Pizzagate conspiracy theory
"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails.
Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring.
One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C.[5][6] Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists, and others who had urged Clinton's prosecution over her use of an unrelated private email server spread the conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and Twitter.
[7] In response, a man from North Carolina traveled to Comet Ping Pong to investigate the conspiracy and fired a rifle inside the restaurant to break the lock on a door to a storage room during his search.
The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton's property.
[7] The original Reddit post, removed some time between November 4 and 21, alleged the involvement of Comet Ping Pong: Everyone associated with the business is making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors.
[3]The story was picked up by other fake news websites like InfoWars, Planet Free Will,[9] and The Vigilant Citizen,[17][18] and was promoted by alt-right activists such as Mike Cernovich, Brittany Pettibone, and Jack Posobiec.
[19] Other promoters included: David Seaman, former writer for TheStreet.com,[20] CBS46 anchor Ben Swann,[21] basketball player Andrew Bogut,[22] and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson,[23] as well as the German edition of The Epoch Times, a far-right Falun Gong-associated newspaper.
[26][27] Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, said that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam, and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots.
[30] By June 2020, the conspiracy theory found renewed popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #Pizzagate were reaching over 80 million views (see relevant section).
In Turkey, the allegations were reported by pro-government newspapers (i.e., those supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), such as Sabah, A Haber, Yeni Şafak, Akşam and Star.
[31] Efe Sozeri, a columnist for The Daily Dot, suggested Turkish government sources were pushing this story to distract attention from a child abuse scandal there in March 2016.
For example, Amanda Kleinman of Heavy Breathing deleted her Twitter account after receiving negative comments connecting her and her band to the conspiracy theory.
[40] East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Illuminati.
[43] On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant's walls, a desk, and a door.
[8] In an interview with The New York Times, Welch later said that he regretted how he had handled the situation but did not dismiss the conspiracy theory, and rejected the description of it as "fake news".
[62][63] In 2018, the city of Portsmouth, England experienced its own version of Pizzagate when the Scottish owner of a vaping business was targeted in what the Sunday Times called a "xenophobic campaign".
Judge William Mousley QC also imposed a three-year restraining order and was quoted as follows: "Mr Cheape said he saw 15 to 20 screenshots a day regarding him, his partner, and his business.
[68] Eight years after the initial incident at Comet Ping Pong, on January 4, 2025, two police officers from Kannapolis, North Carolina, pulled over Welch's vehicle at a traffic stop (he was a passenger) over an outstanding warrant for his arrest over a felony probation violation.
[82] In an interview with NPR on November 27, 2016, Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis referred to the conspiracy theory as "an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story" and a "coordinated political attack".
[83] Syndicated columnist Daniel Ruth wrote that the conspiracy theorists' assertions were "dangerous and damaging fake allegations" and that they were "repeatedly debunked, disproved and dismissed".
[44] Stefanie MacWilliams, who wrote an article promoting the conspiracy on Planet Free Will, was subsequently reported by the Toronto Star as saying, "I really have no regrets and it's honestly really grown our audience".
[90][91][92] Academic Roger Lancaster likened the impact of Pizzagate to the Satanic panic of the 1980s: at the time, hundreds of daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children.
"[97] InfoWars also issued a correction on its website and Jones said, "I want our viewers and listeners to know that we regret any negative impact our commentaries may have had on Mr. Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong, or its employees.
We apologize to the extent our commentaries could be construed as negative statements about Mr. Alefantis or Comet Ping Pong, and we hope that anyone else involved in commenting on Pizzagate will do the same thing.
They alleged that John Podesta drank the blood and bodily fluids of other humans in Satanic rituals, which Politico says "soon morphed into the '#pizzagate' conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong".
[100] On November 2, 2016, Flynn tweeted a link to a story with unfounded accusations and wrote, "U decide – NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc ... MUST READ!"
[112] A related conspiracy theory known as "Frazzledrip" (sometimes spelled "Frazzled.rip") emerged in 2018, claiming that an "extreme snuff film" was recovered from Anthony Weiner's stolen laptop and was circulating on the dark web.
According to that story, the file named "Frazzled.rip" was hidden in a folder called "life insurance" in Weiner's computer: the video contained in that file was said to show Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin raping and murdering a young girl, drinking her adrenochrome-rich blood in a Satanic ritual, and "tak[ing] turns wearing the little girl's face like a mask".
[10] It focuses on an alleged global elite of child sex-traffickers, ranging from politicians to powerful businesspeople and celebrities such as Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen.
