Comet Ping Pong

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World
by James Ball
Published 19 Jul 2023

Comet (as it is known to locals) was co-founded by James Alefantis, a connected member of DC’s elite once named on GQ’s list of the fifty most powerful people in Washington,46 who had dated senior figures in the not-for-profit world (including the CEO of left-wing media watchdog Media Matters for America).47 The dark corner of the internet that was Pizzagate had now convinced itself not only that there was a child abuse conspiracy underway, but that they knew where it was happening – in the basement of Comet Ping Pong. Inevitably, someone took things into their own hands. In the middle of the afternoon on 4 December 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch walked into Comet Ping Pong with an AR-15 rifle (the civilian version of the US military’s M16 automatic rifle) and a Colt .38 pistol, and fired three shots into the air, demanding to be allowed to investigate the pizzeria’s basement and the crimes within.48 By some miracle no one was injured, and before he was detained – alive – by law enforcement, Welch was shown a simple fact about Comet Ping Pong he could probably have discovered without heavy weaponry: the restaurant did not have a basement.

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THE OTHER PANDEMIC ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’ – Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886 Contents Introduction PART ONE: EMERGENCE 1. Ask the Q 2. Comet Ping Pong 3. Breadcrumbs PART TWO: INFECTION 4. Patriot Research 5. Follow The White Rabbit 6. The Storm PART THREE: TRANSMISSION 7. #SaveTheChildren 8. Enough Is Enough 9. Nothing Can Stop What’s Coming PART FOUR: CONVALESCENCE 10. Trust the Plan 11. The Great Awakening 12.

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There are other movements born from 4chan that have more claim to serve as direct forebears to QAnon: Gamergate and the alt-right. This is a story of the ripple effect, and how one man’s bitter vendetta against his ex, fuelled by our bizarre online ecosystem, arguably gave rise to much of Trumpism. It’s this we turn to next. 2 Comet Ping Pong ‘It is early on a Monday morning. You are a mid-twenties human being.’1 It all started with a video game about depression. To those who haven’t played video games from independent studios, the game – called Depression Quest, and released in 2013 – might not even seem like a game at all. Depression Quest takes place entirely inside a normal web browser window, and is text-based.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

Edgar Maddison Welch, affidavit filed December 12, 2016, in US District Court for the District of Columbia, https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/pizzagate-affidavit.pdf. 158 “in our own backyard” Merlan, Republic of Lies, 60. 158 actor of the same name Nathan Francis, “Edgar Maddison Welch PizzaGate Theory: Was the Comet Ping Pong Shooter a Crisis Actor? New Conspiracy Theory Takes Hold [Debunked],” Inquisitr, December 6, 2016, https://www.inquisitr.com/3772621/edgar-maddison-welch-pizzagate-theory-was-the-comet-ping-pong-shooter-a-crisis-actor-new-conspiracy-theory-takes-hold-debunked/. 159 “wasn’t 100 percent” Adam Goldman, “The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions, New York Times, December 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/edgar-welch-comet-pizza-fake-news.html. 159 “sheer luck” Matthew Haag and Maya Salam, “Gunman in ‘Pizzagate’ Shooting Is Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison,” New York Times, June 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack-sentence.html. 159 torched a pizzeria across town Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, “ ‘Pizzagate’ Video Was Posted to YouTube Account of Alleged Arsonist’s Parents before Fire, NBC News, February 14, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/pizzagate-conspiracy-video-posted-youtube-account-alleged-arsonist-s-parents-n971891. 160 “can’t live in this reality anymore” Sara Jean Green, “ ‘God Told Me He Was a Lizard’: Seattle Man Accused of Killing His Brother with a Sword,” Seattle Times, January 9, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/god-told-me-he-was-a-lizard-seattle-man-accused-of-killing-his-brother-with-a-sword/. 161 Wolfe’s first “likes” on YouTube Travis View (@travis_view), “I was looking at the ‘likes’ on the Youtube page of Buckey Wolfe,” Twitter, January 10, 2019, https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1083437810634248193. 161 apology to QAnon fans Jennifer Smith, “Haunting Video of ‘Thor’ Actor Isaac Kappy . . . ,” Daily Mail, May 15, 2019, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7033879/Haunting-final-video-Thor-actor-Isaac-Kappy-committed-suicide.html. 162 his Mercedes-Benz “Authorities: Whitehall Man Threatened Government, Had Homemade Explosives,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 14, 2020, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/07/14/mt-lebanon-bomb-explosives-kurt-cofano-whitehall-fbi-atf-allegheny-county-threats/stories/202007140103. 166 “time to tell the truth” Mack Lamoureux,“ ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes Was a Daredevil First, Flat Earther Second,” Vice, February 25, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/939nnz/mad-mike-hughes-was-a-daredevil-first-flat-earther-second. 167 “Is the media going to be there?”

