World-champion kick boxer. Pimp.
Mafia-associated
criminal. It's all true.
Few people have become as popular,
influential and seemingly wealthy
in such a short space of time
as the influencer Andrew Tate.
Women are absolutely happy
serving a man they respect.
They're far more happy
with that than they are working
some f*cking career.
In December 2022, Tate
was arrested in Romania,
accused of r*pe and of grooming
women into working for him
as online sex workers.
The world is now focused
on his upcoming trial.
But the one thing
no-one has figured out
is how a failed
reality TV contestant
became one of the most
famous alleged criminals
in the world.
JOURNALISTS CLAMOUR
Surely he didn't do it alone.
For two years, I've been
investigating his secretive society,
The w*r Room.
The w*r Room is a whirlpool.
Once you're in, you're
in, and it's hard to get out.
Speaking to women who
say they were targeted
by this shadowy organisation...
As soon as I walked in the
door, he, like, pushed me
to my knees and, like, smacked
me really hard across the face.
..and whistle-blowers
who are now ready to reveal
what's really going on.
Let's not kid
ourselves. This is a cult.
Who's in charge?
Of The w*r Room?
Could someone else be
behind the cult of Andrew Tate?
There he is, there
he is. He's right there.
I just saw him come out.
Dude, just go. Just go.
I want to ask you a
couple of questions.
Fourth floor.
Doors opening.
So, Tate's just
released a new video,
and based on the influx of Andrew
Tate fans in my social media,
I'm guessing he mentions
me. So, let's take a look.
You can see it's homeless Matt
Shea, who follows us around the world,
wearing the same
clothes every single time.
The same jacket. Yeah.
And it says DNG on the front.
This is so weird.
Now I know you're thinking
this explains what a DNG is -
disgraced news gatherer,
deluded narrative generator,
discredited news guardian,
dork, nerd, geek. DNG.
The DNG, Matt Shea.
He's been trolling me ever
since last year, when I interviewed
women who say he
sexually assaulted them.
The reporting sparked
a backlash against Tate
that continues to this day.
His arms fell off anyway.
Piss off with your documenting.
"We'll do another documentary!"
Nobody cares, Matt!
He has no hands, and I
think his arms falling off
has just told the whole world...
He has no hands. No hands.
VOICE-OVER: Tate
wasn't always like this.
He was much more civil to
me when I met him previously.
Oh, my best friends.
Hello, hello.
Great to meet you, man. Good
to see you. This place is giant.
Welcome to Emergency
Meeting, Episode 13.
We have a special
guest, Matt Shea,
who is internationally
renowned and respected.
When I first met Tate,
he was attracting attention
for being an overnight
success on TikTok.
In the space of a month during
lockdown, he amassed billions
of views and became one of
the most-searched
influencers in the world.
I perfected this in pimp
school, when I got my PhD.
It's bang out the
machete, boom in her face,
then grip her up by the
neck. "Shut up, b*tch!"
His messaging at this stage was
misogynistic, but many thought
it was an act rather than evidence
of something genuinely criminal.
He successfully monetized his
following into millions of pounds
by selling courses teaching boys
and men how to become like him,
surrounded by fast
cars and women.
At one end of the scale, for
39 a month, you could join
his Hustlers University,
which promised a path
to making money online.
Above this were bespoke
courses on topics like chess, 197,
developing an iron mind, 547,
and right at the top, his
highest-valued product,
membership to Andrew
Tate's w*r Room.
I had a school which
primarily taught people
how to make money online.
OK. The reason I had that school
was so that everybody
could afford The w*r Room.
The w*r Room is a network I
have, which is a level above HU.
Everything I've talked
about with brotherhood
and people you can
trust and capable people,
that's what The w*r Room is.
Join The w*r Room and
you'll learn and there'll be a...
There's a spiritual
journey involved as well.
So, The w*r Room is kind
of like the Illuminati but cooler.
For any young man or any man
who's serious about his journey
or serious about himself, it's the
most important place you can be.
You're going to learn
absolutely everything
about the realities of Earth.
Tate says The w*r Room
is a network of powerful men
and those who want
to learn from them.
They say it promotes brotherhood
and is on a mission to reframe
traditional masculinity
in a positive way.
You can currently join for $8,000
a year, which gets you access
to a Telegram group and the option
to spend even more money by buying
exclusive courses and
attending events around the world.
The w*r Room is led by a
group of so-called generals.
The most famous
are his brother Tristan,
Sartorial sh**ter, his head
of security and operations,
Jonathan, The Money Pilot,
and Iggy Semmelweis, the
mysterious self-proclaimed wizard.
Rumours were circulating about
Tate's behaviour towards women,
and with The w*r Room
shrouded in secrecy, I couldn't help
but wonder what was
really going on inside.
What were these generals
teaching the men who joined?
What did they get
for their money?
So I went inside the organisation,
even participating in an initiation
ritual that involved a cage fight
with a professional MMA fighter.
But every time I tried to find
out what was really going on,
a w*r Room general would
stop us from speaking to people.
We've been told that we're
not allowed to talk to anyone.
So we can't speak to anyone? OK.
Though Tate and his generals
tried their best to keep me out,
I felt something more was happening
when, through a hotel window,
I saw a group of men
photographing naked women.
NEWSREADER: The
online influencer Andrew Tate
has been detained
in Romania as part of
a human trafficking
and r*pe investigation.
