Pete Evans Part 2: COVID & Consequences

Okay, the only one that I could come up with, which I came up with when I was like plugging in my microphone a second ago, was Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is post-agriculture, but pre-T Good.

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I'm Aubrey Gordon.

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We're going to tell you a wild tale about an Australian TV chef.

Yes, and today we are closing the account of Pete Evans.

I have been bursting to record this episode.

Have you really?

Yeah, because, okay, you know that like my entire internet presence is characterized by like a total lack of impulse control.

I have had to sit in my house for like four days and not Google this fucking guy and find out how the story ends.

I feel like your Twitter presence is id and my Twitter presence is super ego.

And by our powers combined, we're like one person.

I like that yours is the best parts of your personality and mine is my worst parts.

And it's a good balance.

So, Mike, last time we started our story about Paleo Pete Evans, walk me through what you recall of that story.

I mean, it's basically a story of radicalization.

This guy, Pete Evans, starts out as a fairly normal restaurant owner, and then he ends up being like a judge on a reality show and becomes a more prominent influencer, and then he gets into paleo.

He gets just like further and further down a rabbit hole and starts getting into like weirder and weirder stuff.

and seems to like become more disconnected from reality and just kind of like internet poisoned.

Yes.

Part of the ways that that internet poisoning shows up is that he starts making these big, bold, wild, and like almost completely unsubstantiated claims.

He starts talking about how there were quote-unquote mountains of evidence that fluoride is a neurotoxin.

He made a claim to a Facebook follower with osteoporosis that that person should stop eating dairy because he believed that dairy would strip the calcium from your bones.

We are going to check in with him in the year 2020.

Okay.

At this point, Pete Evans has been a judge on the reality cooking competition show, My Kitchen Rules, for about eight years.

Despite all of these totally wild public claims, he's still a big TV star.

He's still writing cookbooks.

He's not really paying any price significantly or one that's visible to the public at this point.

But that is true until 2020.

Okay.

I told you last time, I'm trying to tell the story mostly in chronological order.

This is is going to be the one like dramatic license moment.

Needle scratch.

So 2020, as you may recall, was the year that the pandemic sort of started in earnest globally.

Folks are locked down.

They're freaked out.

For pretty much the whole year, we don't have vaccines.

We don't have treatments.

We don't have anything.

In November of 2020, he went on a podcast and decided to talk about his sort of philosophy and best thinking around COVID.

And we're going to watch a little clip.

You're healthy.

So does that mean you can't live your life based off the choices that other people have made?

You know, you live your life, you look like a fit, healthy human being that's open to, you know,

you see the rig here.

Growth and expansion.

So should you be punished?

and not being able to live your life because there's other people out there that are sick.

So you can't go outside today because somebody else might die.

I mean,

these are big, big, big questions.

And I don't have the answers, but I'm putting out the question out there.

Let's just take this virus as an example.

We know that it affects 0.00

part of the population that already have these issues.

So should we look after these people?

Should we

improve their immune system?

Should we look at feeding them a wonderful diet?

Should we look at doing meditation for these people?

Should we look at what self-love means for these people in the position that they're in, in the nursing homes?

How do we encourage self-growth, self-love, self-empowerment?

How do we change their immune system?

Because we can.

Imagine if the government came together with the leading health professionals and said, okay, let's target this.

Let's help these vulnerable people.

Everybody else continue on the way that you're living, but let's actually

put the funds and the resources.

wonderful anti-inflammatory diet.

Let's make sure that there's no Wi-Fi in the vicinity of these people because we know EMS EMS can have a

problematic effect on the immune system.

What about if we put these people into the sun for a certain period of the time so we can increase their vitamin D?

What about if we got the right

put pumped ozone into the air or however it works as a disinfectant?

What about if we use certain light therapy that might help with this these coronaviruses that are affected by light therapy?

What about if we use heat therapy because we know this works for certain coronaviruses?

What if we use this, this, this, this, this for our most vulnerable?

Do you hear anybody fucking talking about that?

There you go.

Have you, okay, I, I, I know nothing about the person who's interviewing Pete Evans.

I have no context for this at all, but I was reading in his face as he was listening to that.

A thing that I have gone through where as you're listening to somebody, it's like, oh, you are unhinged.

And like, I have to think, like, I need a strategy strategy to deal with like what I'm hearing.

Because, in normal conversations, you're not doing like a bunch of chest moves, like 17 ahead.

But then once you realize, it's like, oh, you're this, you're like a Wi-Fi causes cancer person.

So now it's like in your brain, the whole paradigm of the conversation shifts.

And you're like, how can I, how can I get to the heart of like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

You absolutely see the light go out of his eyes where he's like, oh, it's incredible.

Oh, no.

You could see the moment where he's just like, Oh, it's gonna be this kind of interview.

What's happening fundamentally in this clip is that Pete Evans seems to be really pissed off that he can't go outside, yeah, that he can't do stuff, and that he has to wear a mask.

Yeah, Pete Evans really seems to be reaching for a public policy justification for why he feels so frustrated, right?

And his sort of theory here is that there's like some kind of incentive for people in power to keep us locked down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He's not saying COVID isn't real.

He is saying that the things that we need to do for COVID are continue operating as usual and like pay special attention, sort of, to disabled people and to elders who are most susceptible to COVID.

And his answer to that is to put all of those people on paleo.

Yeah.

Teach them how to love themselves, even though, as he puts it, they've made like the wrong choices in their lives, which is why they're not healthy.

That is like a cornerstone of COVID garbage.

It's also extremely funny in the context of COVID specifically, because the number one risk factor for COVID is age.

Hey, man, you chose to get old.

Yeah, like what?

My grandma's 97.

