“Pizzagate,” as the social media conspiracy lovers styled it, is the deranged conspiracy theory by which Comet Ping Pong, a popular family pizzeria in Northwest Washington, D.C., is the hub of a child-abuse ring run by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta. This baseless drivel is fake news at its most patently absurd.
But what is absurd can yield events that are all too real, as on Sunday when a North Carolina man armed with an assault rifle reportedly barged into Comet and fired at least one shot. The man, Edgar Maddison Welch, told police he’d gone to the restaurant to “self-investigate” pizzagate, which took hold in the dark crevices of social media in the days before the election.
It’s tempting to think of fake news as a political dirty trick devised by partisan mischief-makers that caters to ignoramuses in election season. But the Comet Ping Pong incident is a reminder that fake news isn’t only a distortion of public events, which is bad enough. Fervid conspiracy theorists have seized on anodyne personal emails from the hacked Podesta files to conjure, out of the thinnest air, supposed evidence of a child sex-trafficking ring.
The crackpots who peddle such stuff include Michael Flynn, the son and top aide to retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the new White House national security adviser. Both Flynns are especially fond of conspiracy theories.
Beyond the responsibility that social media platforms have shirked in allowing their spaces to be polluted by fiction masquerading as fact, there is little to prevent the spread of fake news. In Comet Ping Pong’s case, though, two things might help: District of Columbia police should post a uniformed officer at the restaurant. And both Flynns, along with Trump, should visit Comet Ping Pong and order one of its excellent pizzas. We recommend the Jimmy, topped with meatballs.