Andrew Tate, Supermasculine Menial

The crisis of manhood cannot be solved by a digital pimp.

The Right has waged a long-running debate about the crisis of masculinity. The basic critique is that the feminist capture of our institutions has created a pervasive cultural hostility toward men, undermining traditional models of masculinity and leaving young men adrift. Unfortunately, opportunists and charlatans have rushed in to fill the void.

Perhaps the most notable is Andrew Tate. Tate is a charismatic online guru who turned a kickboxing career into a sex-cam business into a masculinity-themed, social-media influencer grift. He is best known for provocative ideological statements against feminism, as well as a long-running legal fight in Romania, where he resides, against charges of rape, abuse, and sex trafficking. On the surface, the controversy surrounding Tate appears to pit religious traditionalists, who object to his exploitation of women, against a segment of disaffected young men, who admire his strength and willingness to confront feminist taboos.

Both approaches, however, miss the essence of Tate’s appeal. He is neither a traditional sinner nor a modern Nietzsche. He is instead a distinctly postmodern figure who has used his online persona to reduce masculinity to a simulacrum. His anti-feminism is like a version of the feminist critique turned into reactionary dogma. Tate is to masculinity what pornography is to sex: a degraded form of the original, superficially attractive but profoundly empty.

A cultural reference from the recent past is helpful in understanding this dynamic. Sixty years ago, the black nationalist Eldridge Cleaver, who had served time in prison for rape, described the archetype Tate exemplifies today. In his prison memoir Soul on Ice, Cleaver coined the phrase “supermasculine menial,” a role, he argued, that white society imposed on black men. In this telling, the black man is primitive, hypersexual, physically intimidating, and relegated to menial, sometimes criminal, employment. Cleaver’s memoir chronicled his attempt to escape out of this archetype and into that of a Nietzschean superman, a creator of his own values and sole master of his own destiny.

The irony is that both archetypes—the supermasculine menial and the Nietzschean superman—are ultimately fantasies, dead ends. In his own life, Cleaver went from criminal to black nationalist to drug addict to psychotic. Yet, his work, seen through the lens of literary interpretation, offers insight. Andrew Tate is living out the tension between the polar extremes Cleaver describes, with predictable consequences.

We can break down the component parts of the archetype. The first is Tate’s steroid-style physique, which provides the physical basis for his supermasculine persona. Whereas Tate faced other men in the kickboxing ring, in his post-athletic career he allegedly used his physical force to intimidate the women he employed as sex-cam operators. In other words, he used his strength not to fight wars or defend the weak—the traditional masculine virtues—but for brute domination. This is a signal not of confident masculinity but of insecure super-masculinity.

The second part is Tate’s cartoon materialism. His online persona centers around cars, houses, jets, cigars, and other ostentatious forms of material wealth. But these, again, are a simulacrum of real wealth. Tate has a teenager’s vision of what it means to be rich, spending his cash on rapidly depreciating assets rather than investing it in businesses, philanthropies, or other enterprises. Tate lives in a converted warehouse near an airport in Romania, with a sterile bachelor’s aesthetic that signals perpetual adolescence, not cultural refinement. His consumption patterns remind us that dollars are not inherently convertible to culture.

Third, for Tate, the highest form of sexuality is to preside over a digital harem. Like Cleaver, Tate operated as a pimp, albeit with a technological twist: he made his initial wealth operating a sex-cam business, having women perform sexual acts on the Internet and taking a cut of the proceeds. Despite claiming to represent Western values, he embraces a primitive, pre-Western family structure, telling his audience, “If all your children come from one woman, you are not a conqueror.” We should be able to see through the bravado: Tate is not a conquering Caesar but an online huckster selling young men on the idea that creating fatherless children is equivalent to sacking Gaul.

Fourth is Tate’s cynical use of religion. While he was under attack from feminists and other media figures, Tate very publicly converted to Islam. Again, we have reason to be skeptical that his conversion was genuine. During Ramadan, for example, he was seen in a casino gambling and drinking—forbidden in Islam. It seems more likely that his conversion was part of a ploy to use the religion as a refuge from feminism and a rationalization for his treatment of women. He resembles a character in Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, adopting the de-civilizing structure of Islam as a release from insecurity, anxiety, and social expectation.

Yet we should also recognize that Tate is a symptom, not the cause, of the disease afflicting men. Our society’s failure to provide appealing masculine archetypes created the vacuum that Tate filled. The solution is not only to point out the flaws in Tate’s proposals but also to articulate a superior vision: an integrated ideal, grounded in the traditions and spirit of the West. At its best, masculinity is not a nihilistic pursuit of the appetites but a constructive use of man’s virtues for something higher.

Strength should mean protecting women and children. Wealth should mean contributing to society and cultivating taste. Male sexuality should mean responsible fatherhood. And religion should mean spiritual depth. What Andrew Tate is selling online is just as empty as Eldridge Cleaver’s narcotics. It’s an empty masculinity that will enrich the pusher but leave the customer—in this case, young men—shriveled and broken.