Like, changing her diet is not going to affect her vulnerability to COVID.

Totally, totally.

It's an interesting juxtaposition with the rest of his argument because he's saying, if you got COVID, it's basically your fault.

But we should change government policy to make it more likely that you get COVID.

And then, Mike, when you do get COVID, we put you on paleo, we teach you to love yourself, and you do some meditation and we pump in some ozone.

My favorite thing in that little medley was that he mentioned meditation.

Yeah.

My understanding is that like the health benefits of meditation are like pretty well established and like meditating is very good for you.

But.

Is it a treatment for COVID?

Yes, totally.

It's just this weird thing of like, it's this whole worldview where like things are either good or bad.

Yeah.

And if you're sick, then you should just do more of the good things, regardless of like the actual circumstances, right?

Of like an air conditioner fell out of a window and like crushed my arm and it was amputated.

And he's like, have you tried yoga?

Totally.

It sounds like you don't love yourself.

It's like, no, there's a specific thing with a specific cause.

I have another clip for us.

Ooh.

What would you say to somebody that might

say that we might not have the technical training to understand certain things if we think for ourselves?

Like,

I haven't studied anything to do with virology, so when it comes to me understanding various different viruses and things, I don't think I might have that capacity.

What would you say to someone that says that?

I would say go with the basics, mate.

Breathe, live, eat, sleep, love.

I mean,

why do you need to be an expert on viruses?

Well, I guess to determine whether COVID's a thing or not.

What does it matter?

If nobody told you about it and you were living your life without

ever hearing of it, do you think you'd catch it?

Well, I guess they would say that perhaps I wouldn't be in the demographic that would catch it.

They would say that I'd be walking around, I'd visit my 90-year-old grandma and then she might die because I did that.

Maybe that's what they would say.

I mean, a lot of people say they still haven't worked out or isolated the virus itself, and that's up for debate.

But the people that seem to be getting affected by this are the people that already have at least one or two or three different comorbidities, which is other illnesses or diseases.

Now, it's very controversial, but how did these people live their lives?

What choices did they make through their life to get type 2 or diabetes or heart disease or this or that or the other?

Did they live in a state of freedom or did they live in a state of fear?

What did they choose to put into their bodies as they diet for the last 60, 70, 80 years?

What were their emotional beliefs throughout their life?

You know, did they believe that they were lovable?

Did they have self-love?

Did they have self-worth?

Did they live in a state of victimhood?

Did they live in a state of victimhood?

Oh, this is the fucking, this is this like toxic, like conservative bullshit.

But like, everyone's a victim now.

Also, I'm a victim because you're asking me to wear a mask.

They're bad kinds of victims, but I'm the good kind of victim.

My victimhood is real, but theirs is fake because they're only dying of an infectious disease that I will not admit exists.

The other thing that I will say is happening in this clip, he's like totally just saying the quiet part loud.

I know, I kind of respect it.

It's like, it's like, what if they deserve to die?

I mean, the captain is going down with the ship.

The other thing that he is just sort of laying out pretty plainly is that when he talks about who's at high risk for COVID, he's absolutely not talking about old people.

He's absolutely not talking about, he's talking about fat people, right?

Yeah.

The things that he named were heart disease and diabetes.

The things that he talked about were the choices that people made and having self-worth.

And like, you don't invoke type 2 diabetes and heart disease to talk about thin people.

I love that it's like fat people are unhealthy and maybe they deserve to die.

And also, why do they have such low self-worth yeah totally just look at you grotesque fucking trolls living under a bridge you're all gonna die and it's gonna be your fault if only you had loved yourselves more i know get fucked asshole

I mean, I think part of the reason I wanted to lift up this clip in particular is that it feels like the clearest and most crystallized example we have gotten on this show of something that we've talked about often on, which is healthism, right?

Right.

Healthism is sort of of a term of art used to describe the ways in which we ascribe morality and value judgments onto people that we perceive as being healthier, right?

Right.

It is strictly a visual assessment of another person, right?

That's what healthism relies on.

Right.

And that is genuinely the argument that he is sincerely advancing here.

You made good choices.

Your life shouldn't change just because other people made bad choices.

If you're healthy, it's because you made good choices.

If you're unhealthy, it's because you made bad choices.

Sorry to everyone who has cancer, COPD, diabetes, depression, anxiety.

That's all a result of your choices.

And if you didn't want to have it, you should have made better choices and different choices.

Sorry, whoops, I made good choices.

And also, I feel like COVID brought out a lot of that because it was asking people to make a common sacrifice.

for more vulnerable groups.

Like that broke a lot of people's brains.

Yeah, I mean, I think so in organizing world, there is a lot of discussion of like our fates are intertwined.

But aside from like taxes and voting, we don't actually ask people to act like it.

Right.

And this was one of the biggest asks that we had of a collective population to act as if we were caring for one another and act as if other people's fates and their lives and their livelihoods mattered as much to us as our own.

Well, one thing that I'm so frustrated by is that, like, if you look at the actual polling, most people were fine with this.

Most people understood this.

The first probably month of the pandemic, March, April in the United States was like one of the greatest acts of solidarity in modern history.

And then it was like people like Pete Evans that were like, that just poisoned it all, right?

And that started like whispering in people's ears about like, well, you've been home for so long and these other people, they're not grateful.

And it's all this bullshit.

And all of a sudden, all this like whispering in people's ears started to become like a fucking grim social movement, which was never very big, but they were very loud and they were very fucking online.

And all of a sudden, it was like, okay, well, like 8% of the population is being a real dick about this.

And so, we all have to like build our policies around how these really scary people are going to react.

Uh, do you remember how last episode I was like, the beat hasn't even dropped yet?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The beat is dropping, Mike.

So, we started with this podcast appearance.

