Some people think of Tate as controlled opposition. He says a few true things about the importance of men being strong, for example, but he’s also said he has no problem with LGBTQ. He’s like a safety valve that allows some pressure to be released without threatening the liberal paradigm itself.
But really Tate isn’t opposition at all. The millions of young men who thought he stood for masculinity were duped (perhaps like Tate himself). He furthered the feminist agenda of fornication and contraception — the two essential components of the Sexual Revolution.
Tate’s message repeated the machismo of rap culture for the mainstream. Get paid, get laid: Bugattis and bitches.
And nothing is more damaging than this to the family and the male authority that comes with it. In an ironic twist like one of the punishments in Dante’s Inferno, “alpha” promiscuity emasculated the black man in the ghetto. The male rush from responsibility resulted in the welfare state supplanting fathers, creating a harem of single mothers.
The black family was thus the canary in the coal mine for modern man. “Free love” was the ultimate honeytrap, and men were seduced into doing the radicals’ work for them. And now they are frustrated by the very feminism they have themselves been entrenching.
But a young man in this situation is primed for recruitment by Islam. As Aquinas noted, Mohammed ‘seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men.’
Sexual liberation, as E. Michael Jones has stressed, is political control. And this is how Tate can be weaponised as a tool of the liberal regime. High-testosterone young men have been primed as weapons against the West by getting them to seek the carnal pleasures that Islam offers. This even works on women: they’ll always choose a bad boy over a soy boy, preferring an excess of masculinity to its insufficiency, hence the phenomenon of young Western girls running away to wed terrorist warlords.
Another reason for Islam’s appeal is that it offers what Belloc called an ‘oversimplified’ version Christianity. It’s actually a Christian heresy:
Mohammedanism… began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. Its vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was -- not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all) heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world -- on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel -- which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while.
He took over very few of those old pagan ideas which might have been native to him from his descent. On the contrary, he preached and insisted upon a whole group of ideas which were peculiar to the Catholic Church and distinguished it from the paganism which it had conquered in the Greek and Roman civilization. Thus the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine: the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence of God, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of all things by His power alone. The world of good spirits and angels and of evil spirits in rebellion against God was a part of the teaching, with a chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognized. Mohammed preached with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human side -- the immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life, coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death.
If anyone sets down those points that orthodox Catholicism has in common with Mohammedanism, and those points only, one might imagine if one went no further that there should have been no cause of quarrel. Mohammed would almost seem in this aspect to be a sort of missionary, preaching and spreading by the energy of his character the chief and fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church among those who had hitherto been degraded pagans of the Desert. (The Great Heresies, pp. 42-43)
Christians have more in common with Muslims than with any other world religion except Jews. All three worship the One True God. Unlike secular liberalism, Islam offers disaffected young men a world of good, evil, order, honour and — crucially — opposition to feminism.
If you’re a frustrated young man looking for a force opposed to feminism, Islam is appealing. How many men know that the Catholic Church teaches a wife must obey her husband in everything? That the husband is the head of the wife? Christianity is failing men because it’s failing to communicate its message about male authority clearly.
Islam also represents a big improvement on promiscuity because at least it promotes marriage. Tate has taken a step in the right direction in that respect. Multiple wives is better than pump and dump.
But Belloc wisely warned that Islam ‘hates all Paganism but hates the Catholic Church even more’. It’s often asked why liberalism loves Islam. And this is the answer. It naively believes it can use Islam like an attack dog against Christianity. But Islam is far more powerful than liberalism is. It was around long before liberalism and will be here long after. Not satisfied with being thrown treats, the attack dog will turn and go back up the leash because what it really wants is blood.
Liberalism doesn’t understand this, but Christianity does. Liberalism is a sideshow because, as Geoffrey Hill’s poem ‘Genesis’ memorably puts it, ‘no bloodless myth will hold’. Ultimately, it’s the same dog fight that’s been going on for centuries, but Christianity has proven itself game time and time again.
While Tate's conversion to Islam is disappointing, I think his impact is a net positive. The "Tate circus," like the "Trump circus," represents another odd step out of the hole we're in despite these clowns' imperfections. It would be nice if everyone who is inspired by Andrew Tate was able to understand his messaging with a critical mind. And no public persona ever offers the whole package. We have Christ for that. Sadly, Christians have turned Christianity into another float in the gay pride parade. I have often felt inspired, myself, to run from the church because of its sad state. I, too, can get jealous at the display of comradery and brotherhood that Moslems can display. Sadly, Christianity is in position to learn from Islam in this regard.
I wish every Tate fan had your words to read, Knowland. And I look forward to reading more from you on how we move forward with a Christian resurrection of masculinity. Thank you for this piece of the puzzle unfolding. It gave light to a few of my own blind spots.
I would like to understand the quote from Geoffrey Hill “No bloodless myth will hold”. While seeking to understand, I came across this excellent article in First Things https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/the-cross-and-the-machine