In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll re-introduce the American-British social media personalities, Tristan and Andrew Tate (@tatethetalisman and @cobratate).
They’re best-known for their social media grifts and allegations of human trafficking and rape.
1/22
The history of the Tate brothers was introduced thoroughly in my original Vatnik Soup thread, but since then so much has happened that this pathetic duo needs another review. The soup will go through a lot of the evidence and videos in which the Tates incriminate themselves.
2/22
The Tates became (relatively) rich through their webcam (pimping?) businesses and self-help courses targeted at young, desperate (incel?) men. At some point, they had up to 75 women working for them, and the brothers later admitted that the business was a “total scam”.
3/22
Later they launched several pyramid scheme-type platforms like “Hustler’s University”, “The Real World” and “War Room”. All of them were costly, required their users to work for Andrew, and offered very little substance. How do we know this? Lemme tell you.
4/22
In Nov 2024, the Tates’ “Real World” Discord clone was hacked and all the information leaked. The Tates stole the code for the server, along with its vulnerabilities, from another project called Revolt. Tech-savvy people realized this and breached and took over the server.
5/22
The hackers stole detailed information of over 320,000 emails, and contents of all public and private chats which were then given to DDoSecrets for anyone to review. According to the metrics, the site was earning the Tates around 5.6 million USD per month.
6/22
In Dec 2022, Romanian police arrested both Tate brothers and two women. All four were suspected of human trafficking, forming an organized crime group and one of them was suspected of rape. The brothers were formally charged in 2023, naming seven alleged victims.
7/22
In 2024 the case grew even bigger: a second indictment mentioned 35 alleged victims of trafficking, including one who was only 15 at the time.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the bros are being investigated in the UK for allegations of rape, human trafficking and tax evasion.
8/22
According to the documents, Andrew “repeatedly engaged in sexual intercourse and anal and oral sexual acts,” while “knowing she was 15 years old.” According to her, Andrew also beat her up with a belt and choked her – one time so hard that she fainted.
9/22
Because of these serious allegations, the Tates were put on house arrest and barred from leaving Romania. But in February 2025, they received assistance from a group of corrupt kleptocrats, as the Trump administration suddenly pressured Romania to lift these restrictions.
10/22
For quite some time, the Tates have been fully integrated into the MAGAsphere. They’re friends with Don Jr., Andrew has been interviewed by @TuckerCarlson – in turn promoted by Musk, of course, who has also interacted with him and promoted him on a regular basis.
11/22
It’s not actually known who pressured the Romanian officials to release the Tates, but we can always guess.
For example, “free speech platform” Rumble paid Andrew Tate over 9 million EUR annually. Peter Thiel, JD Vance and David Sacks have all invested in Rumble.
12/22
The reason why the billionaire broligarchs are aligning with the Tates could be related to their wealth and social media influence, especially among young men. 80% of British boys aged 16-17 have seen Andrew’s content, and 45% of British men 16–24 view him positively.
13/22
On 27 Feb 2025, Romania caved in to US pressure, allowing the Tates to flee to the US. Romanian prosecutors said they remain “under judicial supervision”. UK lawyer Matthew Jury,however, said that “any suggestion that the Tates will now face justice in Romania is fanciful.”
14/22
After landing in Florida, Andrew Tate told reporters he and his brother were “largely misunderstood,” insisting the accusations were just a conspiracy against them and that they did nothing wrong. He also declined to comment on whether they’d ever return to Romania.
15/22
But the thing about Andrew Tate is that, even though he always denies any wrongdoings, there’s tons of videos where he admits to them. There’s clips where he’s talking to a woman, ADMITTING that he beat her before. There’s also plenty of other evidence like testimonies.
16/22
Yet, MAGA Republicans champion him as a conservative freedom fighter promoting traditional values. After arriving in the US, he and his brother were “formally welcomed” by the Tampa Bay Young Republicans (@TBYR) and invited to speak at one of their events.
17/22
But not everyone welcomed the Tates with open arms – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stated, “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct.” Maybe the Tates thought they’d be more welcome in a state where @mattgaetz (and Jeffrey Epstein) resided.
18/22
And all these allegations are just the tip of the iceberg of the depravity of Andrew and Tristan Tate. They’ve also threatened to sue a victim of a Pakistani-rape-gang in the UK. And, as is tradition, they’ve also scammed people with their own crypto shitcoin, $DADDY.
19/22
The Tate brothers’ & their father’s allegiance to Putin & Russia were extensively covered in the previous soup. Tristan has been more vocal about the war in Ukraine, but otherwise he's quite unremarkable - he doesn't even have his own Wiki page.
To conclude, the Tates are conmen accused of serious crimes, including sexual acts with a minor.
Yet, somehow, they are being worshipped by most MAGA Republicans who deny their crimes on a regular basis. And now the brothers are fully integrated into the MAGAsphere.
21/22
In Finland, however, the big brother Andrew is best-known for his tendency to “culturally appropriate” Finnish sauna by sitting on the kid’s bench in the measly temperature of 50 ºC, all the while wearing his swimming trunks. And this guy calls himself the “ultimate alpha”.
22/22
The 2nd edition of “Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation” is officially out!
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
1/20
War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.
1/20
In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:
The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered… 1/5
…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse. 2/5
Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare. 3/5
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army. 1/8
Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries. 2/8
Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft. 3/8
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) @Olympics . It’s mostly known for organizing sporting events, and for being supposed to foster the Olympic ideal while actually submitting to dictators.
1/15
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 in Paris by Pierre de Coubertin with a noble goal: promote peace through sports. Politics out, sportsmanship in: sounds great in theory.
2/15
But in practice, the IOC has a long history of accommodating authoritarian regimes, always in the name of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “keeping sports separate from politics”, usually not in a particularly consistent or moral way.
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek.
1/20
This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda.
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre
Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened.