Kyle Messenger

In 2016, there was an incident at a pizza/ping-pong joint in Salisbury, N.C. What happened was a man named Edgar M. Welch went to Comet Ping Pong and brought his rifle inside because of the conspiracy that was hot on the media at that time. The conspiracy regarding the restaurant was known as the “Pizzagate.” This theory was that the people inside of the restaurant were molesting children. The reason why this became a headline on the news was because it was believed the restaurant had connections with the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign John Podesta back in 2016. Not only him, but they believed Hillary herself had connections to the business they were believed to be running.  After this event, major news paper industry supported the falsly accused business to help bring out the facts about the Comet Ping Pong restaurant to support the fact that no sort of child sex-trafficking was going on at any time in the restaurant. Welch was so brainwashed by the news that he felt like he had to end something that wasn’t even taking place. The reason why these theories were released was to sabotage the campaign of Hillary and her family. People like Welch believed these theories, he just decided to act upon it. Even though he was the only one to act upon this lie, it doesn’t mean it didn’t affect a lot more people than it really did. Another person to blame for this, is most likely Donald Trump and his team for developing this kind of theorie. 

This had an effect on Hillary’s campaign because these events happened relatively close to the election. The motives for this conspiracy relates a lot to the claims that author Jan-Willem Van Prooijen says in his article, “ Suspicion Makes Us Human,” he says.”These modern forms of Communication allow conspiracy theories to spread faster than ever, and make it easy for like-minded people to connect and form online echo chambers.”(Page 2 para. 3) What Prooijen is trying to point out is that these kinds of theories can spread like a wil;dfire. Especially, when it comes from elite people in the world we live in. So, when these kinds of claims hit the news Prooijen tells us it is very easy for people to become brainwashed and truly believe something false like this is truly happening which can cause dangerous situations such as the Pizzagate incident. Not only are the people from the right side responsible for this incident but many news channels believed and covered this story which was a vital part in the spread of the false information being sent out. Prooijen describes throughout his article about how people will make up their own theories  about a person or group because they feel like they are undergoing certain procedures that will end up hurting people of their own group or in general. This incident was a prime example of how one thought can get out of control when it is published by a powerful human or organization. Not only that, but it is also an example of how us people can be so blind to a statement but we still choose to believe in such and even worse, act upon them. Even though we don’t truly know what has taken place, by listening to our leaders, it can cause us to become so caught up into something that isn;t real and take action and end up almost hurting people for no correct reason. This also adds to the topic of fake news and how it can control us humans one way or the other significantly. Maybe one day, we can have a world were elite officials do not target each other by spreading lies in order to sabotage the other side so violence doesn’t have to take place.