Police found g*ns,
knives and wads of cash.
Mr Tate was arrested,
as was his brother, Tristan.
On the 29th of December, 2022,
Tate was arrested by
Romanian authorities,
accused of manipulating
women into webcam sex work.
It's alleged that he
used the loverboy method
as part of his
recruitment process.
This is a type of grooming in
which a person presents themselves
as romantically interested
in someone, promising them
a relationship, but with the sole
purpose of manipulating them
into sex work.
The authorities are focusing
their investigation on Andrew Tate
and his brother. But
what I'm interested in
is what's going on at the
top level of his organisation.
What is happening
inside The w*r Room?
To find out, I've enlisted the help of
someone who says he can show me
what the organisation's
real purpose is.
So, as well as hundreds of
thousands of Andrew Tate fans,
one of the things that's happening
with the internet and Andrew Tate
is the rise of these
kind of internet sleuths
who are just obsessed with
investigating Andrew Tate.
But the most prolific one by far
is a man who goes by the
name of Crabcrawler on Twitter,
and he has access, he says,
to the internal chat logs of
Andrew Tate's w*r Room.
So, we've come to
Cleveland to pay him a visit.
Hey there, Matt.
Nick. Hello.
Good to meet you in real life.
Yeah.
Beautiful day in Cleveland
to talk about a serious subject.
Crabcrawler developed a
platform as a hard-right journalist
and blogger, where he
first encountered Tate,
then a rising star of the
right who was going by
his former kick
boxing title, CobraTate.
So, do you consider yourself
part of the kind of right wing?
Not any more.
So, this has actually changed
your kind of political views,
this whole experience?
It corrected me back
towards the centre again.
What really rattled me the
most was the silence from
some right-wing figures that really
should have spoken up about this,
and had their
horse in this race.
Crabcrawler claims he's
now a reformed character,
and recently was
handed a treasure trove -
12,000 pages of
encrypted messages
sent by hundreds of w*r Room
members over the course of two years.
Now that I have these chat logs,
these crazy, mind-blowing chat logs,
I can see how complex this
situation really is beyond the surface.
So, what is The w*r Room?
Getting into The w*r Room means
you have to buy Andrew Tate's courses.
You're basically brought into
this school to learn to become
like Andrew Tate, and that includes
the PhD course of how he lures women
into becoming cam girls.
The online course that crabcrawler
is referring to is called the PhD,
or Pimping Hoes Degree.
It has been removed from Tate's
website, but is a required course
to join the elites
in The w*r Room,
costing an additional 337.
The PhD is taught by
Andrew Tate himself,
and in private,
behind a paywall,
he says it teaches men a
method for seducing women
into a relationship and then
gradually manipulating them
into working for you
in online sex work.
The PhD course is
my recruitment system.
I don't mention webcam
until after I've had
sex with the girl.
You have to f*ck them
and they have to love you.
It's...It's essential
to the business.
The first thing that's clear
from looking at these encrypted
w*r Room communications
is that Tate and the generals
are pushing the PhD
course to members.
Andrew Tate says you have
to add the PhD programme
to convert girls to work.
"PhD is essential.
"Essential. Cam
course alone won't do it."
It's difficult to know when
members are simply bragging,
but these encrypted messages show
the men in The w*r Room feeding back
to Tate and the generals how
they were putting into action
the teachings from
the PhD course.
They call this showing receipts.
Men also brag about their control
over women by sharing examples
of the punishments
they've meted out on them.
They're eager to show
off to other members
when their financial
exploitation of women
has produced lucrative results.
It's a PhD receipt.
That's the new whip.
That's the whip that
my girl bought for me,
registered in my name.
All possible because of the PhD.
So crabcrawler has just
handed us almost 12,000 pages
of internal w*r
Room Telegram chats.
It's going to take a while to go
through, but this is The w*r Room
members talking unfiltered,
when they don't think
anyone's listening in.
And from these conversations,
it seems pretty clear
that The w*r Room is about a lot
more than just positive masculinity.
After verifying the authenticity
of these messages by speaking
to The w*r Room insider who
leaked them to Crabcrawler,
we begin to go
through them in detail,
and start to notice something.
The person who appears to push
the PhD course most frequently
to members is The
w*r Room general
and self-proclaimed wizard
called Iggy Semmelweis.
From his messages,
manipulating women into sex work
seems central to The
w*r Room's agenda.
It's well known that Tate
himself is under investigation
for using the loverboy method
to coerce women into sex work.
But the evidence suggests
that it isn't just Tate
allegedly using this method.
The w*r Room generals are
actively teaching it to members,
making this potentially
much wider than we thought.
NEWSREADER: A court
in Romania has agreed
to allow the controversial social
media influencer Andrew Tate
to leave prison and
move into house arrest.
On March 31, the Tate brothers
win a court appeal to be released
under house arrest while
the authorities continue
their investigation.
This means we may have a
chance to ask him if he is the leader
of a global grooming
organisation.
Freedom, at last.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
LINE RINGS
Andrew. Hey.
Yeah, that's what I... That's
how I like to think of myself.
Look, the main reason I'm
calling is, I wanted to see
whether you were up for
doing another interview.
Because we have a history,
and there are still unanswered
questions that I want to put to you.
But because of our history...
I-I'll check with my superiors
whether I can send you
a box of chocolates.
OK. One quick thing.
CALL DISCONNECTS OK.
