Pizzagate (2016+)
(Washington, D.C., United States of America)

The “Official” Story

“Pizzagate” is a (debunked?) conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.

In March 2016, the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, was hacked in a spear-phishing attack. WikiLeaks published his emails in November 2016. 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.

Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists, and others who had urged Clinton’s prosecution over the emails, spread the conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan, and Twitter. 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 restaurant owner and staff also received death threats from conspiracy theorists.

Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Pizzagate resurged in 2020, an election year, mainly due to QAnon. While initially it was spread by only the far-right, it has since been spread by children and teenagers on TikTok “who don’t otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold”. The conspiracy theory has developed and become less partisan and political in nature, with less emphasis on Clinton and more on the alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.

Origins

On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting antisemitic and white supremacist material which said it was run by a Jewish New York lawyer falsely claimed 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. Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta’s emails. Proponents of the conspiracy theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking. Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.

The story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year. 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. The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the conspiracy theory.

Source: Wikipedia