Pizzagate conspiracy theory
Debunked conspiracy theory about alleged child-sex ring / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"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.[1][2][3] It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.[2][3][4]
In March 2016, the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, 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.[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.[8] The restaurant owner and staff also received death threats from conspiracy theorists.[9]
Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. It also generated another offshoot conspiracy theory, called Frazzledrip, which involved Hillary Clinton participating in the ritual murder of a child. Pizzagate resurged in 2020, mainly due to QAnon. While initially it was spread by only the far-right, it has since been spread by teens on TikTok "who don't otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold: the biggest Pizzagate spreaders on TikTok appear to otherwise be mostly interested in topics of viral dance moves and Black Lives Matter".[10] 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.[11]