I think he thinks he's even more
the messiah than he was before.
He said he was the most
relevant person in the world.
And then there's this
whole power game
of having to bring him
a box of chocolates.
So bizarre.
Now I need to find out if I legally
can bring a box of chocolates
or whether that's
considered bribery.
Tate's trolling of me always
ramps up when he's under threat.
I'm worried he's found out we're
investigating The w*r Room.
TATE LAUGHS You see?
Isn't the world beautiful?
Vice do a hit piece on Tate.
Tate goes to jail.
God releases me.
Matt BBC Whoever,
Matrix agent number 399,
begs for another interview.
It's kind of
like...I never lose.
I really never thought I would
meet this man again in my life.
Hey, how's it going?
Hi.
Is Andrew coming out to meet us?
Erm...
Yeah. Who are you?
Matt, from the BBC.
All right, I'm going
to let him know.
OK, great. Thank you. Thanks.
I guarantee he's going to film it
and he's going to put it on Twitter.
Good morning.
Andrew, you want breakfast?
Yeah, I'll have
breakfast, cos I've got
a very important
interview today.
A very important interview today
with a very renowned, esteemed,
well-known journalist
called Matt Shea.
He is a dork,
a nerd and a geek. DNG.
It's been now 15 minutes.
Where is he? There
he is. There he is, look.
WHINES: "Please, can I
have another interview?
"Please?!"
THEY LAUGH
Geek!
Geek! What a dork!
Trolling the press is Tate's
key tactic for fighting back
against what he and his
fans see as "The Matrix" -
a global conspiracy
that aims to silence him.
His fans buy into this, sending
me scores of death threats, ranging
from, I'm going to wait outside
your office and slit your throat,
to, "there are individuals"
who "will dismember you
"in front of your parents".
Why is he here?
To do an interview.
About who? About the most
famous man in the world,
the most influential man in
the world, who owns the culture.
The person who's going
to save planet Earth. Me.
He's still there.
HE LAUGHS
Look at him standing there!
Look at him...
LAUGHTER
Woo!
Going to be great.
The DNG man.
This is my interview. This
is all I have to say to him.
THEY LAUGH
Woo!
OK. So, I spoke with Andrew.
Yeah. And you either give him the
chocolate and you have an interview,
or you don't, and
you don't have.
So, where is the chocolate?
Where is he? He's
inside. OK, cool.
Well, yeah, if he... You have
to give him the chocolate first.
No, I'm not going to
give you the chocolate.
If he comes out,
I'll give it to him.
You're either going to
give me the chocolate,
I'm going to give him the chocolate,
you'll have an interview. If not...
This is getting
quite silly, though.
Andrew's being accused of
some very serious crimes. Yep.
He should take this seriously.
So, are you going to be
giving me the chocolate?
No, I told you I would give
it to him when he comes out.
And I told you that I
need the chocolate now.
You must realise
how silly this looks.
OK. See you.
You know the worst thing?
I don't feel sorry for him 1%.
Neither should anyone else.
These are the
worst type of people.
Yes, Matt. Hi, Andrew.
No, I don't want to
do a quick interview.
I want to do an in-depth,
detailed interview.
My first interview
under house arrest is
going to be world-breaking.
It's going to be massive, perhaps
the biggest internet interview
of the year, perhaps
of the decade.
I own the culture and
I want to do it properly.
I want to give you the chance
to give your side of the story.
That's why I'm here.
Oh, you're giving ME a
chance. You're such a nice guy.
Because, listen, these accusations
are coming out regardless.
Please, Matthew, you're
not giving me a chance.
I'm giving you a chance. I've
given you a very fair parameter.
It's a parameter that you can
either adhere to or you can go home
and fly home, economy, on
Wizz Air. I don't give a f*ck.
It's up to you. Stop calling me.
You know the
parameter. You decide.
So... So, that's your
response to the accusations?
CALL DISCONNECTS Mm. OK.
With Tate refusing to speak
to us, to get any answers
about whether The w*r Room uses
the loverboy method to groom women
they want to recruit into
webcam, we'll need to speak
to those women themselves.
Our investigation has
found that, as of August 2022,
there were 434 members
of The w*r Room
all around the world.
We have identified 45 potential
victims who are mentioned
in Crabcrawler's chat logs.
Though with limited information,
the true number is
likely much higher.
Two of these women have
agreed to meet with us -
one in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
and one on the
west coast of the US.
To protect this woman's identity,
she's going by the alias Amanda.
Hi. Hi, Amanda. How's it going?
Good. How are you? Good
to meet you. Nice to meet you.
Thanks for letting us in.
The man Amanda claims
groomed her into online sex work
is one of The w*r Room generals,
Jonathan Bowe, AKA The Money Pilot -
because he's a retired
US Air Force pilot
and currently works for Delta.
I had been chatting with
this guy that I met on Tinder,
and we had been talking
for, like, a couple months
about, like, wanting to meet.
You know, I was 21
and, you know, I wasn't
making any money.
I was young and in a
very vulnerable position.
I didn't feel like I,
myself, had a lot to offer,
so this, like, older guy kind of
being into me was attractive.
And we met and we,
like, went out on a date.
I wouldn't really say
it was much of a date.
He, like, picked me up and
we went to, like, a hotel room
and slept together.
And the next morning,
he sent me a text.
He asked me if I was interested
in working with him on webcam.
I kind of knew of
webcam, but not really.
