by Halima Mohamed
Pizzagate is a conspiracy that grew in popularity during the 2016 presidential race and it suggested that a Pizzeria in Washington DC known as Comet Ping Pong was the home of a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton along with her campaign manager John Podesta and many other democrats. There are many variations of this conspiracy, but it is centered around many people involved in the Democratic Party being responsible for a large governmental child sex ring which intends to sexually abuse small children and sell them into sex trafficking as part of the New World Order.
This conspiracy gained significant media attention after a man named Edgar Welch travelled from North Carolina to Washington DC with an assault rifle, in order to confront the employees of the store. The origins of the conspiracy are unknown but they seem to have began in October of 2016 after several Twitter users claimed that former democratic congressman Anthony Weiner’s computer was recovered by the FBI and that there is evidence on that laptop that Weiner was involved in a child sexual abuse. Weiner was under investigation for sexting a child at the time.It was reported that many supporters of Donald Trump suggested that Weiner was not the only one committing these acts and that many other democrats were involved.
The conspiracy continued to gain momentum, after emails from the Democratic National Committee were leaked by WikiLeaks one month before the election. When the emails were published, users of popular forum sites including a reddit forum dedicated to Donald Trump, began searching for evidence of the child sex ring in the emails, and suggested that the emails were written in a code.Many participants began commenting on what some words might be code for by connecting words like “cheese pizza” for example, as code for “child poronography” becuase the initials for both were “c.p.”, or the word “pizza” being code for “girl”. Once pizza was connected to the theory, believers began to focus all their attention on potential locations in Washington DC where the sex ring might be taking place, and they zeroed in on Comet Ping Pong after discovering an email exchange between John Podesta and James Alefantis, the owner of the pizzeria and concluded that the crimes were taking place in the basement of the restaurant.
Following this discovery a number of people began harassing the restaurant’s employees along with several other businesses in that area and on December 4th 2016 , Edgar Welch who brought a military style rifle and a handgun to the restaurant, and fired the rifle inside the pizzeria. Luckily, no one was hurt but the incident led to the conspiracy gaining significant attention from the media, and a number of media outlets debunking the conspiracy.
A lot of the evidence for the conspiracy came from James Alefantis and John Podesta’s social media profiles, many claimed that there was a “secret kill room”, in reference to a picture that Alefantis posted on his social media, but the picture was of a walk in freezer for a property Alefantis was considering purchasing. There was also a side by side comparison of John Podesta and his brother Tony Podesta to a police sketch of a person wanted for the abduction of Madeleine Mccann, theorists suggesting that they were responsible for her abduction. A number of organizations have discredited the theory including the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and most major new sites, but theorists believe that these organizations are also involved in the sex ring.
This conspiracy is extraordinary because it is completely baseless and there is no physical evidence of any of the claims. There seems to be political motivations for this theory, especially since it is so close to the election, and because the many of the creators of the theory were from an extreme fringe of the right wing, the theory might have confirmed some other things that people already believe about liberal elites. It also largely relies on people’s distrust of the government and leans on many already existing theories surrounding the government such as the New World Order and conspiracy theories the Clinton family.
It is thought that people tend to believe conspiracy theories due to a lack of control over their life or finding new ways to blame others for their issues. According to a 2017 study, published in the Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology journal, around 42% of people without a high school diploma believe in conspiracies and only 23% of people who have a postgraduate degree, it was also found that the household income on average for people who tend to believe in conspiracies was around $47,193, while people who did not believe in them had an average income of $63,834. This disparity could explain why many people tend to believe in extreme and unusual theories.
Work Cited:
http://time.com/4965093/conspiracy-theories-beliefs/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/10/business/media/pizzagate.html
Hi Halima,
I had never heard of this, and it was shocking! This is truly crazy to me. I liked how you provided data from the Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology journal. Specifically you stated that, around 42% of people without a high school diploma believe in conspiracies and only 23% of people who have a postgraduate degree. This makes sense to me. If we could just educate people on extraordinary beliefs then I think the belief in them would diminish drastically.
Charlie
Thanks Charlie, I agree with you. It is interesting that we discussed many of the cognitive reasons why people believe in conspiracies but it can sometimes just be about ignorance and lack of education!
The Pizzagate Conspiracy is just nonsense and a stupid attack to Hillary Clinton by The Republican Party, but I would not be surprised if it really happens. in US. Since it has been wide-known that U.K. does have a growing need for child prostitution, it is possible that it happens in U.S too. People are not really serious about conspiracy theory nowadays, I think we may just let the police do their job. Education will definitely help reduce conspiracy theory, but there are many other factors that there are limited things about what we can do, e.g: social class.
I found this post interesting to read about because I had not heard of this conspiracy theory before and liked learning about it. I am not surprised at all that this is a belief people hold because it seems people will believe anything when it come to politics. I think it definitely makes sense why believers would use Anthony Weiner as proof, but this is completely biased. I think the believers and any from the republican party are using confirmation bias when using Anthony Weiner as proof especially since there are plenty of democrats who do not sext children.
I feel like I should have known about this conspiracy but I did not! This was so interesting to read, and political conspiracys are so funny because they are just another tactic to get the other candidate some credit. I loved how you added the statistics at the end, and I wish I could say they were shocking but it really makes sense that the lesser educated tend to believe in conspiracy theories and it just so happened that extreme rightist are the ones to believe it. The party that tends to be anti-science. Very compelling read!
this is an actual scary and serious conspiracy theory because if it is true then there are children that are actually in need of help. I do think that it needs to be researched on more. Also, i think it is silly how people can make something out of nothing like the words cheese pizza meaning child pornography just because of the letters, it really goes to show how the mind can go to a million places, this extraordinary belief is one that needs to be taken seriously.