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They would have joined the growing ranks of conspiracy theorists committing real-world harm in an effort to prove their beliefs. Chief among this dangerous crowd are adherents of QAnon and Pizzagate (a sort of QAnon predecessor that specifically accuses Trump’s foes of participating in child sex trafficking under Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, DC, pizzeria and ping-pong arcade). On December 4, 2016, a man named Edgar Maddison Welch drove six hours from his home in Salisbury, North Carolina, to Comet Ping Pong. He recorded himself during the interstate journey. “I can’t let you grow up in a world that’s so corrupt by evil. Gotta at least stand up for you. And for other children just like you,” Welch said in a video addressed to his two young children.

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“Raiding a pedo ring,” he texted a friend about his journey to DC, “possibly sacraficing [sic] the lives of a few for the lives of many. Standing up against a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard.” More than three hundred miles later, Welch parked his car outside Comet Ping Pong and retrieved a military-style assault rifle from the back. Then he entered the restaurant. Inside, Comet Ping Pong was packed with its Sunday lunch rush. Parents and children, the very people Welch had vowed to protect in his video, crowded the booths. Their afternoon turned to panic when he started shooting. Families and employees scrambled for the exits as Welch fired multiple shots, including at the lock on a closet door.

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth
by Elizabeth Williamson
Published 8 Mar 2022

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8 Cecilia Kang, “Fake News Onslaught Targets Pizzeria as Nest of Child-Trafficking,” New York Times, November 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-this-pizzeria-is-not-a-child-trafficking-site.html. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9 Adam Goldman, “The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions,” New York Times, December 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/edgar-welch-comet-pizza-fake-news.html. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10 Peter Hermann, “Man Who Set Fire at Comet Ping Pong Pizza Shop Sentenced to Four Years in Prison,” Washington Post, April 23, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/man-who-set-fire-at-comet-ping-pong-pizza-shop-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison/2020/04/23/2e107676-8496-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html.

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“Bill and Hillary love foreign donors so much,” FBIAnon wrote. “They get paid in children as well as money.” That and similar bizarre posts constituted the early traces of what grew into Pizzagate, a nutty web of total nonsense claiming that Hillary Clinton and top Democrats operated a child sex slavery ring from the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. Although the Sandy Hook families had already suffered for years, Pizzagate jolted people awake to the real-world consequences of “fake news.” The term, defined by Hunt Allcott of New York University and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University, referred to “news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers.”[2] At least that was its original meaning, before President Trump repurposed it to discredit reports critical of him, and authoritarians around the world followed suit.

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* * * — Alefantis’s lawyers sent Jones a letter demanding that he retract multiple statements he made on Infowars between late November and early December 2016, spreading the Pizzagate theory and telling his audience, “It’s up to you to research it for yourself,” comments they said inspired Welch to bring his high-powered rifle into Comet. After Alefantis’s lawyers made it clear they were serious, Jones delivered a careful, legalistic statement on his March 24, 2017, broadcast. “To my knowledge today, neither Mr. Alefantis, nor his restaurant Comet Ping Pong, were involved in any human trafficking, as was part of the theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon,” he said. “In our commentary about what had become known as Pizzagate, I made comments about Mr. Alefantis that in hindsight I regret, and for which I apologize to him.

Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media
by Peter Warren Singer and Emerson T. Brooking
Published 15 Mar 2018

It’s Just One More Conspiracy to Digest,” Washington Post, December 5, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/false-flag-planted-at-a-pizza-place-its-just-one-more-conspiracy-to-digest/2016/12/05/fc154b1e-bb09-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.7ecbd9f78337. 129 “Nothing to suggest”: Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec), “DC Police Chief: ‘Nothing to suggest man w/gun at Comet Ping Pong had anything to do with #pizzagate’” (tweet deleted), available at Scoopnest, https://www.scoopnest.com/user/JackPosobiec/805559273426141184-dc-police-chief-nothing-to-suggest-man-w-gun-at-comet-ping-pong-had-anything-to-do-with-pizzagate. 129 livestreaming from the White House: Jared Holt and Brendan Karet, “Meet Jack Posobiec: The ‘Alt-Right’ Troll with Press Pass in White House,” Slate, August 16, 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/08/16/meet-jack-posobiec-the-alt-right-troll-with-a-press-pass-in-white-house_partner/; Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec), “Free our people,” Twitter, May 9, 2017, 10:28 A.M., https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/861996422920536064. 129 retweeted multiple times: Colleen Shalby, “Trump Retweets Alt-Right Media Figure Who Published ‘Pizzagate’ and Seth Rich Conspiracy Theories,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-updates-everything-president-trump-retweets-alt-right-blogger-who-1502769297-htmlstory.html; Maya Oppenheim, “Donald Trump Retweets Far-Right Conspiracy Theorist Jack Posobiec Who Took ‘Rape Melania’ Sign to Rally,” Independent, January 15, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-jack-posobiec-pizzagate-rape-melania-sign-twitter-conspiracy-theory-far-right-a8159661.html. 129 “power law”: Emma Pierson, “Twitter Data Show That a Few Powerful Users Can Control the Conversation,” Quartz, May 5, 2015, https://qz.com/396107/twitter-data-show-that-a-few-powerful-users-can-control-the-conversation/. 130 study of 330 million: Xu Wei, “Influential Bloggers Set Topics Online,” China Daily Asia, December 27, 2013, https://www.chinadailyasia.com/news/2013-12/27/content_15108347.html. 130 a mere 300 accounts: Ibid. 130 susceptibility to further falsehoods: Sander van der Linden, “The Conspiracy-Effect: Exposure to Conspiracy Theories (About Global Warming) Decreases Pro-Social Behavior and Science Acceptance,” Personality and Individual Differences 87 (December 2015): 171–73. 130 more supportive of “extremism”: Sander van der Linden, “The Surprising Power of Conspiracy Theories,” Psychology Today, August 24, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/socially-relevant/201508/the-surprising-power-conspiracy-theories. 130 spread about six times faster: Brian Dowling, “MIT Scientist Charts Fake News Reach,” Boston Herald, March 11, 2018, http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/03/mit_scientist_charts_fake_news_reach. 130 “Falsehood diffused”: Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359, no. 6380 (March 9, 2018): 1146–51. 131 fake political headlines: Silverman, “This Analysis Shows.” 131 study of 22 million tweets: Philip N.

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THE SUPER SPREAD OF LIES The families were just sitting down for lunch on December 4, 2016, when the man with the scraggly beard burst through the restaurant door. Seeing him carrying a Colt AR-15 assault rifle, with a Colt .38 revolver strapped to his belt, parents shielded their terrified children. But Edgar Welch hardly noticed. After all, he was a man on a mission. The 28-year-old part-time firefighter knew for a fact that the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant was just a cover for Hillary Clinton’s secret pedophilia ring, and, as a father of two young girls, he was going to do something about it. As the customers made a run for it (and, of course, started posting on social media about it), Welch headed to the back of the pizza place.

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“False flag,” Posobiec tweeted as he heard of Welch’s arrest. “Planted Comet Pizza Gunman will be used to push for censorship of independent news sources that are not corporate owned.” Then he switched stories, informing his followers that the DC police chief had concluded, “Nothing to suggest man w/gun at Comet Ping Pong had anything to do with #pizzagate.” It was, like the rest of the conspiracy, a fabrication. The only thing real was the mortal peril and psychological harm that opportunists like Posobiec had inflicted on the workers of the pizza place and the families dining there. Yet Posobiec suffered little for his falsehoods.

