Watching the Tate spectacle, and remembering what justice is supposed to mean

It was almost inevitable that the Tate brothers would end up facing charges in the UK after the circus of their Romanian saga. Twenty-one charges, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Rape, human trafficking, bodily harm. The list reads like a shopping list of modern moral outrages. No question, these are serious accusations, and if proven, the right response is obvious and severe. Still, I cannot help but feel uneasy at the sheer spectacle surrounding Andrew and Tristan Tate.

I have never been a fan of Andrew Tate. His brash social media presence, the self-congratulatory monologues, the endless parading of wealth and machismo — it all grates. Yet, I am equally wary of the way accusations, once public, seem to erase the presumption of innocence in the popular mind. In our current climate, it seems guilt is as much about public perception as it is about evidence. Prosecutors announce the number of charges as if quantity alone proves substance. The headlines come thick and fast, each one more definitive than the last, and the comment sections fill up with people eager to see a villain destroyed.

I have no illusions about the Tates. I’m not here to defend their brand of toxic bravado, nor do I claim to know what happened behind closed doors. But I do remember the last decade of high-profile cases — all those media-driven trials where the public verdict was delivered long before the legal one. I remember when due process was a bedrock principle. Now, it feels like an afterthought, especially if the accused is unpopular or provocative.

There’s a peculiar irony here. The Tates built a following by railing against what they saw as a feminised, censorious culture, only to be swallowed up by that same culture’s mechanisms of public punishment. One can dislike them and still worry about what is happening to our sense of justice. There’s a thin line between holding someone accountable and turning them into a symbol for all our collective anxieties.

Maybe the brothers are guilty. Maybe they’re not. I want to see the evidence before I pass judgment, and I wish more people felt the same. It is tempting to cheer when someone you dislike is hauled before the courts, but that temptation is poison to any society that claims to care about fairness.

The Tates do not deserve blind faith, but neither do they deserve a trial by media. If we cannot extend the presumption of innocence to our enemies, we have lost something vital.