The Troubling Adoration Of Andrew Tate

Much has already been said about the sudden fall from grace of supposed “alpha male” Andrew Tate, now in detention somewhere in Romania to the relief of all those who wished it had happened rather earlier, after he was very publicly given The Mother Of All Twitter Slapdowns by environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg. But maybe not enough about Tate’s fans.

Andrew Tate and another not-really-far-right-honestly pal

How the fall was precipitated can be put directly: Tate unwisely Tweeted at Ms Thunberg “Hello [Greta Thunberg] … I have 33 cars … My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo … My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s … This is just the start … Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions”.

Yawn, much? Ms Thunberg’s come-back contained the slapdown: “Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com". OUCH! Tate could manage only a spluttered “How dare you”? But he later released a video response with a pizza box in the foreground of shot.

And then Romania’s finest rozzers nicked the SOB. Rumours spread that his location had been given away by the pizza box may not have been true, but that did not stop Ms Thunberg issuing another slap: “this is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes”. Another OUCH!

Just to put the lid on it, the authorities in Romania successfully applied yesterday to remand Tate in custody for another 30 days. This from the BBC: “Tate was arrested alongside his brother Tristan on Thursday as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape, which they deny. Authorities suspect the pair, along with two Romanian men, of running ‘an organised crime group’”. Rape, eh? Which brings us to why he was there.

Tate was accused of harassment; soon afterwards he rocked up in Romania, tellingly claiming “I find it offensive that a police officer in England will stop me and refuse to take a bribe … I’ll tell you why; it's because he will sit there and go 'no, no, this is the law; law and order' and pretend that the law means something, and f*ck me over”. He finds upholding the law “offensive”.

And what's more, Ron ...

So he must be getting seriously offended now that he has discovered the Romanian cops are as interested as their British contemporaries in upholding the rule of law. And the 30-day detention means he stands accused of something serious. This would normally be his problem, and his alone, were it not for the way in which some of the UK media establishment have sided with him, or merely given him a platform to dispense his lack of wisdom.

Nothing showed in more stark focus the lack of investigative journalism deployed by our media class today than the adoration of Andrew Tate: not for them the initial caution, the questions about how he came about the wealth that funded the cars, the home in Romania, the private jet charters, and all the rest. No sirree, Andy just got the door opened for him.

Especially as the slapdown was administered by Greta Thunberg, a hate figure for any right-leaning UK media outlet, which means most of them. Not wanting the planet to burn is, for all those owners, editors and pundits, A Very Bad Thing Indeed. So bad that they will side with a self-confessed misogynist, someone who got binned off Big Brother when it was discovered that he had violently assaulted a woman. It was a Murdoch host leading the way.

TalkTV’s unfeasibly tedious breakfast show presenter Julia Hartley Brewer immediately sided with Tate, trilling “I'd choose Andrew Tate's life *every single time* over the life of a half-educated, doom-mongering eco-cultist. And the only car I own is a diesel Tiguan”. Sadly, there was more.

Pretentious? Who, moi?

“I've deleted my previous tweet that mentioned Greta's autism because - although I only referred to it because she states it in her own Twitter biog - people decided to take offence at a fact. Even though they had no problem with this woman calling a man ‘small dick’. Yawn”. Ms Hartley Dooda wants the world to know that she knows she’s offensive, but she’s not sorry.

And staying on the TalkTV theme, as recently as last October, Tate was interviewed by the host of the channel’s obscenely expensive flop The All-New Percy Moron Show. Only as the house fell in did Piers Morgan and his pals decide that sharing the video of the interview might not be such a wise move. The Murdoch empire and the far right, eh?

Those not convinced that Tate is part of the “far right” might usefully consider his closeness to Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson. Far right is what he is; our media class had no problem in giving him profile-raising platforms, or rush to his side when the going got tough.

Our media class and the far right. A troubling yet enduring relationship.

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