And I instantly was like, no.
Like, I don't want to do it.
I have no interest in this.
Up until that first
mention of webcam,
he had portrayed himself as someone
who was romantically interested
in you? Absolutely. Yeah.
And in your mind, this
was a date, a relationship?
Yeah, it was.
And I continued seeing this
guy. Like, we chatted all the time
and he was really sweet and
just kind of like a nice person
to have in my life.
And if I would complain
about anything in my life,
he'd be like, "Well, I
have a solution for you."
Thousands of miles
away, in Buenos Aires,
a woman we are calling
Maria has a similar story.
She met the man who she says
groomed her when she was 20.
I think at that time in my
life I just wanted, like, security
and someone to be there
for me. And here was this guy.
And I had some
things happen in my life.
Like, I lost my
job and I was like,
OK, I think I might be
interested in, like, webcamming.
And do you realise now that
that was his intention all along?
Both of these women's alleged
groomers used the same method
to gradually manipulate
them into webcam.
It all began with the same
question that Tate had asked me.
It's important. I'm telling you,
it's a very important
element, that control,
because once the money starts
pouring in, the girls will be like,
"Well, what the f*ck do I need
this dude for?" And they will leave
if you don't have
every aspect of control.
I felt like I had no
control over my life.
He has control of everything,
so is it, like, worth it to leave?
There is no such thing
as the perfect woman.
If you want a woman who's
perfect for you, you must
build her to be perfect for you.
He would be like, "I
have a mission for you."
The mission for today is this.
The mission for tomorrow is this.
He'd ask me to, like,
clean his apartment.
That kind of humbling
bullshit, that's what you want.
That's what you want.
You just have to be
like, "OK, I need a coffee.
"Go make me a coffee."
When I would do well,
I was, like, rewarded.
Women want attention.
You're going to reward them
for their good work with attention.
Easiest way to give a girl
attention is to f*ck them.
Sex was my reward.
He would, like, whisper
things about money into my ear.
If you f*cked her - good.
Sit down with her and say,
"Look, we're going to
get f*cking rich together."
The way he approached me
with beginning webcam was...
"You make a ton of money,"
like, "we'll do this together."
You could not do a business
relationship with a female.
Doesn't work. That's
when the pimping starts.
I'd keep 80% of the money they
made. So, they basically worked for free.
They worked for my
love and attention.
I was giving 80% away.
In total like $95,000.
If I wasn't doing well, things
would become more violent.
The woman must learn that her
man is f*cking an iron mountain,
and the easiest path is to obey.
Any other kind of resistance
simply doesn't work.
There was a night that
I had gone over there,
and as soon as I walked in the
door, he, like, pushed me to my knees
and, like, smacked me
really hard across the face.
He would, like,
bruise me pretty badly,
kind of marking his territory.
And that's what I teach
in my courses. Yeah,
getting the girl and f*cking the
girl is the first 10% of the game.
Having a girl tattoo your
name on her is the other 90%.
He wanted me to tattoo
his name on me.
The reason I decided to webcam
was because I liked this guy
and I had developed
a bit of trust for him.
We've now heard some first-hand
accounts of what The w*r Room
is really up to, and it
appears that this whole thing
is way bigger than just Tate.
It's not just that these women
were allegedly groomed
into online sex work,
it's that the method used to
groom them, allegedly, is so strange
and so specific that it's clearly
something that's been taught
to these members.
And if you look at the
chatroom messages,
there's one w*r Room member
who is constantly instructing others
on how to use this
method and its details,
and that's the spiritual
leader, Iggy Semmelweis.
When I was initiated into
The w*r Room, Iggy was there.
He calls himself the Master
of Spells and Shadows
and seems to play the role of
The w*r Room's spiritual leader.
But he has stayed
out of the public eye.
The chat logs show
us how integral Iggy is
to the operation
of The w*r Room.
He's the one always
talking about missions
and Pavlovian conditioning,
which is the method
you use to train dogs.
He also talks about isolating women
from their entire support network
and emotionally manipulating
them into getting tattoos
of w*r Room members'
initials on their bodies,
and ultimately into sex work.
He talks about casting spells
and anchoring women's orgasms
to the idea of money.
I mean, this goes way
beyond the video courses.
I mean, no-one knows what's
really going on inside The w*r Room.
But with all this talk of
spells and mysticism,
it's clearly a lot
weirder than I thought.
And the internal messages
can only tell us so much.
But speaking to someone
on the inside is very difficult
because they have
this code of silence.
However, we've recently managed
to speak to someone who claims
to have previously been the
head of sales and marketing
of The w*r Room.
He's agreed to meet.
Hey, Matt. Good
to meet you, buddy.
Thanks for coming
all the way out.
Eli spent two years as a member
of The w*r Room, working closely
with Tate, but recently left
after clashing with its leadership.
So, what first appealed to
you about The w*r Room?
I had never really
consumed any manosphere,
any, like, red-pill stuff
online, other than Tate.
Really, he was the first person
that I came across, and I watched
all of his videos, and I joined
The w*r Room in September 2020.
I was one of those vulnerable
men that fell to the marketing,
and I helped propagate that
with my sales and marketing efforts
on his team, right?
So, how did you
help propagate that?
People who would
sell The w*r Room,
we played into the insecurities of
men, meaning that when you saw
Tate with a
Bugatti, for example,
or you saw Tate as a four-time
kick boxing world champion,
he made you believe that that was
the ideal that you needed to become
in order to get
women in your life.
