Pizzagate

2016

Date: October-December 2016 · Place: 4chan · Reddit · Twitter · Comet Ping Pong, Washington DC · Figures: Edgar Maddison Welch, gunman · James Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong owner · John Podesta, Clinton campaign chair (target of conspiracy) · Tags: Conspiracy, OffPlatformConsequence, Wikileaks 01. From Email to Pizzeria On 30 October 2016 a 4chan post claims to have decoded WikiLeaks-released emails from John Podesta as a pedophile ring code, with 'cheese pizza' meaning child pornography. The thread migrates to /r/pizzagate on Reddit, then to Infowars, Twitter, and Facebook. The conspiracy converges on a Washington DC pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong owned by James Alefantis, who has no ties to the Clinton campaign beyond knowing Podesta socially. The restaurant receives death threats for a month. 02. Self-Investigation On 4 December 2016 Edgar Maddison Welch drives from Salisbury, North Carolina to Washington with an AR-15. He enters Comet Ping Pong, fires three rounds, searches the building, finds no children, surrenders. He tells police he came to 'self-investigate' the conspiracy. Pizzagate is the first viral political conspiracy of the platform era to produce an armed man at a real address. It does not end the conspiracy. It demonstrates the throughput from imageboard to gun, a circuit QAnon will industrialize within ten months. Sources • Adam Goldman, 'The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter's Questions,' New York Times, 7 December 2016 • Marc Fisher, John Woodrow Cox, Peter Hermann, 'Pizzagate: From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in DC,' Washington Post, 6 December 2016 • Amanda Robb, 'Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal,' Rolling Stone, 16 November 2017