If you come across an article alleging that Podesta and Clinton are conducting satanic sex rituals on young boys while dining on anchovy slices in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, dont take it seriously. But if youd like to understand the web of innuendo and fabrication thats entangled whomever shared that article in your news feedand perhaps even attempt to disabuse your Facebook friend of their strange ideasread on.
Pizzagate began gaining traction last month, around the time of the presidential election, when misguided vigilant citizens on 4chan and
Reddit discovered that Alefantis appeared several times in the cache of hacked emails belonging to Podesta that were published by Wikileaks. All of the emails to Alefantis were related to a fundraising dinner for the Clinton campaign, which is not surprising. He is something of a celebrity chef in D.C., and the only actual fact on which the Pizzagaters have based their theory is his adjacency to Democratic power brokers. He is a casual acquaintance of Podestas brother Tony,
according to the
New York Times, and he was once in a romantic relationship with the prominent Clinton ally David Brock. That said, Alefantis is very far from the candidates inner circle, and has never even met Clinton herself, he told the
Times.
Reddit has since deactivated a board devoted to Pizzagate theorizing, and
the Reddit post that seems to have first popularized the Pizzagate idea, on /r/The_Donald, has been removed. (
We dont want witchhunts on our site, reads the message you receive when you try to access /r/Pizzagate.) Reddits belated clampdown was not enough to deter the peddlers of conspiracy theories and fake news that got in on the action, however, generating headlines like Pizzagate: Podesta pedo perps and Clintons international child sex trafficking ring exposed (
Sott.net), and Pizza Gate- Clintons run a child sex trafficking ring (
Steemit.com).
Low-level political boosters like Alefantis are a dime a dozen in D.C., on both sides of the party divide. How did a passing connection to the Podesta brothers turn him into a deviant mastermind, presiding over grease-stained child sex parties for the Democratic elite? The evidence, as laid out by Pizzagate believers, is startlingly thin. Theres a good chance that youre not familiar with this, because youre probably not a pedophile, the narrator of a
popular YouTube Pizzagate video intones. But pizza is actually a term used by pedophiles, to describe pedophilia, or child porn.
If you take this ridiculous assertion to be true, Podestas inbox is suddenly brimming with discussion of pedophilia: an
invitation to a pizza lunch and discussion of the upcoming Supreme Court session at Georgetown University (
Predators in the halls of academia!), an
advertisement for everyday low prices in the frozen pizza aisle at the supermarket chain Safeway (
I dont know how this frozen pizza works, but it sounds disgusting and painful for everyone involved!). A lost handkerchief emblazoned with a pizza design mentioned in one Podesta email clearly signifies a preference for underage sex, according to the narrator of the same YouTube video.
If all of this seems like a wild leap of imagination to you, well, thats just the territory were in. Anti-Clinton conspiracies have populated the fringe right-wing media since Hillarys husband was in office. The Pizzagaters are also deeply invested in the idea that John and Tony Podesta participate in occult sex rituals
based on an email from Marina Abramovic, a world-famous performance artist who sometimes uses violent and sexual imagery in her work. Once you earnestly believe that your political enemies are capable of murdering their own staffers, as one
particularly tenacious theory accuses the Clintons of doing, or that they spend their Saturdays beheading small animals and bathing in the blood, an elaborate system of culinary codewords for child rape might not feel so far off.
Alerted to the abuses that were supposedly being carried out by the Clintons and their allies at Comet Ping Pong, self-appointed investigators began scouring the social media accounts of Alefantis and his employees, generating even more evidence against them. A photo of what looks like Comets walk-in refrigerator quickly was taken to be some sort of sex dungeon. The crossed ping-pong paddles pictured on the restaurants menu refer not to the actual ping-pong tables inside the restaurant, the Pizzagaters claimed, but an arcane symbol supposedly used by pedophiles to safely self-identify to each other. Believers began leaving threatening comments on social media and obscenity-laced messages on Comets phone line. From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, weve come under constant assault, Alefantis told the
Times last month, weeks before the shooting.
Another photo, pulled from Alefantiss Instagram account, shows a man holding a toddler. According to the annotations
supplied by a Pizzagate believer on Twitter, the yellow beads the man is wearing around his neck are not an ordinary necklace, but a sex bracelet, signifying his passion for analingus, presumably with the child he is holding. The photo is also branded with the word HOMOSEXUAL, in big block letters, and many other pieces of supposed evidence against Alefantis and Comet are also characterized by latent or outright homophobia.
Another YouTube video notes an Instagram photo of apparently lesbian graffiti in the Comet bathroom as potential support for the idea that young girls are abused there.
Eventually, supporters began investigating businesses on the same block as Comet, including an NGO focused on helping Haitian orphans, Snopes points out. One of the more fanciful theories holds that there are underground tunnels connecting the buildings, forming a vast subterranean sex chamber.
All in all, Pizzagate seems like a perfect confluence of several related factors. Long-running paranoia about the Clintons, enabled by Donald Trumps assertions during the presidential campaign that Hillary should be sent to prison, sets them up as the sorts of evildoers who might partake in pedophilia. The amateur sleuths that run rampant on Reddit and forums like it, responsible for everything from
Westworld fan theories to the
false accusation of an innocent man after the Boston marathon bombing, dig for clues to support the wild claims. The fake news industry, with access to an audience of millions via Facebook, give these claims the veneer of objective reporting and fact. The
post-Gamergate right-wing culture warriors wage coordinated harassment campaigns against their targets, determined to enact justice themselves if the PC liberal media wont do it. Second-amendment fanaticism suggests armed resistance as a reasonable course of action when your government acts in ways you dont agree with.
Edgar Welch may be the first gunman to take the warnings of the right-wing conspiracy theory complex as literal calls to arms. He almost certainly will not be the last.
