'There's nothing you can do': The Legacy of #PizzaGate

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Amanda Rivkin
@amandarivkin
Note the early characters here. Note how their grift has only grown in large measure thanks to @verified which has not put a blue check mark next to people doing real work.

'There's nothing you can do': The Legacy of #PizzaGate
The Washington City Paper, a small D.C. outlet, ran a story called “Alt Right Conspiracy Theorists Obsess Over Comet Ping Pong” on Nov. 6, 2016. A phone call requesting comment for the article marks
splcenter.org
4:04 AM · Jul 9, 2021

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/07/07/theres-nothing-you-can-do-legacy-pizzagate

The online disinformation campaign now known as #Pizzagate, which extremists blasted into mainstream visibility on such sites as Twitter and Reddit, targeted Alefantis with a storm of harassment and lies, falsely suggesting that liberal elites abused children in the basement of his pizza restaurant. The #Pizzagate fable ultimately inspired a man to drive across state lines from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., to “save” fictitious victims. He fired a gun inside Comet Ping Pong in December 2016, when the restaurant was full of families eating lunch. Trolls continue to target Alefantis and his staff with harassment even now, as the event approaches its fifth anniversary.

Researchers of the far right still talk about #Pizzagate, but for different reasons: #Pizzagate influenced the politically charged disinformation campaigns that followed it in significant, often underreported ways. #Pizzagate helped birth the sprawling, pro-Trump conspiracy #QAnon, which in turn led to a number of violent crimes. #Pizzagate represents a watershed moment for Trump-era extremists, and its popularity united such figures as the actress Rosanne Barr with open neo-Nazis and, potentially, the Russian government. It can be viewed as a forerunner to the so-called Big Lie, wherein millions of Americans falsely came to believe that former President Trump won reelection in 2020 but liberal elites colluded to change the outcome.

Hatewatch published a detailed analysis of Twitter’s enabling of the far right on July 7. The analysis frequently references #Pizzagate due to the degree to which once-obscure extremists who pushed those lies went on to achieve fame on the website without ever facing consequences for their actions. Hard-right disinformation peddlers such as Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks, who hyped #Pizzagate on Twitter, also later used the site to push lies about the 2020 election in the runup to the violent insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. Twitter has enabled these figures for years and even recommended to readers Posobiec’s misleading content about the trial of Derek Chauvin, despite the sensitivity around the trial and his connections to the white supremacist movement.

Hatewatch reached out to Alefantis to hear his perspective about these matters and to obtain a better understanding of what it’s like to find yourself at the center of a maelstrom of hate based upon wholesale lies. Although Comet Ping Pong remains a staple of Washington, D.C., dining, the harassment has taken a toll. Alefantis discusses personal and professional hardship resulting from the hate enabled by social media sites, as well as helplessness in trying to stop it. The interview, which Hatewatch conducted in February by phone, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

*snip*

[niyad]

1. KNR and bookmarking. My response is always, "the restaurant has no basement."

[magicarpet]

2. Nor do these Fascist liars and hate mongers,...

[oswaldactedalone]

3. Well-played

and sad but true.

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R