Is the appetite for conspiracy theories really new?
On the morning of December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a warehouse worker and a father of two from Salisbury, North Carolina, told his family that he had a few things to do; loaded an AR-15, a .38-calibre revolver, and a folding knife into his car; and headed for Washington, D.C. Welch’s intention, he later told police, was to “self-investigate” a plot featuring—in no particular order—Hillary Clinton, sex traffiking, satanic rituals, and pizza.
At around 3 P.M., Welch arrived at Comet Ping Pong, a restaurant in Chevy Chase, where, he believed, children were being held in a network of tunnels. He made his way to the kitchen, shot open a locked door, and discovered cooking utensils. In an interview from jail, a few days later, he acknowledged to the Times, “The intel on this wasn’t a hundred percent.” He’d found no captive children in the restaurant’s basement; in fact, as many accounts of the incident noted, Comet Ping Pong doesn’t even have a basement.
Far from being dissuaded by the new “intel,” believers in what had become known as Pizzagate dug in. Welch had dabbled in acting—he’d appeared as a victim in a low-budget slasher movie— thus, it followed, his raid on the restaurant had been staged. That the plotters had gone to such lengths to cover their tracks showed just how much evil there was to hide. “This shit runs very deep,” a contributor to the subreddit thread r/Conspiracy wrote. All the while, the restaurant’s owner was receiving death threats.
This story is from the April 22, 2019 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the April 22, 2019 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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