she worked for him for many years.
And according to Tate, in private messages that I obtained, made him $2 million. But he said that she didn't get to see hardly any of that money. He just gave her pocket money for coffee and manicures and kept the rest and then went on to recruit dozens and dozens of other women who were exploited in a similar way.
People might find it hard to understand how these women actually continued to put up with it. I mean, they saw what happened to themselves. Then new arrivals came and more were added to, if you like, the string of performers he had on the web.
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Chapter 3: What are the serious allegations against Andrew and Tristan Tate?
Were there no rebellions?
There were some rebellions and it is hard, I think, from the outside to understand how women came to be so bamboozled by the tapes. But I think it was an education for me to read screeds and screeds of messages in which these women were gradually lured in. And you could see the way that they were constantly kept off balance with this kind of shifting technique of,
of warmth and affection and kindness and then cruelty and abuse. And this kind of constant shifting of modes was very confusing.
And many of these women had come from backgrounds where they had suffered abuse in the past, where they had come from poverty and suddenly were living in this world where Andrew Tate could shower them when he wanted to with great largesse and then at other times be very withholding and very cruel. And, you know, he was also very deliberate about the methods of controlling these women.
So once they entered his orbit, he would systematically isolate them from their friends, from their families. They would be banned from leaving the properties where he kept them unattended. So these women quickly became disorientated, isolated and kind of worn down by this constant bombardment. But there were some women who tried to get away and the brothers had techniques for dealing with them.
that one of the things that they consistently did was to hack into the social media accounts of anyone who tried to get away and post pornography to their regular friends and supporters. So outing them as sex workers. They would also make sure that they controlled all of the accounts that these women used. So there was no way for them to continue earning an income if they left.
Women were also threatened. with all sorts of repercussions if they tried to get away. And so for many women, it was, you know, it didn't feel possible to leave. But there certainly were some who left. And I spoke to women who'd spent years since then in therapy, recovering from the abuse they suffered during the years in which they worked for the Chaites.
Now, one American woman who was lured to Romania by Tristan Tate was instrumental in a raid on their little village, which resulted in the charges, their arrest. But I suppose that didn't stick.
Well, yes, there was a young woman from Miami who Tristan Tate had met and kind of romanced on a trip there himself. She arrived at the compound in April of 2022 and ostensibly thought she was going there to teach Tristan piano. She's a young musician. But when she got there, quickly came to believe that the women in the house where she was placed were being trafficked. She felt
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Chapter 4: How did the Tates build their online empire?
They've said that Tate is radicalizing young men in what police chiefs have described as a terrifying manner. And education leaders have described violent misogyny spreading through classrooms on what they call an epidemic scale. So this is very serious. There have been similar reports in North America, across Asia and in Australia and New Zealand, all around the world.
And I think that's why this story is really important, because this is not just about the abuses that the Tate brothers themselves have committed, but about their vast influence on very impressionable young men all around the world today.
And you report about how Hadley, that young American woman who blew the whistle on them and caused that raid in Bucharest, how she had the tables turned on her by a lawyer representing the Tates, who in turn had represented some of the insurrectionists of January the 6th. And Hadley ends up being persecuted effectively by that side.
That's right. Yeah. The Tates, after they were indicted in Romania, hired a very expensive team of lawyers, PR, PR advisors, political advisors, private detectives to go after this young woman who they really blame for the entire case against them. They sent private detectives and other influences to dig into her past and to try and find information that could be used to discredit her.
And they launched a very aggressive campaign against her through the Florida courts in which they and other people close to them have sued her, her parents, the family friend she texted. You have to bear in mind, all of this young woman, all this young woman has done is text her family and a friend to tell them that she felt that she was in danger.
Her family then alerted the embassy and the embassy then alerted the police. She's never spoken to the media. She's never said anything publicly against them. But on the basis that she simply spoke to law enforcement about them, they are suing her for defamation and members of her family as well.
While, you know, through a network of their affiliates, this information that their private detectives have dug up about her
um including very private information about about how she was sexually abused and raped as a teenager for example is being spread online by their followers um she's been forced into hiding she said her life has been made into a living nightmare um and yeah and so that's the situation she faces some people speaking to law enforcement meanwhile they are traveling freely around the world do you think they'll end up behind bars
I think it's very hard to say in the current political climate. You know, they are wanted in the UK for rape and human trafficking charges, 21 counts of rape and human trafficking against the two of them. And they face exploitation addition to the UK, but the Romanian courts have ruled that they can't be extradited until the Romanian case runs its course.
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