Now, we're going to rewind to the start of 2020 and just walk through the year.

Awesome.

In January and February and a little bit into March, Pete Evans is going hard.

He's doing his Pete Evans thing.

He posts a

photo with a caption that is very complimentary of him and RFK Jr.

Oh,

the canon thing.

And anti-vax.

King anti-vax RFK.

I feel like having a photo of you and RFK Jr.

junior in january of 2020 is like being able to say that you bought cold play's first ep or like saw them at cb gbs or some shit you're like i was in the anti-vax guy before they were even vaccines so rfk picture all of that happens then the pandemic hits nations and cities start locking down pete evans gets on Facebook live at this time when folks have unreliable information, at this time when folks are reaching for anything that gives them a sense that they like they have some kind of talisman that makes them feel more secure in what's happening in a really insecure and uncertain time right like people are just kind of reaching for whatever pete evans gets on facebook live and he starts talking about a device called a biocharger okay we're gonna watch a little video clip of an ad for the biocharger made by the manufacturer of the biocharger

scientific and medical studies have proven nutrition and exercise are both key factors towards optimal health and prevention or recovery from chronic illness.

But there is another important factor that's often overlooked, voltage.

It's important to take care of our bodies.

Hello, I'm Jim Law, and I'd like to tell you about the biocharger.

an innovative and non-invasive technology that actually recharges our cells to the optimum level.

Think of our bodies like a cell phone.

Just as daily use drains this battery, our everyday lives diminish the voltage in our cells.

The biocharger is the world's first subtle energy revitalization platform.

It's essentially the ultimate human recharging station, restoring your body's natural energies.

We believe that if we could mimic nature and find a way to produce these subtle energies in a biocompatible way, that virtually anyone could benefit from having restored cellular voltage regardless of age or health.

The three most important factors in cellular health are voltage, nutrition, and dealing with toxicity.

What you find, as a common characteristic of all disease, is inadequate cellular voltage.

Mike, what did you learn about the biocharger?

What?

I learned that cellular voltage and toxicity are the things I should be worried about.

Hey, man, if you're not feeling good, it's because your cells don't have enough voltage in them.

Also, okay, I have seen lower production values in this kind of like grifty health stuff before, so this wasn't as bad as it gets, but like it's just like, here's a bunch of stock footage of like conventionally attractive people like hiking and shit.

And then when it talks about the actual machine, it cuts to people with like, I guess, electrodes on them in some sort of doctor's office, and they're sitting in front of something that looks like fucking the Dalek from Doctor Who.

This like little weird robot from the the future that's like moving like red lights.

Look, it's the thing that they put in like a family movie about a science fair where

a kid is like tinkering around with it and then there's a big puff of smoke and the kid's face is covered in soot and they like blink.

It looks scientific.

So Pete Evans goes on Facebook Live and he's like, I've been using this thing.

It's incredible.

It's called the Biocharger NG.

It is on in the background behind him.

So he looks like an absolute supervillain in the actual video.

So he starts talking about the Wuhan coronavirus and how this is like a great device to use to combat it.

Oh, that was, that's like a little Easter egg for weirdos.

Once again,

the Australian Medical Association immediately tweets about it and issues a statement, and they keep calling it a fancy light machine.

Yeah, this is...

One doctor calls it a glorified lava lamp.

Has anyone, did anyone end up looking into like this actual company?

Because like, were they paid?

I mean, I assume they were paying him to do this.

Nope.

Also, almost immediately, the manufacturer of the biocharger NG releases a statement distancing themselves from Pete Evans and being like, this isn't for COVID.

No.

Even

the cellular voltage grifters were like, that's too far, man.

Like, let's dial it up.

Here, here.

I added on here because I was like, we probably won't read it, but your reaction to this makes me think we should.

This is a quote from their statement.

I'm so desperate to see this.

Okay.

It says, recent coverage points to the biocharger as a cure or treatment to the novel coronavirus.

The biocharger is not a medical device, and for that reason, advanced biotechnology suggests that anyone seek medical attention from their primary care provider if they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and all other diseases, infections, and ailments.

Oh, that's some like lawyers, the lawyers of the biocharger people.

are like, oh, the lawyers got in there.

I love how whenever anybody takes one of these like scammy medical manufacturers to court or whatever, they're always like, oh, this is fake.

They're just like, immediately just like, oh, it's not real.

Oh, hey, all that stuff we said about cellular voltage and how everything boils down to this.

Actually, we're not selling a medical device.

Whoops.

Just kidding.

It's okay.

This video has 11,000 views.

That's not very many views.

It's really not.

So, like, the fact that Pete was able to find this speaks to like where the fuck he is on the internet.

This is like sub 3 a.m.

infomercial stuff.

Oh Mike, if you are distressed by this,

oh, the levels we're going to drop to here momentarily.

Oh my God.

So the other thing that happens after his promotion of the biocharger NG

is that the Australian regulatory body called the Therapeutic Goods Administration immediately launches an investigation and within a couple of weeks issues a really significant fine to him.

He's fined $25,000.

Dude, I love this.

I know, right?

Oh, just like basic accountability and like non-impunity for people that tell fucking lies constantly.

He got charged almost the price of two biochargers for talking about a biochar on Facebook.

That's how much a biocharger costs?

$15,000.

No,

my guy.

And as soon as they're pressed, they're like, oh, it doesn't work.

Oh, by the way, if you bought this because he talked about it, sorry.

So, not only does he get fined for the biocharger stuff, he gets fined 25 grand for that, but also they launch more investigations into how he had discussed other health issues and treatments.

And ultimately, his total fines are $80,000.

Love it.

And from there, so that happens in April.

In May, he is dismissed from My Kitchen Rules.

