Yesterday, a North Carolina man walked into the DC pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong and fired an assault rifle. Thankfully there were no casualties. The man would later tell the police he was there to "self-investigate" the election-related "Pizzagate" conspiracy. What is Pizzagate and how did it gain traction? Here's what you need to know.

You can't make this stuff up…

The restaurant's owner and employees were threatened on social media in the days before the election after fake news stories circulated claiming that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.

[The Washington Post]

The owner, James Alefantis, has raised money for Democratic politicians before and is connected to progressive leaders.

James Alefantis is the owner of Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington. He's also a big Democratic Party supporter and raised money for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He was once in a relationship with David Brock, an influential liberal operative. Alefantis — who's never met Clinton — appeared in the Podesta emails in connection with the fundraisers.

[BBC]

The 4Chan users immediately speculated about the links between Comet Ping Pong and the Democratic Party. Some posited the restaurant was part of a larger Democratic child trafficking ring, which was a theory long held by some conservative blogs. That idea jumped to other social media services such as Twitter and Reddit, where it gained momentum on the page "The_Donald." A new Reddit discussion thread called "Pizzagate" quickly attracted 20,000 subscribers.

[The New York Times]

[T]hanks to just a few tweets, a couple of message board posts, and the help of some pro-Trump sites eager for traffic, this conspiracy theory generated hundreds of thousands of engagements on Facebook, reaching potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

[BuzzFeed]

After Turkey's own government child abuse scandal, Turkish conservatives and supporters of the Erdoğan administration took hold of the Pizzagate theory as a form of political obfuscation.

Timing of PizzaGate was significant in that it initially blurred the public debate abound the actual child abuse problem in Turkey. Back in March, when a real child abuse scandal was revealed at the government-linked Ensar Foundation, the perpetrator received a heavy jail sentence, but the government was spared from an investigation by a diluting the issue in the Parliament.

[The Daily Dot]

Soon, protesters began to gather outside of Comet Ping Pong, shooting video encounters with Alefantis.

General Mike Flynn tweeted out a link to an article spreading the conspiracy theory.

A fake news story was even tweeted by General Mike Flynn, Donald Trump's pick for national security adviser. In the 3 November tweet he linked to a discredited story that suggested Hillary Clinton and her "crew" were involved in child abuse and added the comment "U decide."

[The Guardian]

Last month, D.C. police told Fox 5 that they were not investigating Comet and were keeping an eye on those who were threatening the restaurant and its employees. Restaurant general manager Bryce Reh told the station that some conspiracy theorists were using photos of actual children from the establishment's website to push the false stories.

[Fox News]

The company noted the disclosure of personal information as the reason for its decision:

We wanted to let you know that after several long discussions on our end we are unable to keep your community open after today. This is because we're still seeing PII of private individuals continually posted on your subreddit and it's not being removed by moderators after multiple warnings and discussions with your team.

[Heatstreet]

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