Amateur email sleuthing fastened an imagined global pedophile ring onto a real pizzeria.

Evidence

Google searches for “Hillary” and “pedophile” skyrocketed and the story stampeded forward at terminal speed. Online sleuths returned to Podesta’s hacked emails, which had been made public on WikiLeaks, and after decoding the references to “cheese” and “sauce,” they arrived at the conclusion that Clinton and Podesta were part of a global child-sex-abuse ring. Reddit detectives determined that its physical center was the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor, owned by James Alefantis, a restaurateur who once dated Democratic fundraiser and author David Brock and a friend of Podesta’s mentioned in the emails. (Reddit’s Pizzagate board was eventually shut down by the site for posting people’s personal information—phone numbers, addresses—and soon migrated to Voat, another message board site, with even less oversight.) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 223

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s epistemic-style claims about Christian nationalism and authoritarian prejudice — both read contested evidence through a fixed enemy narrative. — connects to: Pizzagate conspiracy theories inspired an armed real-world raid on a pizzeria. — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 450

Broader Connections

• Pizzagate conspiracy theories inspired an armed real-world raid on a pizzeria. #expands (0.92) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 450