Okay.

So that was it.

The network says that it's because the ratings were down and they needed to mix things up.

Okay.

That seems extremely unlikely to me.

The ratings might have been down.

One month ago, he said a thing and then got fined by like your lark.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm like, no, it's looking bad for him.

He's saying bad shit.

Although, to be fair, I would not put it past a TV production company to just not give a shit.

That someone's like a massive grifter.

Totally.

I will say there was a piece about this in The Age that had my favorite lead.

Celebrity chef Pete Evans has activated his last almond with the Seven Network.

Oh, that's good.

Compliments to the chef.

I love that lead.

Pete Evans has crammed his last trail mix into the shape of a slice of bread.

So in May, he gets fired from My Kitchen Rules.

That same month, he shares a video on social media.

That video is a three-hour lecture.

The lecture is being given by David Icke.

Who's that?

What?

Is he bad?

I'm using context clues.

I really thought you were going to know who David Icke is.

Okay.

David Icke is an English sort of former footballer and current wild ass anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.

Oh.

You can catch him shouting about the New World Order and how the world is run run by Habsburgs and lizard people.

He's a fucking New World Order guy?

Yeah, 1,000%.

And genuinely, he believes that the people running the world are not only Jewish, they are also like a separate race of lizard people.

This is like he'll talk about how you can like look in their eyes and you can see the lizard eyes and they're like it's

He is the conspiracy theorist that other conspiracy theorists distance themselves from.

At least I'm not David Icke, man.

It's not even trash in the conspiracy theory garbage bin.

It's like the juice at the bottom of the garbage can.

Sour garbage juice.

It's the sour garbage juice of conspiracy theories, just distilled and fermented and terrible, right?

In this particular video that Pete Evans shared, David Icke gives a three-hour interview in which he takes a bold garbage stance that effectively announced to pandemic.

Oh, this is the pandemic time.

This is this fucking little subplot.

So this is where Pete Evans gets it's a fake pandemic and that it's actually the result of 5G.

And he says in this video that public health measures to stop the spread of COVID are akin to, quote, Nazi Germany fascism.

Oh, yeah, of course.

This is...

Yeah.

The funny thing is, this is so fucking mainstream now that it doesn't even shock me.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Comparing public health measures to the Nazis, yeah, get to the good stuff, Aubrey.

So, this is how the fucking Guardian covered this issue.

Oh my fucking god.

Okay.

In his Instagram post linking to the interview, Evans wrote, Here is an alternative view.

I would be keen to hear your thoughts on this video as to whether there's any validity in this man's message, especially as there seems to be a lot of conflicting messages coming out of the mainstream these days.

What is the truth?

I personally loved the last 30 minutes talking about heart frequency and love, Evans told his 231,000 followers.

Ike has denied being anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier.

The Guardian has contacted Evans for comment.

There is no suggestion Evans holds anti-Semitic or racist views.

No evidence that he holds anti-Semitic or racist views.

He just keeps posting racist shit on his fucking forward-facing public accounts.

But this is my whole beef with coverage of these kinds of cultural figures.

Because on one level, in a sort of bloodless debate club way, you could say that like just because you have someone on your podcast does not mean that you hold all of their views.

Yeah.

It is possible to be the kind of person who just like wants to hear out literally everybody, right?

And you have a podcast where like people of all stripes come and they tell you their wacky ideas, right?

But it doesn't sound like that's what Pete Evans is doing.

This is not a podcast where it's like one one day there's a COVID denier and the next day there's like a COVID doctor.

No, he's he's sure not.

After this, he's having like very famous anti-vaxxers.

Oh, yeah.

The podcast is entirely him just laying out a clear worldview, which I don't think it's a leap to presume that it's his clear worldview.

Right.

I feel like journalists are constantly doing this thing where they try to divine what somebody's quote-unquote real beliefs are.

Like, oh, it's not clear if Pete Evans agrees with David Icke when actually it's totally irrelevant whether he agrees with David Icke.

The fact is, Pete Evans is very consistently delivering extremely fringe, odious views to a mainstream audience.

It's lending credibility and the benefit of the doubt to a dude who's been publicly torching his credibility for eight years at this point.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Oh, there's no suggestion.

I'm like, there's eight years of suggestion.

There's a lot of suggestion.

Aubrey, what if this turned into like a methodology queen episode where we debunked the idea that like there's lizard people

like the methodology

on that study?

So it is not a good time for Pete Evans.

And what he decides to do is to go on 60 Minutes.

What?

What?

I thought you were going to say that he like points his own front-facing camera at himself in his car and like talks at his camera for like two hours.

You decide.

You decide what energy he's bringing to this interview.

And we have to watch 60 Minutes Australia again.

I know, I'm so sorry.

I could very easily disappear, you know.

Some people would like me to disappear, no doubt, and I'll just make this one statement.

If I disappear or I have a freaking weird accident, it wasn't an accident, okay?

I, you know, and that's probably the most conspiratal thing that I will say: that I am of what I believe complete sound mind and body and spirit.

That says to me you don't always feel safe.

There's been too many coincidences out there in the world for people that have questioned certain things.

Sometimes those people don't last very long, and that could just be a coincidence.

Or you think that could be you?

I don't know.

What?

Yep.

It's bizarre.

I mean, I will say, as a person who has gotten like pretty explicit death threats, there would be no reason for me to be oblique about it.

This to me reads as someone who has not been threatened, but who has been swimming in the soup of conspiracy theories long enough

that they just sort of come to believe that anything is possible.

And of course, there's no specifics, and it's just this weird, like, they killed JFK for his views or whatever the fuck.

This shit is exhausting.

It's just like, what do you even do with this?

