Getting close to Andrew Tate—and then on the wrong side of him—certainly makes the world a stranger place to navigate.
Filmmakers Matt Shea and Jamie Tahsin spent nearly three years investigating the alleged rapist and human trafficker, staying at his Romanian compound during his meteoric rise to fame in 2022. The trip culminated in the VICE documentary The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate about the misogynist figurehead and his ‘War Room’ membership network.
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The film also unearthed the first criminal allegations against Tate, featuring interviews with women who had known him during his time in Luton, England in the mid 2010s. They accused Tate of rape and violent abuse (allegations that Tate continues to deny). Two of the three women had worked for Tate in his then-burgeoning webcam sex business.
The trip to Romania culminated in Shea and Tahsin confronting Tate about his apparent use of ‘the Loverboy method’ in his recruitment of webcam workers—a strategy used by human traffickers to recruit women by feigning a romantic interest in them, seducing them with promises of a relationship or family.
In the documentary, Tate and his brother Tristan strongly denied the allegations, with Tate visibly losing his temper and Shea and Tahsin being forced to leave the Transylvanian hotel where the interview was being conducted to return to London.
In the years since, Tate and his fans have continued to harass the reporters both online and in the real world. Now, after the documentary, comes a book—the following is an excerpt from Clown World: Four Years Inside Andrew Tate’s Manosphere, written by Shea and Tahsin about their time with Tate and its aftermath.
This passage begins upon their immediate return to London.
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Over the following days, we worked harder than we ever had in our careers to get our film out as quickly as possible. It was released on 12 January 2023. Almost immediately afterwards, an onslaught of abuse and attempts to discredit us began on social media. Tate and his fans portrayed us as traitors. We were ‘snakes.’ They had let us into their own home, helped us to become better men and, in turn, we betrayed them with a hit-piece that was intentionally released while they were trapped in prison.
Usually, when famous people are accused of rape, the world shares in the victims’ fury. After we released our film featuring our first interview with Sally [one of the women claiming to have experienced abuse by Tate], she felt like the masses were taking Tate’s side. His fans were all over social media claiming it was an ‘attack by the Matrix.’ When an American, far-right ‘masculinity influencer’ named Sneako—who at the time had millions of followers—live-streamed himself watching that interview, he scoffed, “Yeah, women crying… but there is zero evidence. And why is she only coming out now?” At one point in the interview Sally says, “He used to strangle us as well.” Sneako questioned, “Okay, was it strangling or consensual choking during sex?” His fans echoed his disbelief in the chatroom, asserting she was a paid actor. “Drop a 1 in the chat if you’d rape Sally,” one said. “Don’t care if he smashed your dumb ass, whore,” wrote another. “This bitch needs to be hung,” said a third.
A right-wing ‘masculinity’ podcast called Fresh and Fit, whose hosts were long-time supporters of Andrew Tate, did an episode discussing our work. They filmed themselves leading a chant of “fuck VICE” at a party and released it to their followers. Sartorial Shooter [an ex-armed forces menswear influencer and Tate acolyte] appeared on the podcast in his new thawb and repeated exclamations of “Mashallah,” announcing to the world that he had followed his beloved leader in converting to Islam. He claimed that we had manipulated our documentary because our superiors demanded a hit-piece. (He also admitted to Matt in a phone call that the tattooed woman he had shown us was actually his wife—and she was not happy when she saw the documentary and found out what her husband had been up to.)
War Room general Dylan Madden released a viral TikTok video that portrayed Jamie as Matt’s sinister ‘handler.’ Matt had apparently been enjoying the experience of The Test [a three-day, $5000 residential program offered by Tate culminating in a cage-fight against a professional MMA fighter], until, all of a sudden, Jamie was seen ‘whispering in his ear’ to attack Tate.
Other videos went viral where supposed ‘experts’ claimed that the voice notes in which Tate had apparently discussed raping Amelia were ‘faked with AI.’ Amelia and Sally, who had given us filmed interviews, were still being accused of being paid actresses. A news website called Poptopic published a piece claiming that an inside source revealed to them that Sally [whose identity wasn’t disclosed in the film] was ‘played by’ the in-house VICE reporter Sophia Smith Galer.
“On the hugely popular Twitter Spaces show The Roundtable (given a plug by Elon Musk himself), nightly live discussions were held in which speakers attempted to discredit our work. Then, when VICE Media went bankrupt soon after the documentary’s release due to long-standing financial issues, many on Twitter believed Tate’s narrative that this was because our documentary was ‘debunked.’ On 2 May, a viral tweet about the bankruptcy read, ‘Vice News made headlines with their hit-piece against @cobratate, but the documentary was debunked upon its release.’ It was viewed 1.6 million times and retweeted by Jordan Peterson.
Then death threats began to appear in Matt’s inbox:
You fucking snake if I catch you in England I will strangle your ratty neck till your blue in the face you fucking 2 faced fucker.
Better hire bodyguards for yourself or else you will be found dead by July 2023 ☺ Better apologise for what misinformation you bastard scripted for Andrew Tate through Vice News or
Wait for a terrific brutal death you Ugly MotherFucker.
Hey Matt I recently seen your interview with Tate and I believe you made an effort to damage is look in the public eye because of this I would like to inform you that the day I find you I am going to put a knife so deep into your neck it comes out the other side I will be waiting out of the London vice office everyday looking for you stalking you I will find you and I will be there to witness your last breath.
There were about a hundred more of these. And as [YouTube who’s been critical of Andrew Tate] Daz Black’s agent had warned, they began contacting Matt’s bosses claiming to have ‘evidence’ he was a pedophile.
Soon Tate fans began to appear in Matt’s life offline too, almost every time he went out in public. At Caffè Nero, while he waited for his coffee . . . The caterer at an award ceremony for our film . . . The air steward on his flight . . . At least three Uber drivers . . . At Glastonbury Festival, on the way back to his tent, three official security guards surrounded Matt and accused him of ‘stitching Tate up.’ Some people just wanted to name-call, but most felt entitled to a debate. And they all had the exact same look and mannerisms—muscular, perfect posture, speaking in short, terse sentences as the War Room instructs, domineering body language and formal attire. It was as though an army of robots had been unleashed.
Every single one of these Tate fans believed the narrative they had been fed on Twitter: that our film had been debunked, our sources were fake, and Tate was totally innocent. Yet when Matt engaged them, it became clear that they had neither seen our film nor read our articles.
They had only seen the reactions to them from Tate’s supporters on social media—especially Twitter. As far as they were concerned, the film had ended our careers and made us the laughing stock of the world. On Elon Musk’s Twitter, we were losing the battle.
VICE Media Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2023 and exited bankruptcy in July 2023 following a sale to a consortium of former lenders.
Clown World: Four Years Inside Andrew Tate’s Manosphere is available now, published by Quercus.
Follow Jamie Tahsin and Matt Shea on X.
