Australian Idol winner Natalie Gauci promotes bizarre Trump conspiracy theory
A former Australian Idol winner is among the high-profile celebrities promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory to her social media followers.
Former Australian Idol winner Natalie Gauci has promoted a series of bizarre claims – including that US President Donald Trump was fighting a secret war against paedophile rings run by the global elite – to her followers on social media.
It’s one of several examples of high-profile celebrities promoting the so-called “QAnon” conspiracy theory, whose followers believe that an anonymous individual or group – going by the name of “Q” – has uncovered a secret global cabal of satanic, cannibalistic paedophiles.
Followers subscribe to the baseless belief that Mr Trump is leading a war against these abusers and their “deep state” allies in governments, business and the media worldwide.
The conspiracy has gained traction among Australian social media users in recent months, prompted by theories swirling around global lockdowns that have been promoted by high-profile figures.
Australian Facebook groups and pages focused on the conspiracy theory have gained thousands of new followers this year, with membership in one large public Australian Facebook group spiking nearly 30 per cent in July. Since the start of 2020, that group has added more than 10,000 members.
Instagram pages have also gained thousands of followers, while on TikTok, users have created new hashtags to spread the conspiracy after the platform blocked several of the main hashtags related to QAnon.
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Last month, Australian Idol winner Natalie Gauci posted a string of QAnon-linked conspiracy theories to her official Facebook page and its 5000-plus followers with the comment: “Sugar coating is for Willy Wonka people’s (sic).”
The post suggested that the royal family was responsible for Princess Diana’s death and were “Satan-worshipping, child traffickers” as well as making claims that the World Health Organisation (WHO) was part-owned by Bill Gates, billionaire financier George Soros and the Rockefeller family.
It added the claim that Trump had “crashed the Fed bank (and) bought all of the gold … meaning that Trump is now the chairman for the global banking system with the people’s money”.
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Gauci told one follower that she “can’t take the credit for writing this. I found it and copy and paste it,” also telling another that she had “known for a few years now”.
The now 38-year-old achieved stardom after winning the 2007 series of Australian Idol but had largely disappeared from public view until she resurfaced recently on The Voice as a contestant.
She told the program she had “lost her way” after the Idol win, but over the past seven years she had built herself “a whole new persona” with the help of “spiritual healing” and meditation.
However Gauci is not the first Australian celebrity to post material including claims and terminology linked to QAnon conspiracies to their followers.
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In May, celebrity chef Pete Evans shared two graphics as part of disappearing Instagram posts to his 250,000-plus followers.
One linked “the great awakening” – a catch-all term tied to core QAnon conspiracy theories – to opaque references to a “secret space program” and “inner Earth civilisations”.
Another claimed that a number of high-profile people, including celebrities and politicians, would soon be arrested for “major crimes against humanity” with the stings disguised as coronavirus cases by the media using a series of code words.
RELATED: Two words that sparked Evans’ downfall
Since then, Evans has stopped posting material explicitly linked to QAnon, instead sharing conspiracy-themed material suggesting the COVID-19 pandemic was “a great big set-up”, among other claims, although several of his posts have included references to an “awakening”.
Evans has gained more than 10,000 new followers since he started posting the conspiracies in late May, Storyful found.
Many of the largest QAnon groups on Facebook are private. In recent months, Facebook said it had removed pages dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory for violating the same rules against fake personas and inauthentic behaviour used by government influence operations.
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