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World
by Scott Galloway
Published 2 Oct 2017

Pew Research Center. May 26, 2016. http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/. 34. Briener, Andrew. “Pizzagate, explained: Everything you want to know about the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria conspiracy theory but are too afraid to search for on Reddit.” Salon. December 10, 2016. http://www.salon.com/2016/12/10/pizzagate-explained-everything-you-want-to-know-about-the-comet-ping-pong-pizzeria-conspiracy-theory-but-are-too-afraid-to-search-for-on-reddit/. 35. Williams, Rhiannon. “Facebook: ‘We cannot become arbiters of truth—it’s not our role.’” iNews. April 6, 2017. https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/technology/facebook-looks-choke-fake-news-cutting-off-financial-lifeline/. 36.

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Just hire a few “media watchdog” firms to give you cover. As far as the machine sees it, one click = one click. So, entire editorial operations hatch all over the world to optimize production to this Facebook machine. They create crazy fake stories that serve as clickbait for the left and the right. Pizza Gate—the story about Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.—got a lot of momentum around the 2016 election. It claimed that the brother of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, was running a child prostitution ring in the back rooms, hidden from where the customers eat. Lots of people believed it. One guy drove up from North Carolina with an assault rifle, with vague ideas of freeing the imprisoned and abused children he’d read about.

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
by Max Fisher
Published 5 Sep 2022

They claimed that the police investigation of Anthony Weiner, a former Democratic congressman caught sexting a fifteen-year-old girl, had discovered evidence that Weiner, along with his wife, Huma Abedin, and his wife’s boss, Hillary Clinton, were all involved in a child sex ring. As evidence, they cited the emails of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager, which Russian hackers had stolen and published through WikiLeaks. A Washington DC pizza place that Podesta had mentioned in his emails, Comet Ping Pong, was, the conspiracists insisted, the headquarters of a vast, elite conspiracy to ritualistically cannibalize children. “Half or more of the people I have met online believe in it fully,” Adam, the longtime 4channer, told me. One day the conspiracy was “everywhere,” he said, especially on Facebook, where after years of inactivity, some pages reemerged simply to repeat the phrase “Pizzagate is real.”

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One post exhorted users to spread word of the “world-wide Pedo-Ring connected to the CLINTON FOUNDATION, that just so happens to also be taking over the USA for good.” The jump to Facebook started in user groups. Even on apolitical pages, users posted screenshots of 4chan threads detailing the conspiracy, asking, “Is this real?” Scouring for information on Comet Ping Pong, the DC pizza place, Facebookers found the owner’s Instagram account. They recontextualized benign images—kids playing at the restaurant, jokey cartoons of pizza slices covering peoples’ genitals, Comet’s star-and-moon logo—into evidence of an occult pedophilia ring. Within a few days, prominent Gamergaters and white nationalists on Twitter broadcast the claims, attaching screenshots of Facebook or 4chan threads.

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A few weeks after the election, Edgar Maddison Welch, a scraggly-bearded twenty-eight-year-old from North Carolina, texted a friend: Raiding a pedo ring, possibly sacraficing the lives of a few for the lives of many. He had been bingeing YouTube videos on Pizzagate. Someone, he’d concluded, had to act. He grabbed his AR-15 rifle, a shotgun, and a revolver, and drove to Washington DC. Bursting in the door of Comet Ping Pong, he pointed the rifle at an employee, who fled, with customers streaming out behind him. Welch turned to a locked side door, which he recognized from Pizzagate videos as the entrance to the basement where Democratic conspirators locked up their child victims. He fired several shots through the door, then kicked it open.

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
by Jia Tolentino
Published 5 Aug 2019

In 2016, a similar fiasco made national news in Pizzagate, after a few rabid internet denizens decided they’d found coded messages about child sex slavery in the advertising of a pizza shop associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. This theory was disseminated all over the far-right internet, leading to an extended attack on DC’s Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and everyone associated with the restaurant—all in the name of combating pedophilia—that culminated in a man walking into Comet Ping Pong and firing a gun. (Later on, the same faction would jump to the defense of Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for the Senate who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers.) The over-woke left could only dream of this ability to weaponize a sense of righteousness.