I mean, I feel like at some point this stuff tilts closer into like mental illness slash like becoming untethered from reality than any kind of like statement you can even like parse or debunk.

Yeah, I just don't know what you do with somebody once they're like, once they're this far gone, basically.

Yeah, I'm not sure either.

I don't know what the intervention is here at this point.

But I also feel pretty certain that the intervention here does not include...

There's no suggestion that he has racist or anti-Semitic views.

Yeah.

Nor does it include giving him airtime.

So what's the actual episode like?

The actual episode is a bunch of shit like this, where he's sort of speaking in these weird cryptic terms.

He's sort of like refusing to clarify his position on a bunch of things.

He's just doing the like, I don't know, you make the connection.

Like that is his like favorite thing.

It's just him coming off as...

not responding to the same observable reality as many viewers.

Yeah.

Like it just really feels like it's getting into the territory of just like, oh, you've lost the thread of like maybe even being able to communicate with other people about what your ideas are.

This mechanism is just fascinating to me, where you can so quickly become a person like this with no like

major stressor, like, you know, the loss of a child or something.

You know, the pandemic was really stressful, and becoming a celebrity is stressful, and, you know, all this other stuff, but it's sort of, it's like normal stuff, but then it seems like something just like broke in his brain.

It is very hard to know.

All of those things are things that could cause someone to feel way less anchored in their world, way more hungry for sort of different explanations of the world, all of that kind of stuff.

But none of that really explains why this is the one that you would land on.

Right.

If you're experiencing a bunch of pressure points in your life and you like need something to help you feel anchored in your life, you could just as easily get into like LARPing.

You could join a fucking trivia team.

There's like so many things that you could do.

You don't have to be the guy who's like, I gotta publicly get up and be a David Eichstan.

Right.

It seems like it's much more rare that it pushes people in like a pro-social direction.

It seems like it oftentimes pushes these people down these like very well-trodden paths of like it starts with like wellness woo-woo stuff.

And then, I mean, fuck, we did a whole episode on this.

Yeah, yes.

I really want to understand it because it feels like one of the like extremely important mechanisms for understanding like what the world is going to be like for the next 50 years absolutely and i think it's worth noting as we're trying to understand that mechanism that there were also several and quite pronounced signs of this kind of thinking prior to the pandemic for him right prior to the pandemic is when he was talking about how fluoride is a neurotoxin prior to the pandemic is when he was talking about how like basically autistic people exist because not everyone eats paleo.

Yeah.

Like it's tricky because like definitely something shifted in the pandemic, but also it was definitely there before.

It's interesting.

I mean we come across this all the time the weird intersection between health and politics.

This weird health stuff can be a gateway drug to political radicalization in a way that often doesn't look like political radicalization because a lot of this QAnon stuff sort of seems apolitical because it's like they're kidnapping kids and like drinking the adrenochrome and it's just so it's so out there that you're like, okay, whatever.

It's like people believing in Bigfoot or whatever.

It doesn't necessarily have a political valence.

But then once you actually investigate these online groups where people are getting this like sewage, it's extremely political.

Like QAnon was very explicitly a movement to like defend Donald Trump and the idea that Donald Trump was like speaking in code.

Totally, totally.

It feels like the health stuff lays the foundation for the rest of it.

Yeah.

The health stuff is where he really starts kind of exploring the space around this idea of like, oh, I don't actually have to take care of you.

You have to take care of yourself.

Right.

That is is majorly softening the ground for extremely right-wing thinking about sort of like resisting any idea of collective care, all of those things.

Like the starting point for all of that really appears to be Pete Evans' investment in paleo and investment in the deeply ableist arguments about paleo.

We are canceling the shit out of paleo the last two episodes.

Baby, all it took for me was reading the first book and having them be like, you know what, we could use more of is eugenics.

Genuinely, the thing that has stayed with me throughout this whole story.

And again, we have two more acts of the fall to cover.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, we've got, we have a lot more.

This was not the end.

I thought we were like wrapping up.

No, Michael.

How is there more?

Actually, you know what?

Let's just get into the more and then we'll circle back to this conversation.

Because holy shit.

So in June of 2020, Pete Evans is on 60 Minutes.

You know, he just gets like a bunch of bad press after that.

It doesn't look good for him.

Sort of whatever your position is on this dude, the consensus is he didn't do well in that interview.

Right.

He has also been continuing on his social media nonsense, taking big swings, blah, blah, blah.

The Sydney Morning Herald.

did a piece called Oh for Pete's Sake, The Rise and Fall and Possible Rise of Pete Evans that is great.

They did a little recap of like previously on Pete Evans.

Okay.

And here is what they said.

Over time, the pronouncements became less funny.

COVID-19 was a hoax.

Fluoride in water was bad for you.

Vaccinations were dangerous.

He took to wearing MAGA hats, sharing posts from and in favor of Donald Trump.

He hosted conspiracy theorists on his podcast.

He shared the conspiracy theories of QAnon, according to which a cabal of pedophiles ruled the world and manipulates the sheeple.

Oh, catching up with Pete.

Right.

Yeah.

So now he's doing MAGA.

Now he's doing QAnon.

Now he's gone explicitly pro-Trump.

Then in November of 2020, he makes a post on social media that really, after all of this shit, this turns out to be the uncrossable line.

Okay.

I would like to say, before we get into this.

Oh, is it going to be like the biggest trigger warning imaginable?

Holy shit.

My mind is racing.

Big old trigger warning for very explicit anti-Semitism

and for Nazi references.

What?

So here's what I'm going to do.

I am going to send you the meme that he posted.

Oh no, it's a meme.

It's a meme.

Oh, God.

Which I just sent to you.

Okay.

Wait.

I don't understand this.

I'm livid.

