Self-proclaimed champion of the “battler” Pauline Hanson has been caught at a luxury resort in Italy with mining and fossil fuels billionaire Gina Rinehart.
The two key figures in Australia’s far-right “MAGA” movement have been photographed at the Grand Hotel San Pietro in Taormina, on the Italian island of Sicily.
Hanson has been touring the UK and meeting with far-right actors, including convicted criminal Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Hanson, who was this year “donated” a $2 million Cirrus G7 aeroplane by Rinehart, is photographed crossing the pool deck of the luxury, $2,000-a-night hotel, on the sparkling shores of the Mediterranean.
Rinehart is the biggest funder of far-right disinformation group “Advance”, which claims to represent “ordinary Aussies”, but which is funded by some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals.
The story was broken on social media, with a series of photographs posted to Instagram, including of Rinehart swimming in the pool.
The mining and fossil fuels baron, Australia’s richest person, is an avid supporter of Donald Trump and MAGA, and has been regularly photographed at Trump events, including at the White House and at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Rinehart is a notorious climate denier and a prominent conspiracy theorist.
In 2021 she wrote to workers at her Roy Hill mining empire recommending they drink hot water twice daily “with fresh lemon pieces or juice and honey to taste” because “Covid-19 does not like heat”.
At around the same time Rinehart gave a speech to high school students attacking climate change “propaganda” and boasted that she had previously helped convince students that climate change was not human induced.
Hanson has repeated much the same climate disinformation spread by Rinehart, including last month lying to the public and labelling climate change a “hoax” in an address to the National Press Club.
Hanson’s far-right One Nation has surged in the polls since December’s Bondi Terror attack.
“One Nation’s massive increase in support has corresponded with a vast, multi-pronged social media disinformation campaign”
That massive increase in support has corresponded with a vast, multi-pronged social media disinformation campaign, with scores of sham accounts pushing pro-Hanson and pro-One Nation material. Many of the accounts are based offshore.
The aggressive disinformation campaign is extremely similar to that used by Trump and MAGA, as well as by actors pushing for Brexit in the UK.
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Thank you,
Anthony Klan
Editor, The Klaxon
