5/19/23, 12:33 AM Pizzagate, the fake news conspiracy theory that led a gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong,

Comet Ping Pong, explained - Vox

×
Help keep Vox free

Reader support helps keep our explainers free for all. Support our mission by making a gift today.

Yes, I'll Give

Pizzagate, the fake news conspiracy theory that led a

gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong, explained
How Pizzagate went from the musings of 4chan trolls to the cause for a gunman at
Comet Ping Pong.
By German Lopez @germanrlopez german.lopez@vox.com Updated Dec 8, 2016, 11:15am EST

The Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, DC, at the center of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

On Sunday, a man walked into a pizzeria in Washington, DC, with an assault rifle and
fired one or more shots.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news 1/11
5/19/23, 12:33 AM Pizzagate, the fake news conspiracy theory that led a gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong, explained - Vox

The scene, thankfully, was not another example of a mass shooting — no one was
injured or killed. Instead, it was the result of a fake news story about Hillary Clinton’s
2016 presidential campaign that proliferated on social media in the weeks before
Election Day.

The totally false conspiracy theory claims that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign
chair, John Podesta, ran a child sex ring at the basement of a pizzeria in DC, Comet Ping
Pong (which doesn’t even have a basement). Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump
supporters and white supremacists on social media have pushed the conspiracy theory
— leading to headlines like “Pizzagate: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of
Washington’s Occult Elite” on fake news websites.

The Sunday shooting was far from the beginning of threats that Comet Ping Pong has
faced over the past few weeks. Cecilia Kang reported at the New York Times that the
restaurant’s staff and its owner, James Alefantis, have faced a barrage of abuse and
death threats on social media as a result of the conspiracy theory. Things have gotten
so bad that the general manager’s wife asked him to quit. Alefantis has worked to get
the FBI and local police involved in an investigation to stop the conspiracy theory’s
spread, and requested that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit
take down messages and pictures related to the false conspiracy theory.

But it has persisted. Bryce Reh, Comet’s general manager, characterized trying to take
down the conspiracy theory online as “trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun.”
Yet as Pizzagate continues spreading online, it becomes more and more clear just how
big of a problem fake news now poses — and how difficult it may be to address.

Pizzagate has been pushed by Trump supporters and white supremacists

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news 2/11
5/19/23, 12:33 AM Pizzagate, the fake news conspiracy theory that led a gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong, explained - Vox

Nick Wing
@nickpwing · Follow

Really love that this #pizzagate infographic bothers to say

“it’s not actually that crazy"

12:48 AM · Dec 6, 2016

59 Reply Share

Read 18 replies

Like many ridiculous things on the internet, Pizzagate appears to have begun on the troll
haven and message board 4chan. After Podesta’s emails were hacked (likely by
Russian agents) and WikiLeaks published them, 4chan users in October found
emails between Podesta and Alefantis about a Clinton fundraiser that happened early
in the campaign.

From there, people began speculating without any evidence that the restaurant was
part of a broader child trafficking ring run by the Democratic Party — a popular but
entirely false conspiracy theory on the fringes of conservative media. The conspiracy
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news 3/11
5/19/23, 12:33 AM Pizzagate, the fake news conspiracy theory that led a gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong, explained - Vox

theories jumped over to Reddit, where the popular Trump subreddit r/The_Donald
championed it; Twitter, where pro-Trump tweeters (including the son of Trump’s pick
for national security adviser) have continued to promote it; and Facebook, where fake
news outlets have written and shared articles about it.

And Alex Jones, the head of the fake news InfoWars who once argued that President
Barack Obama and Clinton are literally demons, also boosted the conspiracy theory,
saying on his show (in a video that was published in early November but later taken
down) that “Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children.” That video earned more
than 420,000 videos before it was removed.

Here is one example of a fake news outlet promoting the conspiracy theories behind
Pizzagate, keeping in mind that the story is entirely false and the FBI has not confirmed
anything about Pizzagate or related conspiracy theories because they’re all wrong:

Your News Wire

Craig Silverman at BuzzFeed has an exhaustive report on how these ridiculous

conspiracy theories got so big.

They appeared to really take off after a white supremacist Twitter account (which uses
an avatar of a Jewish lawyer in New York) propped them up. The tweet pointed to a
Facebook post that claimed a likely nonexistent “NYPD source” confirmed that police
had found evidence on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s devices that the Clinton
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news 4/11