I thought I knew all I needed to about the self-styled “king of toxic masculinity”, Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer and reality TV personality who has built up a huge online following among disaffected men and boys. The Vice News journalist Matt Shea, whose documentary The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate is now available on BBC Three, proved me wrong. Shea was ahead of the story: he had already begun filming when Tate’s social media accounts were suspended in August 2022 over his misogyny (Elon Musk has since allowed him to return to Twitter, where he has over five million followers). In December Tate and his brother were arrested by Romanian police as part of an investigation into human trafficking and rape; Shea was already talking to women in the UK who have accused him of rape.
Tate is edgy but also appears to underestimate Shea, who with his foppish hair and neat button-ups seems like an easy mark for the influencer, who wears a gun in his waistband and his shirt open to reveal large tattoos and pecs as round and shiny as his bald pate. He tries to humiliate Shea by inviting him onto his podcast and taunting him like a playground bully, hoping to goad the journalist into singing for him. He takes Shea boxing and punches him in the face until his nose bleeds while telling him not to be “a pussy”. But Shea is dogged and not easily intimidated. He agrees to fight a professional cage fighter, part of a hazing ritual that Tate devises for members of “the War Room”, an expensive club he has set up for superfans. In interviews he calmly presses Tate even when the influencer tries to shout him down.
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