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
by Steven Pinker
Published 14 Oct 2021

Why doesn’t reality push back and inhibit people from believing absurdities or from rewarding those who assert and share them? The answer is that it depends what you mean by “believe.” Mercier notes that holders of weird beliefs often don’t have the courage of their convictions.40 Though millions of people endorsed the rumor that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington (the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, a predecessor of QAnon), virtually none took steps commensurate with such an atrocity, such as calling the police. The righteous response of one of them was to leave a one-star review on Google. (“The pizza was incredibly undercooked. Suspicious professionally dressed men by the bar area that looked like regulars kept staring at my son and other kids in the place.”)

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Fortunately, they don’t take the next logical step and try to convert people to Christianity at swordpoint for their own good, or torture heretics who might lure others into damnation. Yet in past centuries, when Christian belief fell into the reality zone, many Crusaders, Inquisitors, conquistadors, and soldiers in the Wars of Religion did exactly that. Like the Comet Ping Pong redeemer, they treated their beliefs as literally true. For that matter, though many people profess to believe in an afterlife, they seem to be in no hurry to leave this vale of tears for eternal bliss in paradise. Thankfully, Western religious belief is safely parked in the mythology zone, where many people are protective of its sovereignty.

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
by Kashmir Hill
Published 19 Sep 2023

Tyler had a vague backstory and didn’t seem well educated about liberal causes, making MacAuley and others suspect that he might be a conservative operative. Had the infiltrators been infiltrated, as in a Spy vs. Spy cartoon? MacAuley said that the D.C. Antifascist Coalition had hatched a harebrained scheme to find out. A few members of the coalition invited Tyler to Comet Ping Pong—selected humorously, she said, because it was the unfortunate pizzeria at the center of the #PizzaGate conspiracy theory. Over beers there, the antifascists told Tyler about a plan to stink bomb DeploraBall attendees and set off the sprinklers inside the National Press Club to disrupt the proceedings.

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See also pornography China scoring of citizens by, 34 surveillance in, 224–227 Churchill, Winston, 41 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 38, 125, 227, 268–269n38 Citizens United, 208, 306n206 Clarifai, 32–33 Clarium Capital, 14 ClassPass, 8 Clearview AI absence of headquarters for, x–xi, xii access requests and, 190–192 ACLU and, 202, 203–204, 205 AR glasses and, 249–250 attempts to shut down communication by, xv, xvii–xviii author’s contact with representatives of, 160–166 bans on, 165 capabilities of, ix–x Capitol insurrection and, 229–230 concerns regarding weaponization and, xv–xvii defense of, 157–159 effectiveness of, xii emergence of, 94 fines assessed to, 193–194, 230 growth of database for, 246–247 hit rate of, 133 international backlash against, 192–193 international expansion and, 137 investment efforts and, 111–120, 136. see also individual investors Johnson and, 95–96 law enforcement and, 128, 130–139 lawsuits against, 165, 204–206, 209–213, 248 Leone and, 113–114 NYT article on, 164–165, 187, 190, 194, 204, 230 opposition to, 237–238 pandemic and, 186–187 police reactions to, xii–xiv potential legal challenges to, 117 push for ethical use and, 239 results blocked by, xvii–xviii, 162–163 Scalzo and, 111–112, 113, 188–189 third-party testing of, 240 tip regarding, vii–viii, ix Ukraine invasion and, 237 wrongful arrests and, 183 Clearview AI Camera, 111 Clearview AI Check-In, 111–112 Clearview AI Search, 111 Clement, Paul attempts to contact, 160 on Clearview AI’s capabilities, ix–x lack of response from, xi legal memos from, 134, 157–158 Clinton, Bill, 209, 259n10 Clinton, Chelsea, 9–10, 259n10 Clinton, Hillary “deplorables” comment by, 50–51 election loss of, 88 facial recognition and, 104 false claims about, 94 Trump and, 16, 52 Cohen, Chuck, 133 Colatosti, Tom, 62, 65, 66, 71 Comet Ping Pong, 55 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1986), 117–118 computers early, 36 reliance on, 36 confirmation bias, 181 Constitution First Amendment, 15, 206–207, 208–209, 212–213, 306n206 Fourth Amendment, 141 consumer protection laws, 205 contact tracing, 186 Coolidge, Calvin, 11 Couchsurfing, 81 Coulson, Jennifer, 180–181 Coulter, Ann, 119 Covid-19, 185–187, 209, 214 Crime and the Man (Hooton), 25, 26 CrimeDex, xii, 134 criminal detectors, 31 “criminal face,” 31 Criminal Justice Information Services Division, 299n158 Criminal Man (Lombroso), 22–23, 38 crisis communications, 161 Cruise, Tom, 123 Crunchbase, 79 Cruz, Ted, 11 cryptocurrency, 81 CSAM (child sexual abuse material), 135.