How is there something problematic on the internet and I don't know what it means?

Oh, buddy.

So it's a cartoon drawing of a caterpillar and a butterfly.

And they're sitting at like, they're having coffee.

It's like a political cartoon type of thing.

I believe they're having wine.

Oh, sorry.

I believe that is stemware, which I find just like a very funny little detail.

The caterpillar has a MAGA hat on.

And the butterfly has like big black wings and has some some sort of sign that you're about to tell me is like super fucked up.

But it's like some sort of like Aztec sun symbol.

Something deeply not Aztec, but yes.

Something round with little spokes.

Yep.

And the caterpillar says, you've changed.

And the butterfly says, we're supposed to.

Correct.

I do not.

I am at no, no, no.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Oh, you've been listening to some old replyals.

Welcome a couple reply-ons.

Okay, you've changed, we're supposed to.

So the implication here is that the butterfly is the next natural evolution of the caterpillar, right?

Yes.

The thing that makes this meme especially troubling is the symbol on the butterfly's wings.

Okay.

That symbol is called the Black Sun.

Okay.

It is a variant on an ancient Norse symbol called the Sonnenrad.

The Sonnenrad looks different.

This is the Black Sun.

The Black Sun was first used by Heinrich Himmler.

Oh.

He used it as a floor mosaic in a castle that was used as the headquarters for the SS.

Okay.

It is believed to have stood for victory amongst the Nazis.

This is according to, there's a Brandeis scholar who has done a ton of work on far-right extremism.

Basically, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the Black Sun has been embraced by white nationalists, by neo-Nazis, and by other far-right and specifically anti-Semitic and racist groups and individuals.

Most notably, this was a prominent symbol used at Charlottesville.

It was an image displayed by the Christchurch mosque shooter.

And it's been repeatedly used in very public ways by specific neo-Nazi groups in Australia itself.

If you know this symbol, you know it from Nazi movements.

So this cartoon, the MAGA caterpillar, is saying you've changed, and the Nazi butterfly is saying we're supposed to.

So the MAGA movement is supposed to grow into like a black-pilled Nazi SS situation.

Yes, correct.

Man, I wish I didn't know about this.

Oh, buddy.

I wish this was still gibberish to me.

I'm sorry, and also I'm not.

Also,

you might argue, maybe Pete Evans just didn't know and he thought this was like a MAGA shit posting meme.

Right.

I would like to introduce you to the fucking comments on this meme.

I just sent you a screen grab.

So a commenter says, the symbol on the butterfly is a representation of the black sun.

And then Pete Evans replies, I was waiting for someone to see that.

So they're like, yo, dude, this is like some Nazi shit.

And he's like, I know.

He's like, right?

He fully acknowledged on the post itself that like he knew what this symbol was and that he was like waiting for someone to see it lol.

The other thing that makes this even rougher is that Gizmodo did some reporting where they did a Google reverse image search when this first came out, where they were like, where the fuck else has this shown up?

I've never seen this before.

It's like a weird, shitty meme.

Yeah.

And they reported that they found that it had been previously posted one other time that they found on the internet.

Okay.

And that was on a neo-Nazi website.

Oh, like a straight-up, like neo-nazis.com.

Swastika gifts, whatever else.

Yes.

So like that genuinely appears to be where it came from.

When you were like, what's he reading?

Where's he getting this stuff?

I was like, ooh, I never get there.

Oh my God.

Uh-oh.

This dude is fully, apparently on neo-Nazi websites.

There hasn't been, I didn't find other reporting that confirmed that.

Also, like as soon as Pete Evans posted it, it popped up on a million other places on the internet.

So it's hard to do that search at this point.

So I can't confirm that, but also I don't have any reason to believe that Gizmodo was like making that shit up.

I don't know why they would.

Also, it's like at best, he didn't find it on the neo-Nazi website, but he was like DMing with somebody who did get it from the Nazi website, and he was like, that's lit.

I'm going to post it.

Right.

Which is not that much better.

I'm going to post it and I'm going to show my work like I'm in grade school math class and be like, see, I really get it.

See, I understand this Nazi symbol.

Boom.

So what is the fallout from this?

Oh, Michael.

First, we're going to talk about his response.

Okay.

He said that the image was, quote, like a a Rorschach test, and that people should, quote, be careful to jump to conclusions.

What?

He's like, you guys are all jumping to conclusions.

This is just an inkblot, and you're seeing what you want to see, and what you want to see is a Nazi symbol and a MAGA hat.

What?

It's literally like a political cartoon with like words and very legible symbols in it.

It's so explicit and clear.

It's not like a photo of a cloud.

So then he goes forth and publishes a full non-apology on Instagram.

Oh, just like, yeah, I did it and it whips.

Like, this was cool, and you shouldn't be mad at me.

Nope, I just sent you a quote.

Oh, my fucking God.

Yeah.

It says, sincere apologies to anyone who misinterpreted a previous post of a caterpillar and a butterfly having a chat over a drink and perceived that I was promoting hatred.

I look forward to studying all the symbols that have ever existed and research them thoroughly before posting.

Fuck this guy.

Fuck this guy.

Right, right.

So earlier you were like, hey, maybe there's some mental illness stuff happening, blah, blah, blah.

Counterpoint, maybe he's a master horrible troll.

Counterpoint, fuck this guy.

Counterpoint, here's what he actually says and does.

I hate this shit where it's like somebody posts something with an extremely obvious intended meaning.

And then you're like, oh, that intended meaning is bad.

It's like, oh, I guess you just don't understand a cartoon about a butterfly.

Sorry, you brought all your weird baggage to it, to these Nazi symbols that I'm posting in an affirming way.

This is not how like words and symbols work.

They are in fact intended to convey meaning.

