'PizzaGate' conspiracy theory thrives anew in the TikTok era

Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlour that was central to a baseless conspiracy theory targeting Democrats, dubbed PizzaGate. Photo / Justin T. Gellerson, The New York Times

Four minutes into a video that was posted on Instagram last month, Justin Bieber leaned in to the camera and adjusted the front of his black knit beanie. For some of his 130 million followers, it was a signal.

In the video, someone had posted a comment asking Bieber to touch his hat if he had been a victim of a child-trafficking ring known as PizzaGate. Thousands of comments were flooding in, and there was no evidence that Bieber had seen that message. But the pop star's innocuous gesture set off a flurry of online activity, which highlighted the resurgence of one of social media's early conspiracy theories.

Four years ago, before the 2016 presidential election, the baseless notion that Hillary Clinton and Democratic elites were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria spread across the internet. In December 2016, a vigilante gunman showed up at the restaurant with an assault rifle and opened fire into a closet.

In the years afterward, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube managed to largely suppress PizzaGate. But now, just months before the next presidential election, the conspiracy theory is making a comeback on these platforms and on new ones, such as TikTok.

This time, PizzaGate is being fuelled by a younger generation that is active on TikTok, which was in its infancy four years ago, as well as on other social media platforms. The conspiracy group QAnon is also promoting PizzaGate in private Facebook groups and creating easy-to-share memes on it.

Driven by these new elements, the theory has morphed. PizzaGate no longer focuses on Clinton and has taken on less of a political bent. Its new targets and victims are a broader assortment of powerful businesspeople, politicians and celebrities. For groups like QAnon, PizzaGate has become a convenient way to foment discontent.

PizzaGate is reaching a level that nearly exceeds its 2016 fever pitch, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool for analysing social interactions. That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January this year, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000, according to the Times' analysis.

The conspiracy has regained momentum even as its original targets — Clinton, her top aides and a Washington pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong — are still dealing with the fallout.

Hateful comments have recently surged on the Facebook page and Yelp and Google review pages for Comet Ping Pong, where the child trafficking supposedly happened. The pizzeria's owner, James Alefantis, said he had received fresh death threats that caused the FBI to open a new investigation two months ago.

Representatives for Bieber didn't respond to requests for comment.

PizzaGate was born in 2016 in online forums like 4chan and Reddit, where right-wing users and supporters of Donald Trump pored over hacked emails from John Podesta, Clinton's senior campaign adviser, looking for evidence of wrongdoing. Some emails referring to Podesta's dinner plans mentioned pizza. A 4chan participant then connected the phrase "cheese pizza" to paedophiles, who on chat boards use the initials "c.p." to denote child pornography.

Alefantis, who is friends with Podesta's brother, Tony, was mentioned in several of the emails. That led internet users to connect his pizza parlour to their conspiracy.

Fact-checkers debunked the idea. But weeks after the November 2016 election, Edgar Welch, 32, a North Carolina resident, drove six hours to Comet Ping Pong to free what he believed were enslaved children. He shot several rounds from a military-style assault rifle into a locked closet door of the pizzeria and eventually surrendered to police. In 2017, he was sentenced to four years in prison.

Soon after, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook suspended the accounts of users who had pushed PizzaGate and took down hundreds of related posts.

Written by: Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel
Photograph by: Justin T. Gellerson
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES