@theatlantic: Pizzagate has found its way back into the conspiracy-theory pipeline, 10 years after a man who believed it entered a D.C. restaurant with a gun, Kaitlyn Tiffany reports. The Pizzagate conspiracy theory came from a batch of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, who had emailed with the owner of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. “It’s not worth your time for me to explain why some people became convinced that these were full of coded references to child sex slaves,” Tiffany writes. After the conspiracy theory spilled into the real world, and a man entered the shop with an AR-15, some of its biggest boosters backed off. “Pizzagate had become embarrassing, even to its early promoters,” Tiffany writes. “But any trace of shame is now a distant memory,” Tiffany continues. Earlier this year, on his popular podcast, Tucker Carlson declared that he hadn’t taken Pizzagate seriously enough. “Back in 2016, Pizzagate was interpreted as a close call and taken as a warning. It was a sign that any of the turbid fantasies that swirl around in online spaces might lap across the boundary with real life,” Tiffany writes. “But the shocking power of that revelation—drawn from an episode in which nobody got hurt and the shooter apologized—is hard to fathom now.” This story is one in a three-part series commemorating the 10-year anniversary of Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that led to a shooting at the Washington, D.C., restaurant Comet Ping Pong in 2016. Read more at the link. 📷: Illustration by Joan Wong*

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Friday 30 October 2026 17:00:00 GMT