Also, I have done the thing where I've posted shit online and then somebody would be like, hey, like that's actually from like a bad source or like there's there's shit in there that like you don't know what you mean with that.

And I have like deleted it immediately and apologized.

Having a grandma moment where you post something that like you didn't totally understand is something that happens.

Yeah.

But, like, much more telling than what happens is what happens afterwards.

Yep, totally.

Because, like, I don't know what the fuck this black sun symbol means.

I, I, like, I can see myself posting some, like, weird, like, here's a design I found on the internet, whatever.

But then, if somebody's like, hey, Mike, that's a Nazi symbol, I'd be like, oh, fuck, sorry, Jesus.

You wouldn't go, hey, man, sorry you saw a picture of a butterfly and you decided to get all your panties in a bunch or whatever.

Right?

Like, like, that's absolutely

not a response of a thoughtful and considerate human.

I guess somebody doesn't like internet humor.

Like, no.

It's the most condescending possible way to tell somebody to fuck off, right?

Oh, fucking God.

So I'm going to do some real quick hits here on all of the consequences because it is like a little avalanche, right?

Okay.

November 2020, his publisher drops him and tells booksellers to get in touch with them if they want to return any of his books.

That same month, the network that he had sort of signed a deal with to be on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Oh, nice.

Drops him from that show.

His fee was rumored to be between $100,000 and $200,000.

In November that same month, Kohl's, Kmart, Target, and Woolworths all pull all of their Pete Evans branded products from their shelves.

He has like a branded foods line.

And all of their statements emphasize that they have, quote unquote, no direct business relationship with him, but that they have been getting his products through a third-party distributor.

Okay, like they're fully going, I don't know her, about someone whose products they have had on their shelves for quite some time, right?

One of the products that they pull from their shelves is something called his Jamaican simmer sauce,

which had fish in it, and the label didn't disclose that it had fish in it.

Good God.

In December, the next month, Facebook shuts down his account.

In January, Spotify pulls his podcast from their platform for spreading COVID misinformation.

Whoa.

And then in February, Instagram shuts down his account.

It is amazing what you have to do to actually get canceled.

Absolutely.

A little coda to this part of the story, and then we've got a coda to the story more broadly.

Coda, coda.

In February of 2021, an academic comes forward named Dr.

Kaz Ross,

who is a university professor who studies sort of far-right and extremist movements.

She comes forward and says that she was sent screenshots of neo-Nazis discussing Pete Evans as a recruitment target years earlier.

Oh, what?

Right.

I mean, so grain of salt here.

I don't have any reason to believe that this.

doctor is not a credible source, but this story was published in the Daily Mail.

So like a gigantic grain of salt.

At the same time, like I don't know why this person would make up screenshots.

So what's in the screenshots?

It's, it's Nazis talking among themselves about like, this guy would be great to recruit.

So the screenshots, the press that I saw was like, we've reviewed the screenshots, but we're not printing the screenshots for whatever reason.

Okay.

So they're just saying there was discussion happening that was explicit about recruiting Pete Evans.

Pete Evans responds.

Okay.

I just sent you a quote.

Go for it.

I am definitely not the right fit as I celebrate and love all of the different cultures on the planet as I believe that biodiversity and our wonderful uniqueness is the the key for harmony if somebody says like mike are you a nazi i don't know if i'd say like i'm not the right fit

i think i'd say

i think i'd say something slightly more forceful yeah i feel like my honest to god response to that would be like jesus christ fucking no god the schedule doesn't suit me i can see why he would be an asset to their movement and why they would see him as a credible target.

It's unclear whether or not they did.

Right.

It sounds like the only thing we have evidence of is that they wanted to recruit him.

Yes.

Because like me and you can sit around and say like we should have Oprah as a guest on the show.

But like that doesn't mean that we've reached out.

It doesn't mean that she's receptive.

I mean people talk about recruiting all kinds of other people.

I think the fact that Nazis were thinking about him as a target and like fairly early on seeing him as somebody who could be a vessel for their message is like very telling.

Absolutely.

Even if it doesn't seem like there's any evidence that it went further than that, or at least that we know of.

Yeah, and again, he's already laid his cards on the table so much prior to this instance, right?

That like folks who are part of active neo-Nazi movements are like, hey, you know who we should get?

We should get that guy.

I would like to think that if my name ever comes up in chat logs between two Nazis, it's like, fuck that Michael Hobbes guy.

Absolutely.

That is what I want the Nazis to be saying about me.

I will say this, to the aforementioned death threats.

Never great to get a death threat.

To get them from the people I've been getting them from, pretty good.

That's the bleakest thing you've ever said, but also, yes.

Fair and reasonable.

Yeah.

So you might think that this was the end of Pete Evans in the public eye.

You're fucking kidding me.

This is not the last chapter?

Here is the coda.

Oh, my God.

That very same month, February of 2021, Pete Evans announced his newest venture, which was...

Running for Senate.

What?

Oh, God, did he win?

Is he like the president of Australia now?

No, he's not.

He's not.

And they don't have one of those.

So he ran as a candidate for Senate with a party called the Great Australian Party.

The Gap?

The Gap!

Fall into the gap.

Gee, I wonder what their platform is.

Do you want to guess?

I mean,

it's all this bullshit, no?

Like,

I don't know, probably closed borders and like.

Mm-hmm.

But weird.

Like, what even is like a...

eugenics fucking political party.

I mean, so yes, you nailed the first one.

They believe in zero net immigration.

Okay.

They think that enviro groups are, quote, funded by foreign interests with hidden agendas.

George Soros playing the hits.

They think that vandalism is a major political issue, and they think it's a result of the quote-unquote lack of social responsibility from families, schools, and courts.