When you talk about women,
are you talking about just sleeping
with women or establishing
a relationship...? No, no, no.
Absolutely not.
The w*r Room is all about
you getting women that serve you
in your life. That benefit...
What do you mean, serve you?
So the w*r Room has a
methodology called the PhD,
the pimpin' hoes degree - although
it was removed from our website
and although it's no
longer officially called that -
which is, find a woman
that's attracted to you,
and you obviously
sleep with her.
And, eventually, you put her
through a sort of Pavlovian conditioning
where, for her to
get your attention,
she has to complete tasks,
then bigger tasks and
bigger tasks. Then, eventually,
her whole world becomes you
and she has nothing
else except you.
And she completely
serves you...completely.
Quote, unquote, you
could call it a "sl*ve".
She has to do
more things for you,
whether it's, you
know, wash the dishes,
do errands for you, or
eventually do OnlyFans webcam,
which was encouraged
inside of The w*r Room.
A lot of people might say
that to teach men to coerce
and manipulate women,
to use Pavlovian
conditioning, like you said,
into working in the sex trade
is immoral and wrong.
I would never do it personally.
I've never done it personally.
But that was a big part of
what The w*r Room did.
It was.
Do you regret that
you played a part in it?
I don't regret it.
Why would I feel guilty of
something that I had no control over?
Well, you were part of
the marketing team, right?
Yeah, absolutely. But during
that time, I was brainwashed.
All your friends are
inside The w*r Room.
All of your connections
are inside the w*r Room.
All of your knowledge you consume
every day is inside of The w*r Room
and they actively encourage you
to cut off the surroundings
in your real life.
And you start
cutting off friends.
You cut off, you know,
old co-workers and all...
Do they encourage
that? They encourage it.
And, actually, let me
tell you a very scary thing.
The... One of the members inside
The w*r Room, Iggy, Shi Yan Hui -
he goes under a
few different names -
tells you that your new
brothers inside of The w*r Room
are your new life.
Everyone else before that,
it doesn't matter.
We have here the truth of life.
And if you want to follow us,
you have to, quote, unquote,
"k*ll your parents symbolically,
because they may not agree
"with the things that
you are learning here,
"but it will impede you from moving
forward inside of our organisation
"if you do not
k*ll your parents."
And I thought that
was a very scary thing.
But, at the moment, I actually
believed it, believe it or not.
I am so brainwashed.
The w*r Room, in the events,
they literally
describe it as a cult.
Shi Yan Hui, he basically
said, "Let's not kid ourselves.
"This is a cult."
Who's in charge?
Of The w*r Room?
Iggy's at the top, yeah.
When you spoke to him,
he definitely had an agenda.
He definitely influenced you in ways
that were not of your own thinking.
How do you mean?
He literally would tell me that,
"I went inside of your brain
and I rearranged things.
"I went in the attic and I started
moving the furniture around,"
is how he would describe it.
So he was very good at
"reprogramming brains".
And what's his agenda?
I couldn't really tell you exactly
what the agenda would be,
other than, erm, again,
take over the world, I guess.
It's very, very
grand aspirations.
So, according to Eli, The
w*r Room is a cult that,
while not all members will act on
this, teaches men to groom women
and is run by a mysterious
man named Iggy Semmelweis.
This is the w*r
Room of Andrew Tate.
And Andrew Tate is the secret
weapon Iggy uses to market that cult.
It works like this.
Tate has millions of followers
on Twitter and other
social media platforms.
He uses that following to
market his app, The Real World.
200,000 of these
followers filter into the app,
where they are then sold courses
pushing them to The w*r Room.
This final tier consists of hundreds
of Tate's most ardent followers,
but once they're in,
they find not just Tate,
but Iggy Semmelweis
lying in wait.
So who is he?
Welcome, my brothers,
to the Iron Shadows.
It turns out his real
name is Miles Sonkin.
He was born in Chicago in 1961.
His mother was a TV psychic
and he appeared in high
school theatre productions.
He later studied hypnosis and
neurolinguistic programming,
a method outlined in
books like Frogs Into Princes
and The Structure Of Magic,
based on the unverified belief
that you can influence
the way a person will act
using only your choice of
words and tone of speech.
Iggy Semmelweis
is not his first alias.
In the '90s, he lived in
Japan as Douglas Hall,
the self-proclaimed greatest
pick-up artist in the world.
He sold courses teaching Western
men to seduce Japanese women.
He appears to have
met Tate around 2018.
Soon after, Tate starts
selling his own courses.
And in 2019, The w*r
Room is established.
In The w*r Room's
chat logs from 2019,
Iggy greets every new member.
He sends them a document
called The Survival Scrolls,
which appears to be a manifesto
outlining The w*r Room's agenda.
"Please read the following books
in the exact order they are listed,
"they build upon each other.
"The Predatory Female.
"How To Dump Your Wife.
"Pimpology, The 48
Laws Of The Game.
"They train you in setting up
the female sexual sl*very frames.
"Gs are men of purpose,
men of will and men of power
"that The w*r Room builds.
"All women are merely
dragons chasing them.
"Gs understand this reality
and use their power of purpose
"to bend the
dragons to their will
"and get the dragons giving
over their hoards of treasure
"while never letting the
dragons catch them."
It's not just about
sexual exploitation.
