March 2016 was a month like any other or it would have been because something was about to happen that changed politics. Finding out what pizzagate is, how it started, how it changes politics, and how it’s false will be a challenging task. So I suggest you grab a slice as we devour our way through this conspiracy.
March 2016 was the month that John Podesta, the campaign chair for Hillary Clinton the democrat candidate of 2016 hacked. The hacker got into his emails and they put them on WikiLeaks between October and November, a site where leeks of all kinds are posted anonymously for the whole world to see. Shortly after members of the alt-right a racist, misogynist, conservative group that falsely said that the emails had a secret code that proved that major members of the democrat party had been working with various American restaurants to make a human trafficking ring along with a child sex ring. One of the major restaurants was said to be one called Comet Ping Pong which was a pizza place in Washington, D.C. they also said that satanic rituals were going on there. The location being a pizza place gave pizzagate the name that it has. So far I think you can see the flaws in this conspiracy. The conspiracy had no real evidence supporting that the events happened or that there was even a secret code in the email.
Even though there was no evidence alt-right members had spread the conspiracy around on various social media sites, soon enough those who believed the conspiracy wanted those who were said to be involved in the rings to be arrested for their alleged crimes. When nothing came of it a man went to Comet Ping Pong to try to investigate in there by illegal means. He went in with a rifle and tried to shoot a door open so they could try to find evidence and he was arrested soon after
. Others also sent threats to the people and restaurants who were alleged to be involved in it besides Comet Ping Pong. Pizzagate has caused many different crime allegations and actual crimes and they both lead to only the arrest of the alt-right members committing the crimes.
The conspiracy also affected politics in many ways for years in the future. It caused the public perception of Hillary Clinton to drop with 17% of voters that year saying that pizzagate was something that happened. After the election it started to die down but recently in 2020 with the qanon conspiracy its supporters revived pizzagate. This time it had a much more clear goal with the resurgence it was rebranded to include less of the major democrats and more focused on a worldwide group of powerful people but most of the people labeled as involved were still people who would be considered as democrats and instead of a human trafficking ring and child sex ring it was focused more on a worldwide child sex trafficking ring.
So even with all of the claims made by its supporters, there’s still the issue of the evidence that is meant to prove that all of it is true, or false, or nonexistent. Even still there is some evidence but they are still easily debunked. The only reason that Comet Ping Pong was first claimed to be a major part was that their logos were claimed to look like symbols related to pedophilia and satanism. Some people have shared a photo of what was said to be the Comet Ping Pong owner with a pro-pedophilia shirt but the person in the photo was not him but another restaurant owner no one even said was part of the ring. Photos were also shared of children who were said to be victims but they were just photos of random people’s kids. One of the other major points was there is a big underground tunnel underneath Comet Ping Pong but the photo often claimed to be a photo of the tunnels were of another location. One of the major things that prove that it is false is that not a single kid or staff member said that they were part of it.
I hope now you can see how pizzagate is absolutely false. With all of the evidence claimed not even existing. I also hope you can use what you learned to see how other political conspiracies are false as well.
Student Name – Student School – DMSF Class of 2026
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