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists
by Julia Ebner
Published 20 Feb 2020

Wright, who blocked off a highway close to the Hoover Dam in an armoured vehicle in June 2018, had subscribed to the QAnon motto: ‘For where we go one, we go all’.17 Two years earlier, Edgar Welsh, firefighter and father from South Carolina and firm believer in Pizzagate – the QAnon predecessor conspiracy theory which claimed that Democrats were running a massive child-abuse network from their alleged headquarters at Comet Ping Pong, a DC pizza restaurant – opened fire in the pizzeria to free nonexistent children.18 In January 2019, a QAnon supporter killed his brother with a sword because he believed that he was a lizard.19 ‘Military, we need a plan and must expose evil to light,’ Max writes in late 2018. ‘Can me and my pals Raid MI6 DVD & GO2 Offices in London ourselves please?’

The Twittering Machine
by Richard Seymour
Published 20 Aug 2019

A young man with dirty fair hair and a scraggly beard, he is a small-time screenwriter and bit-part actor with minor credits in a string of slasher horror movies. He has come, dressed in light blue jeans and t-shirt, to ‘self-investigate’ rumours of an elite paedophile ring. Internet stories say that Hillary Clinton and top-level Democrats are trafficking child sex slaves out of the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington DC: the infamous ‘Pizzagate’. Staff and diners at the pizzeria are faced with an agitated, gun-toting man who may be about to kill them. They flee, in hectic panic. He fires some shots into the floor and begins stalking the restaurant looking for the tunnels through which the children are allegedly being hustled.

How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy
by F. Perry Wilson
Published 24 Jan 2023

Social media bombards us with illusory truth because social media algorithms are more likely to surface information similar to information you have interacted with before. Prior to social media, the claim that a pizza place in Washington, DC, was the epicenter of a child sex-trafficking ring would have found little purchase. Social media, by surfacing the same false statement about Comet Ping Pong pizzeria over and over again (to people inclined to interact with those statements) made people believe it was true—the sheer repetition lent it credibility. This phenomenon is a corruption of brain circuitry that served us well for the majority of human history. If you are part of a small community or tribe—as our ancestors were—believing what you heard multiple times made sense.

The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War
by Jeff Sharlet
Published 21 Mar 2023

Jones had tried. “I made a mistake,” he said. “I called them up.” He was not just a believer in the Trumpocene’s conspiracy theories, he was a soldier on their behalf, convicted in a deep-state court of law. On December 4, 2016, a man traveled from North Carolina to a Washington, DC, pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong, the basement of which, according to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, was the heart of a Democratic child-sex-trafficking ring. The man was there to save the children, which he attempted to do by opening fire with an AR-15. Inspired, Jones decided to do his part. Three days after the assault, according to testimony he later gave, Jones called another pizzeria down the street.

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire
by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson
Published 14 Apr 2020

They do not want the public to know the truth which is why they are so desperate to label it as fake news. If it was so fake, then why worry about it? If it was such an obvious lie, then why the panic and the need to bring down the whole social media establishment. Shakespeare said it best, and this can be directed at David Brock and his boyfriend, James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong and the 49th most powerful person in Washington D.C. (for some unusual reason): “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.241 It is worth noting that Facebook also brought in a think tank called The Atlantic Council to assist them in determining what was fake news, but what they failed to mention is that The Atlantic Council is funded by NATO and the Military- Information-Terror complex, so any news that was critical of the globalist agenda was clearly going to be labeled as fake news.