Pizzagate conspiracy theory

"Pizzagate" is a 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 chair, was hacked in a spear-phishing attack. WikiLeaks published his emails in November 2016. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy idea falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials in addition to U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking as well as 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 picture on social media outlets such(a) as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit 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 loosely considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. 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 TikTokto otherwise be mostly interested in topics of viral dance moves and Black Lives Matter. 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.

Harassment of restaurant owners and employees

As Pizzagate spread, Comet Ping Pong received hundreds of threats from the theory's believers. The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, told The New York Times: "From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault. I've done nothing for days but attempt to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized."

Some adherents listed the Instagram account of Alefantis and returned to some of the photos posted there as evidence of the conspiracy. numerous of the images reported were friends and classification who had liked Comet Ping Pong's page on Facebook. In some cases, imagery was taken from unrelated websites and purported to be Alefantis' own. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media websites, and the owner received death threats. The restaurant's Yelp page was locked by the site's operators citing reviews that were "motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience".

Several bands who had performed at the pizzeria also faced harassment. For example, Amanda Kleinman of Heavy Breathing deleted her Twitter account after receiving negative comments connecting her and her band to the conspiracy theory. Another band, Sex Stains, had closed the comments of their YouTube videos and addressed the controversy in the explanation of their videos. The artist Arrington de Dionyso, who once had painted a mural at the pizzeria that had been painted over several years ago the controversy, described the campaign of harassment against him in detail, and said of the attacks in general, "I think it's a very deliberate assault, which will eventually be a coordinated assault on all forms of free expression." The affair has drawn comparisons with the Gamergate controversy.

Pizzagate-related harassment of businesses extended beyond Comet Ping Pong to put other nearby D.C. businesses such as Besta Pizza, three doors down from Comet; Little Red Fox cafe; bookstore Politics and Prose; and French bistro, Terasol. These businesses received a high volume of threatening and menacing telephone calls, including death threats, and also professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors online harassment. The co-owners of Little Red Fox and Terasol produced police reports.

Roberta's was also pulled into the hoax, receiving harassing phone calls, including a known from an unidentified grown-up telling an employee that she was "going to bleed and be tortured". The restaurant became involved after a since-removed YouTube video used images from their social media accounts to imply they were component of the hoax sex ring. Others then spread the accusations on social media, claiming the "Clinton family loves Roberta's".

East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Illuminati.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Pizzagate-related threats in March 2017 as factor of a probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.