Andrew Tate’s War on the West’s Moral Order

Andrew Tate, who is allegedly reformed from his days of running online pornography platforms, has been promoted by some surprising figures. While credible claims of human trafficking are still pending, he has been lauded as an ‘influencer’ who can give advice about “real masculinity”. Moreover, that is how he presents himself to an audience of largely young men.

Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have lent their platforms to him, albeit differently—the former to talk about Tate as a masculine exemplar and the latter to denounce an allegedly unfair prosecution. In a recent tweet, this supposed repentant man who has turned away from his former ways (and thus deserves admittance into respectable society), wrote the following:

In so few words, this man whom thousands admire explained why his values are not in alignment with those of the West. However you wish to define the “ideal masculine”, the civilization that is most worth defending did not herald fornication or deadbeat dads, but families. It is certainly true that all of the West’s heroes were sinners, because they were human, but they were not admired for their sins, but their virtuousness. We saw men of greatness as those who were great leaders, inventors, and even warriors—not those who impregnated the most women, abandoned them, and left their children without fathers.

Tate holds a moral understanding more in alignment with the Muslim world, and in fact, he did announce his conversion to Islam in 2022. It’s a worldview that does not seek to protect the innocent and the vulnerable, nor does it promote the difficult task of growing in virtue or learning the calm restraint of a man in control of himself. Remember that to stay in a committed marriage and raise children takes far more work than self-aggrandizing and walking away from one’s duties. That’s the lie of Tate’s ethos: it pretends that those who take the easiest path are somehow better men. It pretends that those enslaved to their appetites are somehow conquerors, when in fact they are unable to conquer even themselves. Are those who take the noble (and indisputably difficult) step of adopting children somehow lesser? Only in the moral code of the vulgar barbarian.

Then we must analyze the outcome of this “conquest” that Tate lauds. Extrapolating from the individual to its broader application, we would have to ask: What is conquest for if the civilization that you inherit is morally bankrupt and unable to protect those you love? If a civilization took Tate as its exemplar, what could it achieve? What could it build? What would be its monuments? Would it be more admirable than a civilization striving to, say, secure peace, or lift the downtrodden, or glorify God? Tate’s civilization is that of the brute, grunting as it ruts. Tate’s world offers no transcendence, nothing beyond self. Even power, accomplished for its own sake, must surely be a bore once dominion was achieved. Let’s not forget that young Alexander wept when there were no more lands to conquer.

Tate’s attitudes are what we need a civilization to defend against—because no man who understood duty and responsibility would want that kind of psychopathy endangering those that he loves. It was men of the West who built a chivalrous society that would defend their daughters and open doors for their wives. That is what cultural commentators ought to be supporting, because that is a civilization worth being called such.

The principle of trading moral vacuousness for greater “conquest”, however that is defined, is not new. We can find a similar mindset behind the promotion of broad H1B (work) visa acceptance, for example. If importing hordes from Southeast Asia would cause us to better compete technologically, but at the cost of the nation’s soul, would that be a fair trade? Some high-profile figures have argued in favor, because the work ethic in those nations is better. Yet is there nothing to be said of culture? When we import people, we import cultures, faiths, and values. Most of those from Southeast Asia are not Christian and have a foreign culture. That matters because it can fundamentally shape our own cultural landscape.

At some point, we must ask what it is that we seek and why. Christendom was worth defending and lauding because she was rightly ordered and she elevated her citizens in recognition of their inherent dignity, rooted in their Creator. Political and cultural figures who pontificate loudly on these issues are often so ego-driven or numbers-obsessed (“the views!”) that they cannot see the ultimate result of the policies that they advocate. If we have a clear vision of the civilization that we want to live in, we can avoid those who threaten to bring chaos and disorder. Those who are enslaved to their appetites must find freedom for their own souls before they can guide civilization upward.