Illusions of Control
Where people feel powerless and threatened, conspiracy theories offer some relief.
On December 4, 2016, a 28-year-old man from North Carolina entered Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington, D.C. with a loaded AR-15 rifle. He pointed the gun at an employee demanding to know how to get to the basement. The restaurant didn’t have a basement. This didn’t stop the man from firing several shots into the wall while searching for a secret passage. Customers and workers fled in terror. No one was injured and the man was arrested and charged with assault.
The man told police he’d gone to the restaurant to investigate reports of a pedophile sex ring linked to Hillary Clinton that was run out of the pizzeria. The so-called Pizzagate story first appeared in a Facebook post 10 days before the 2016 election. The story spread to Twitter, was promulgated by bots and was picked up by right-wing platforms Breitbart and InfoWars.