And they think that parents should be responsible for the costs of all vandalism from their kids until their kids are of age.

That one's just weird.

On top of all of that, they also want to abolish abolish personal income tax.

They want to abolish family court.

Like, they are arguing for extremely fringe shit.

Abolishing, okay, abolishing family court is like, this is a bunch of like angry divorced dads, isn't it?

So, that, all of the family stuff, I was like, oh, this is all like new world order/slash men's rights.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The thing to note here is that, like, just to be really clear, the Great Australian Party is not a significant threat to any major parties currently.

In 2019, they won 0.04%

of the vote in one of their highest vote-getting elections, right?

One of their best margins.

That's like eight people.

It's so teeny tiny.

So Pete Evans announced his run for office in February.

By the fall, he had sort of quietly pulled down his campaign website and a reporter called him to be like, hey, did you pull out of the race?

And he sort of confirms that he has pulled out of the race.

The story that runs about this has the headline, thank Evans for that.

Oh, that's pretty good.

Really good.

And it's on a website called Crikey,

just to get it as Australian as possible.

So that's where we stand today.

He's no longer running for office.

He's no longer on TV.

He still has his podcast, which he continues to have extremely questionable guests on.

He still has his line of foods that appear to mostly just be sold directly through his website.

He is on social media, but he's on like Telegram.

Oh, I didn't even know you could like be on Telegram.

Okay.

He is, you know, still around.

He's not completely gone, but also most folks just aren't giving him much oxygen at this point.

So the thing that I feel left with in this episode is thinking, as you and I often do, about like, what are the systemic ways that this could have gone differently.

I think that media could have cooled it much earlier on the like there's no suggestion that he holds racist or anti-Semitic views or we don't know how he feels personally or there is some

real garbage both sidesism that allowed this to continue considerably longer than it needed to.

I would say for me personally, it felt very clear pretty early on.

in this timeline that this was like not a great dude.

Yeah.

When you're like, hey man, if everybody ate paleo, nobody would have autism.

That's a pretty good sign that that is not A, one of the great thinkers of our time and B, not one of the great humanitarians of our time.

And I do think if someone on his team or in the press or at the TV network or anything at that point, like that feels like the first major line crossed in this story is when he's talking about autism and autistic people.

If someone at that point had gone, hey, wait a minute, if this is a dude who's willing to say this thing in public, I bet there's more.

I also think that like celebrity and wellness media can also think of themselves as kind of the first line of defense for this stuff.

You know how they tell you, like, keep monitoring your mole to see if it becomes like skin cancer?

You see if like, does it have jagged edges and stuff?

Something about this to me, these celebrities that will say little hints of potentially more odious views, even if it's not necessarily an iceberg of their existing views, but it's like, oh, they're, they're in like a media environment that might be sending them down a radicalization pathway.

And like, I just need to check in on this before I give them more attention.

A lot of media is like, well, we're just wellness media.

Or like, we're just celebrity pop culture media.

We don't have to think about this stuff.

But as we've seen so many times, this is a gateway drug for people.

And also like neo-Nazis and other radical groups are like monitoring pop culture figures.

I think that's right.

And I also think like there are some lessons here to your point just now.

No, it's actually like extra incumbent on health and wellness media to fact check the shit out of themselves, to get to the bottom of stuff, to ask tough questions of people like Pete Evans, even when you're doing a food diary of your emu meatballs and activated almonds and whatever else, right?

Like I think all of this is because of the ways in which both it just sells people like straight up misinformation and disinformation at times, but also because of the ways in which it softens the ground for this kind of weird, very right-wing rhetoric, it feels really important to like get to the bottom of what's going on.

Right.

Because you're bringing somebody into people's homes and you're establishing them as an authority on health stuff.

And so when they turn to their like, vaccines are full of metal or whatever, then it's like, well, they're cashing in the currency that you've given them.

Absolutely.

I mean, like, those are some of my sort of like, here are the things that I'm left thinking about.

What are some of the things that you're left thinking about?

I don't know.

I'm in a pessimistic mood lately.

Me too.

This does seem like some sort of harbinger of what's to come.

Yeah.

We need to understand these pathways and we need to be really clear-eyed about what they are.

I think there's a lot of like weird retreat to abstraction where it's like, well, everybody's getting radicalized or like the internet is affecting society throughout.

And it's like, no, we have a problem with right-wing radicalization.

We're having a resurgent, sometimes violent, anti-democratic right-wing movement that is now emboldened.

Whenever we talk about like media literacy and misinformation, there is misinformation across the ideological spectrum.

Of course there is, right?

But the kind of misinformation that we need to worry about and the kind of misinformation that is politically salient is right-wing misinformation.

It is misinformation that carries with it this kind of bullshit, like conspiratorial, like Jewish people, minorities, people who are going to deserve the crackdown that is coming.

And so I think there needs to be a real push to be like very specific about what the actual threat is.

The threat is not people believing things that are not true.

If people believe in Bigfoot, I don't know that I really give a shit.

The threat to the country is people who are joining violent, quasi-terror movements like QAnon and the Proud Boys and whatever the fuck that Black Sun symbol is, who pose an actual physical threat to other people's safety.

I mean, I think that's exactly right.

There's this sort of constant impulse to depoliticize what you are calling internet poisoning, which I think is exactly the right term, right?

And there is a clear right-wing impulse here that is getting carried much further than any of this kind of stuff on the left goes, right?

Right.

And is leading to much more dramatic and like physical repercussions, real-world repercussions.

Yeah.

I'm totally with you.

I mean, I think the real lesson of all of this is that if we want to save democracy, we have to cancel paleo.

That's number one.

But, Mike, then how will we equalize to our natural, beautiful proportions?

How will we become human?