Peak Insanity for "Pizzagate?"

Wait... Whut?

Here I thought that "pizzagate" reached peak insanity months ago. But apparently, I was wrong.

Clearly demonstrating the recently proposed hypothesis that exposure to contradictory facts makes some people more convinced of their erroneous beliefs, a few hardcore idiots out there are still convinced that there's something to this bogus conspiracy theory. For those few folks who haven't heard of it, the conspiracy was made up by some guy on Reddit who proposed that since "pizza" is apparently a code word used by pedophiles, this particular pizza place must be part of a satanic pedophile ring. Yeah, if that sounds like a ridiculous reach to you, you're not alone.

Now these folks are going further. Because the owner of this particular pizza place appeared on a cooking show hosted by celebrity chef Guy Fiori, it clearly follows that Fiori must be part of the conspiracy. As if a satanic pedophilia cult leader who owned a restaurant couldn't appear on a cooking show, just because they happen to own a restaurant, without the show being complicit. That would even be true if the restaurant owner in question was a satanic pedophilia cult leader, which it's obvious at this point that he's not. I know, critical thinking is not the forte of this bunch.

Months after the Pizzagate shooter conceded that “the intel on this wasn’t 100 percent” and Alex Jones apologized for his misleading coverage of the topic, a group of hardcore conspiracy theorists remains convinced that a satanic pedophilia cult with many elite Democrats as members operates out of Comet Ping Pong, a formerly unassuming pizza shop in Washington D.C. Just yesterday, the Trump-approved Gamergate muscleman Mike Cernovich was tweeting about a “deep state pedophile ring.” And if you haven’t been following closely, you might be surprised to learn that the Pizzagaters have accused Guy Fieri–Food Network host, human meme, American icon–of being in on the action.

The accusation stems from an old episode of Guy’s show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, which featured the host chopping it up with Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis in the restaurant’s kitchen. Pizzagaters have been rumbling about Fieri’s supposed involvement for a while: “COMET PIZZA WAS ON DINERS, DRIVE INS AND DIVES, GUY FIERI, VIDEO TAKEN DOWN. ALAFANTIS SAYS HE HARVESTS 10 TONS OF TOMATOES, CANS THEM AND STORES THEM IN HIS BASEMENT,” reads a comment on the apocalyptic financial “news” site ZeroHedge from December. (If you’re unclear on the sinister intimations of harvesting and canning tomatoes in your basement, you’re just not deep enough into PizzaGate yet.) And this week, the satirical Twitter account @lib_crusher tweeted screenshots to a post about Fieri and Comet Ping Pong on the Facebook group “Pizzagate – Stop the Ring.” “They even put these sick molesters on the food network,” the Facebook poster wrote.

So after all the crazies have disavowed it, this nonsense is still going strong thanks to a handful of true believers. Or are they trolls, maybe, trying to see if they can keep it going? In the end, I suppose the answer to that is "who cares?" If somebody does wind up getting hurt over this bullshit story, it really doesn't matter whether the person perpetrating it was stupid or evil. All of these dead-enders will be culpable. Of course, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, and to this end I want to make it clear that this whole thing was a big con dreamed up by some guy on Reddit. Or maybe it was a joke. But again, who really cares?

The saddest thing about this is that "satanic pedophile rings" aren't even a thing. They were dreamed up by fundamentalist Christians in the 1980's in an attempt to ban all minority religions, and that plan failed catastrophically. Pedophiles for the most part aren't Satanists because statistically, hardly any Satanists exist. Most follow normal, mainstream religions - which, when you think about it, is a lot scarier.