This is about financially
exploiting women.
It's about turning them into
sl*ves that you can profit from.
And not just through webcam -
through a number of means, it seems.
"Seek out women with
their own businesses.
"Seek out women
with family money.
"Seek out women who are
willing to give you their pay cheque
"to use as you see fit."
See, the crazy thing is, you
could be a woman right now
who thinks you're in a
relationship with a man,
but that man is actually a
member of The w*r Room
and he is using a
guide to manipulate you
into giving him money.
Armed with his real name,
we've managed to speak to
a family connection of Iggy.
MAN:
The Maharishi's leader
believed he was directly
spoken to by the gods,
and former members have
since claimed it was a cult.
MAN ON PHONE:
The Bhagwan, also
known as Rajneesh,
was another Indian-based
meditation cult
featured in the Netflix
series Wild Wild Country.
Its leader faced numerous
criminal allegations,
including the sexual
abuse of his followers.
So Iggy was in two
alleged cults in the '80s
and is now using the
image of Andrew Tate
to create a cult of his own.
Everything we find out
about this man is so surreal.
And it gets even weirder.
Iggy frequently mentions a fantasy
novel called The Scarlet Citadel,
in which an evil wizard who
looks strangely similar to him
wears a ring featuring
a snake's head
of the same kind worn by the
senior members of The w*r Room,
including the ones who recruited
Amanda and Maria.
The wizard trades in girl sl*ves
and is the real power behind the
throne of the Cobra King in Koth.
So while the authorities
and the world's media
are looking at the Tate brothers
in Romania, this wizard man,
who appears to have
created the cult of Andrew Tate
and instructed its members how
to groom women, is walking free.
There's only one
thing left to do -
find Iggy.
So we've just found an
audio file in the chat logs
that appears to have Iggy
addressing a w*r Room event.
So we're going
to give it a listen.
It seems like Iggy is in this for
something bigger than money or fame.
Iggy clearly has a plan
for his w*r Room members,
a plan that involves using them
to execute his vision of the world
in which women are subjugated
into sex sl*ves and financially abused.
But there's one group who
are trying to thwart this vision...
..the Gamma Secret Kings.
The Gamma Secret
Kings are a group of men
who became disenchanted
with the online world of
masculinity influencers
and now devote their time to
exposing what they see as scammers,
grifters and false prophets
exploiting male insecurity
for their own ends.
So we've managed to get in
touch with a man called E Scorpio.
He's one of the
Gamma Secret Kings,
and we're going
to give him a call.
PHONE CHIMES
Hello?
Hey. Hello, Mr Shea. All right.
What is your take on the
grand scheme of Iggy, then?
Iggy is not...
He's not an appealing
man at all, in my opinion,
whereas Tate, you have
Tate, who is a, you know,
a man who is at the peak
of his physical prowess.
He's a, you know, an
attractive-looking man.
So why not have
that as your honey
to lure in these men
that want to have, that want
to be that image themselves?
They don't want to be like Iggy.
They want to be like Tate.
So would you say that Iggy's
goals are ultimately ideological?
I would say yes.
I believe there is
a sense of desiring
to sow some kind of political
chaos with The w*r Room.
That there are these generals in
the culture w*r who are very angry.
They're very...
They are frustrated
with society,
and they are very receptive to
this idea of, you can own women.
Are these men true
believers in the political sense?
I would say yes.
As if this investigation
wasn't strange enough already,
we're now on our
way to Koreatown, LA,
to stake out the apartment
of a self-proclaimed wizard
who is building a cult of a*usive
and manipulative right-wing warriors
who are somehow meant
to take over the world.
OK, this is Iggy's
road right now.
INDICATOR TICKS
OK, It doesn't look...
..like any of the houses
here are expensive.
For the kind of grandmaster
priest of The w*r Room,
you'd expect it to
be a little fancier.
Where?
I'm kind of nervous
cos, you know,
what if we actually do find him?
What is his
reaction going to be?
Will he cast a spell on us?
Right here, yeah?
Is this good, right here?
Let me go and have a look.
We're just trying to check if...
..the apartment number
we have for Iggy is correct.
Our producer Tashi's
going to go there,
because he recognises
what I look like.
Guys, he's definitely BLEEP
because I went on to the
address book on the door.
Miles Sonkin, apartment BLEEP.
Oh, nice, OK.
I think we wait for a bit.
Despite being central
to The w*r Room,
writing its reading list
and helping create its
methods for grooming women,
Iggy has managed
to dodge accountability
by remaining in the shadows.
But now, for the first time, the
"Master of Spells and Shadows"
will at least have to face
questions about his role in all of this.
There he is, there
he is. He's right there.
I just saw him come out.
OK, put your camera down.
Put your camera down. He's
walking away. He's walking away.
Yeah, we need to go
park at the end of the road.
Matt, let's go.
Hi. Iggy Semmelweis?
Are you training people in The
w*r Room how to enslave women?
Do you run The w*r Room?
We've seen chatroom
evidence that you're training men
how to enslave women.
Do you care to comment on that?
It looks like, from the
evidence that we've seen,
that you're instructing men how
to enslave and manipulate women
and coerce them into webcam.
You have no
comment on that at all?
How long are we
going to walk for
before you answer me?
VOICE-OVER: We thought Iggy
would go back inside, jump in a car
or go somewhere where
we couldn't follow him.
