Such a relief to see Australian companies have some standards. Finally. Those standards have become very clear in the past 48 hours as conspiracy pedlar Pete Evans has been dumped by brand after brand, business after business.
The celebrity chef already had a sizeable list of reasons not to promote him, before he took to social media on Monday and wrought untold damage on his personal brand. Five years ago, his paleo book for babies was dumped by publishers because it suggested feeding infants a DIY baby formula made from bone broth. He has backed anti-vaxxers, anti-fluoriders, anti-sunscreeners. Most recently he spruiked a device which he claimed would cure COVID-19.
All this has added up to a celebrity willing to gamble with Australian lives. Yet media companies, supermarket chains and publishers backed him, loved him and allowed him unfettered access to Australian minds, time after time. It was not until Evans shared an image regularly used by neo-Nazis that corporate Australia decided his time in the sun was over.
On Monday, Evans shared on social media a cartoon featuring a butterfly with the black sun, or sonnenrad, on its wing. We’ve all seen that motif before. It appeared in photos Brenton Tarrant posted to the internet, on his backpack, before he murdered 51 New Zealanders in their place of worship. Heinrich Himmler decorated Wewelsburg Castle with the black sun, so it became a leitmotif for the hideous uprising of the new ultra-right.
Read the article by Jenna Price in The Sydney Morning Herald.