This was published 4 years ago
Oh, for Pete's sake: The rise and fall (and possible rise) of Pete Evans
By Karl Quinn
Just a few years ago Pete Evans was one of the biggest stars on Australian television. Now he's a pariah, thanks to a stream of increasingly outlandish health claims – and the deployment of some dubious Nazi-connected imagery.
Who is he?
Pete Evans.Credit: Joe Benke
Peter Daryl Evans is a 47-year-old chef-turned-television-host-turned-wellness advocate with a massive social media profile (about 1.8 million followers). Best known as the co-host (with Manu Feildel) of Seven's My Kitchen Rules from its inception in 2010, Evans has become increasingly vocal in his espousal of fringe beliefs in the diet, health and wellbeing space. Now, it seems, we can add politics to the list.
Our first glimpse of it was benign enough: in 2012 he told the My Life on a Plate column in Sunday Life (in The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald) that his breakfast intake included "alkalised water" and "activated almonds", and immediately became the butt of a long-running joke.
But 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 (Make America Great Again) hats, sharing posts from and in favour of Donald Trump, he hosted conspiracy theorists on his podcast, he shared the conspiracy theories of QAnon, according to which a cabal of paedophiles rules the world and manipulates the "sheeple", a wicked deception from which Trump is determined to free us all.
There have been dubious health claims – some of them labelled dangerous by the Australian Medical Association, among others – about bone broth (good for babies), dairy (bad for bones) and a high-protein low-carbohydrate diet (it can cure cancer).
In May, citing declining ratings for MKR, Seven dropped Evans; interestingly, Feildel remains on the books. But even as Evans has drifted further away from the mainstream that made him a star, he has found a new home, and arguably a more avid audience, on the fringes.
Why is he in the news?
On Monday, Evans posted on social media a one-shot cartoon in which a caterpillar tells a butterfly "you've changed". The original is the work of American illustrator Maria Scrivan, and is utterly benign. But the version Evans posted has been modified (by whom is unclear; no trace of it prior to his post appears online): the caterpillar now wears a MAGA cap, and the butterfly replies, "We are supposed to". Crucially, the pattern on the butterfly's wings is a sonnenrad, or black sun. Adapted from an ancient Norse symbol, this particular iteration was adapted by senior Nazi figure Heinrich Himmler in 1934; recently it has become popular with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including the Australian terrorist responsible for the Christchurch massacre.
A white supremacist with the black sun on his shield at a Charlottesville rally in 2017, which turned deadly. Credit: New York Times
When someone asked Evans in the comments if it was indeed a black sun, he replied, "I was waiting for someone to notice that." But as criticism mounted, he deleted the post and replaced it with a rainbow heart in which he claimed he had been entirely innocent as to the meaning of the sonnenrad. On Tuesday, he posted a video in which he claimed he'd had to Google what neo-Nazi meant, adding, "I don't think there is anything else I need to say, except for peace."
Did anyone buy it?
Apart from his hard-core followers, no. On Monday, Pan Macmillan – which has published 19 Evans cookbooks – announced it would end its commercial relationship with him. On Tuesday morning, it was reported he'd been dumped from Ten's I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here, which he was due to start shooting this week. Throughout the day, more brands and retailers followed suit: Big W, Woolworths, Coles, House, Baccarat. The chef-turned-shaman was officially too hot to handle.
Why does it matter?
Because Evans is not just a TV chef any more. He is a mouthpiece for a growing branch of the wellness movement aligned with far-right conspiracy theories. Their views are anti-science, often untestable, and serve to divide society by undermining any sense of a shared reality in favour of individual truths. Many of his pronouncements also undermine public health programs, in the areas of COVID-19 testing and vaccination, for example.
As his social media profile has become more conspiratorial, Evans' fan base has grown.
Evans is often evasive in his pronouncements, saying "it makes you think" rather than "here's what I think", but he's playing to a sense of scepticism that increasingly looks to extreme solutions for the ills of the world, many of which can, in this mythos, be traced back to the conspirators (who are typically Jewish, or reptiles, or perhaps both).
Like Trump, Evans has outgrown the media that helped create him. With his enormous social media following, his own web-based platforms to get his increasingly dubious messages out, and the growth of a right-wing branch of the wellness movement to support him, Evans without the support of the mainstream might just be a more dangerous proposition than Evans with it.