A quiet street in an affluent Washington D.C. neighborhood exploded into violence on Sunday when an armed gunman entered a pizzeria and opened fire. Edgar Maddison Welch later told police that he’d come to self-investigate reports of a pedophile ring operating out of the Comet Ping Pong restaurant. He claimed to have brought the AR-15 rifle with him because he believed there were children being held hostage inside the eatery. His act of violent ‘valor’ was undermined by the fact that the reports were entirely false, and had been fabricated to sabotage Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The bogus news story, dubbed “Pizzagate”, began just over two months ago. A white supremacist Twitter account posing as a Jewish lawyer from New York City posted on October 30th that the NYPD had discovered evidence of emails between Hillary Clinton and Anthony Weiner that linked the politicians to an “international child enslavement ring”. The next day, Sean Adl-Tabatabai posted on YourNewsWire, a known hub for right-wing conspiracy theorists, that the FBI had confirmed the claims. His ‘evidence’? An anonymous post on an “alt-right” internet message board.
According to the New York Times, at least one other person had visited the D.C pizza parlor to investigate the Clinton pedophile ring claims, but Edgar Welch was the first to do so armed with an assault rifle. Although no one was harmed during his rampage, the incident raises troubling concerns about the ability of fake news to provoke violent reactions.
The burgeoning “alt-right”, a fringe white-nationalist movement that has exploded onto the political scene with Donald Trump’s election, has given rise to an increasing number of bizarre fake news stories. Many of them involve elaborate conspiracies targeting liberal politicians and celebrities. Alex Jones, a far-right radio show host, helped propagate the theory that Hillary Clinton engages in satanic rituals and has even “personally murdered and chopped up children”. Such ludicrous claims were once relegated to the front pages of gossip rags like the National Enquirer; in an era where our president can easily be described as ‘post-factual’, they have turned from laughable to believable for many.
While Edgar Welch’s actions may be out of the ordinary––it would seem that most “alt-right” fanatics are content to remain behind anonymous computer screens––he represents a dangerous new faction of the ultra-reactive. Welch insists that he has no political affiliations and did not vote for Trump; his exposure to right-wing conspiracy theories via the internet suggests that these fake news stories are beginning to reach beyond their target audience of “alt-righters” and hardcore conspiracy theorists. As these bogus claims become more easily accessible through social media and fake news outlets, it feels plausible that more Edgar Welches––apolitical, even well-intentioned folks, not to mention those with fanatic political alignments––may be spurred to action by controversial and provocative stories.