But he appears intent on walking
the entire breadth of Koreatown.
You have nothing to
say to these allegations?
Iggy, we've spoken
to several women
who allege that members of The
w*r Room abused them, coerced them,
were physically violent to them.
As the grand high
priest of The w*r Room,
don't you have anything
to say about that?
You don't teach men how to get
women to fall in love with them,
sleep with them and then
coerce them into webcam?
You've used the exact
phrase "female sexual sl*very".
What does that mean?
What is it that you saw in
Andrew that made you think
he was the perfect person
to front this whole operation?
Are you not worried
about these allegations?
You have nothing to say?
You don't want to defend yourself
against these allegations at all?
Well...
..it looks like Iggy
Semmelweis, aka Miles Sonkin,
doesn't want to
talk to us at all.
Hi.
We're journalists from the BBC.
We're actually
investigating this man
for running a...what
appears to be an organisation
that teaches men
how to coerce women.
Does he come here a lot, yeah?
And you got the vibe. Is he
always bringing different women?
You thought he was a pimp?
OK.
Yeah, of course.
Thanks for talking to us.
Have a good one.
MATT CHUCKLES
We've given a chance to Iggy
to respond to the
very serious allegations
that people are making to him,
including those of multiple
women who accuse him
of running an organisation
that trained men
how to coerce them,
manipulate them.
And some of these men, they
say, also physically abused them.
We've given him a chance to
respond. He has nothing to say.
Matt, I think Iggy just
tweeted about you.
About me?
LAUGHS
"Matt A Shea and his cameraman
show up uninvited at my home,
"follow me for half
an hour as I walk,
"ask me silly questions, but
never offer me a box of chocolates.
"So I say nothing. Now
Matt will never know
"who the real mastermind
of The w*r Room is.
"Matt f*cked up again."
I mean, it's pretty obvious
it's you...who's the real
mastermind of The w*r Room.
Every single time someone
buys a DNG T-shirt,
Matt Shea gets an email to
his personal email address
letting him know that a DNG
shirt has been purchased
and someone is walking
around in the world
with a picture of him
being homeless on a T-shirt.
By now, the w*r Room
is clearly aware of our film
and they ramp up attempts to
discredit us before its release.
He's obviously working on
some new film piece and he thinks,
"Oh, finally, I'm going
to get Andrew Tate back
"with my new hit
piece full of lies."
But when he releases it,
everyone's just going
to call him a DNG
and ask him for chocolates.
These people are
worse than disingenuous.
They are worse
than simply liars.
They are evil.
OK, he's dead. Is he dead?
There he is, on the desk.
There he is.
NEWSREADERS: We're back
with breaking news out of Romania,
where disgraced influencer
Andrew Tate has been indicted.
The charges include
r*pe, human trafficking
and forming an
organised crime group.
MATT: On June 20th, the
Romanian authorities announced
that Andrew and Tristan
Tate are to be formally charged
and are due to appear in court.
If the judges decide to
keep them in jail until trial,
this may be our last
chance to ask them anything.
So I'm back in Bucharest.
Andrew?
I see that you were
officially indicted.
Police, police.
OK, we just want to ask
some questions to Andrew.
No... We've seen
internal chat logs
from The w*r Room's
Telegram group...
VOICE OVER
SPEAKER: Get off this lot.
No. ..that demonstrate
that The w*r Room...
DISTANT CALL
What's that?
I'm asking you about
the internal chat logs
that demonstrate
that The w*r Room
is actually a society that trains
men how to groom women.
Chocolates?
You must realise how
silly that question sounds
alongside my question, which
is about human trafficking.
UNTRANSLATED SPEECH
OK.
OK. OK.
OK, OK, OK.
Go, go, go.
UNTRANSLATED
Even since Tate has faced
allegations of human trafficking,
Iggy and The w*r Room
have been using his image
to market themselves to young
men and boys all across the world.
Throughout Tate's house arrest,
fans have shown up to visit him.
Guys, you're not going to
believe where I'm at right now.
I'm outside Andrew Tate's house.
What do you think
about when Andrew says
that all these attacks and
accusations against him
are part of a Matrix attack?
It's 100% true, man.
If, hypothetically, there
was evidence presented
that led to a conviction
for some of these crimes,
would that all still be a Matrix
attack? Of course. Yes? Yeah.
Let's say someone had video
evidence of him committing these crimes.
Would that also be
part of the Matrix attack?
Depends.
Depends if it was staged.
Depends if it was real.
No-one would know. No-one
would know? No-one would know.
What threshold of evidence
would you accept that he
has committed these crimes?
That Andrew Tate said
that he was guilty himself.
Anything besides that,
I...I would question it.
Wow.
That's an incredible
amount of power
for one person to have
over your mind, right?
TATE: Every single one of us, to
some degree, is an empty vessel.
We're all programmed.
There's no such thing as
escaping the sl*ve mind.
You must just, to some degree,
understand who is programming you
and understand if you really
want those characteristics.
Have you heard of Andrew Tate's
w*r Room? Yes. Yeah, I have.
Would you consider joining?
100%, yeah.
A recent survey suggests
that 52% of males
between the ages of
16 and 17 in the UK
have a positive
view of Andrew Tate,
with only 19% having
a negative view,
and were more likely
to have heard of him
than the Prime
Minister, Rishi Sunak.
This hasn't
happened by accident.
The strategy is basically to
show an aspirational lifestyle,
and to market that.
