![]() #Alder coppice primary school dudley windows.Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s new Washington neighbors are inviting him to a meal at Comet Ping Pong, the pizzeria at the center of a conspiracy theory. Pence is currently living in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, near Comet Ping Pong.Ī gunman showed up to the restaurant earlier this month and fired at least one shot. He claimed to be “ self-investigating” a conspiracy theory that a child sex slave ring linked to Hillary Clinton was operating out of its basement.Ī group of Pence’s neighbors, who call themselves the Neighbors Organizing for Power and Equality, posted an open letter to Medium inviting the vice president-elect to meet with them at Comet Ping Pong to discuss the negative impacts of fake news. The letter told Pence that “breaking bread” would help “bring an end to this madness.” “Families are frightened for their own safety.” Parents and grandparents are left struggling to explain to our traumatized children why a man would fire a gun in a family gathering place in the heart of the community,” the letter read. “By doing so, you will send a powerful message to the perpetrators of these hateful attacks that this baseless and dangerous campaign of hate must stop,” the letter read. ![]() “Last Sunday’s assault on Comet ended peacefully. ![]() The next attack may not.After weeks of debate about the theoretical and abstract dangers of fake news, there’s finally a concrete incident to discuss. On Sunday, a North Carolina man walked into Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in an affluent corner of Northwest D.C. wielding an assault rifle, which he fired at least once. The man, 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, told police he intended to “self-investigate” a bogus story alleging that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophilia ring out of the restaurant. The story, dubbed, deplorably, “Pizzagate” has spread around certain fake news circles, culminating in Welch’s expedition to Comet on Sunday. So much of the discussion about “fake news” has involved vague questions about, for example, whether Russian-backed propaganda could have been a factor in Donald Trump’s victory. A big Washington Post report suggested that Russia had played a role in spreading lots of fake news Adrian Chen, among others, convincingly argued that one major basis for that report was extremely fraught. There’s a broader question of the extent to which a foreign power could influence the election, and the extent to which that would really be anything new. Liz Cheney Already Has a 2024 Strategy Ronald Brownsteinīut the Comet incident offers a disconcerting example of what looks like a concrete result of fake news leading to violence. ![]() ![]() BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman last month offered an excellent forensic tracing of how the story came about. A white-supremacist Twitter account falsely claimed on October 30 that emails showed a pedophilia ring centered around Clinton. It jumped from there to message boards, and then to bogus news sites. Eventually, the Patient Zero Twitter account passed along the bogus posts as affirmation of his tip, even though the story originated with him anyway. The connection to Comet came because the restaurant’s owner popped up in emails with Clinton campaign chair John Podesta discussing a fundraiser. Those emails were hacked and then leaked during the election by an unknown actor, though U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe Russia is behind the hacks. The “Pizzagate” story goes beyond some of the other bogus claims made during this election. ![]()
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