You see this guy
that, in your head,
can get the best girls,
then you think,
"OK, let's follow him.
"Let's listen to
what he has to say."
How many people are working
on this? I'd say a few dozens.
We have a PR campaign team
where we go and we see all medias,
either positive or negative,
that mentions Tate.
We will send people -
again, very real-looking
Twitter, Instagram, whatever,
social media accounts -
and they go and they comment
on your posts. On YOUR posts.
They go and they call you DNG.
They go and they try
to counter your narrative.
So are they real
people or bots or...?
They're partly real
people, partly bots.
Very, very highly-trained.
We have shifted our
marketing in previous years,
past years, obviously,
as you've seen.
You keep one element the same,
which was his
aspirational lifestyle -
the cars, the money,
you know, the fighting.
Remove the women.
Replace it with Islam.
By the way, he's
not a true Muslim.
Replace it with positivity.
Replace it with perhaps a picture
of him and his brother's daughter
and stuff like that, with charity
work that he's doing now -
to slowly but surely
shift the narrative
away from his previous
image into something new.
After Tate's arrest,
his marketing team
have done everything they can
to present him as a
religious family man,
but they can't erase what
he's done with The w*r Room,
nor his life as a
self-confessed webcam pimp.
I have a unique resume.
World-champion kick boxer.
Pimp. Mafia-associated criminal.
Like, I've got all this stuff and
it looks like, "Who is this dude?"
Like, surely it
can't all be true.
Well, it's all true.
Mr Tate, nice to meet
you. Nice to meet you, man.
How you doing? Yeah,
good, here for the filming.
In 2016, before Iggy met Tate,
long before The w*r Room
and with his kick boxing
career coming to an end,
Tate was building his
webcam business in the UK.
To try to remain
in the public eye,
he was cultivating an
image as a pimp online.
I want a big banner saying,
"Any women who
think Andrew's amazing,
"want a free life and just come
along for the ride, inbox him now."
But they've got to be hot.
Make it something just like,
"Fit b*tches apply here", put
an email address. Edit it up.
Don't just make this...
"Fit b*tches apply here"?
LAUGHS: Yeah, but in a
more, you know, likeable way.
"Beautiful young ladies
apply here", or something.
And then we need, like, a
montage of, like, the Aston.
You do, like, some
slow shots on the outside
and f*cking let everyone
know how much it costs
and I have to look cool.
You know, put some gangsta
music over it or some sh*t.
It's not just
going to be just...
It's got to be something good.
Even back then, he was thinking
about how to achieve
his dream of viral fame.
This led him to appear on
the reality show Big Brother.
I don't care if nobody
down there likes me.
Everyone's already pre-decided
they don't like me, and that's fine.
So I know I'm the most
intelligent person in this house
and I'm the most capable
person in this house. Fact.
Tate was kicked
out after six days
when the production company was
made aware of an investigation into him
for the alleged
r*pe of two women
and physical abuse of another.
Four years later,
the Crown Prosecution
Service chose not to charge him
because they felt a
conviction was unlikely.
Due to events in
the outside world,
Andrew has had to leave
the Big Brother house.
Tate's decision to go on one
of the biggest reality TV shows
in the country while
under police investigation
was an early indication that he
would let nothing stand in the way
of his insatiable
desire for fame.
And that he not only felt
impervious to allegations of r*pe,
but could in fact incorporate
misogyny into his brand,
all of which made
him the ideal frontman
for Iggy's cult of financially
and sexually abusing women.
Today, the three women involved
in the allegations that led to
Tate being ejected from Big Brother
are now meeting
with the UK authorities
in an attempt to reopen
the police's case against him.
DISTORTED VOICE:
These women were the
first alleged victims of Tate,
whose method of coercive control
was then packaged and
sold around the world.
If you've bought this course, which
you obviously have, congratulations.
You're going to change
your life for the better.
I know exactly what I'm talking
about. I'm f*cking certified.
NEWS PRESENTER: I want
to get to an update on a story
that we have been
following closely here
as social media personality Andrew
Tate has been charged in Romania
with r*pe, human trafficking
and forming a criminal
g*ng to exploit women.
It's now up to the
Romanian courts to decide
if and when this
trial will take place.
On 21 June, Tate
was formally charged
with human trafficking and r*pe.
But we still have questions
about The w*r Room.
And having to attend court
means Tate won't be able
to hide behind his gates.
Is The w*r Room an international
grooming cult, Andrew?
..from behind a bush. What a nerd.
Because I've spoken to three women
now who say that it is.
Do you have chocolates?
Do you have chocolates?
I've spoken to three women...
I've spoken to three women
who say that they've been trained
by senior members of The w*r
Room to groom them and abuse them.
OVERLAPPING SPEECH
So is the w*r Room an international
grooming cult of some kind?
Tate has managed to appeal
to millions of young men
by exploiting
their insecurities.
Once in his orbit,
these same young men are encouraged
to buy more and more courses,
where their final destination
is a cult that teaches men
how to turn women into sl*ves.
What we've discovered is,
Iggy took Tate's
misogynistic persona
and used it to create
a global network
with scores of
potential victims.
Tate's fame is being used
to sell a method of abuse
to men around the world.
But with his fans now
numbering in the tens of millions,
how many of them will
this message appeal to?
CHANTING:
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Andrew Tate: The Man Who Groomed the World (2023)
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