Tracking down the origins of a conspiracy theory is sometimes difficult, but there’s good evidence to indicate where the “Pizza Gate” story came from, and it’s straight from the mouth of InfoWars host Alex Jones.
Now, Jones is walking back his dissemination of the story (which baselessly claims that a D.C. restaurant is the site of a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton) after an armed man stormed the restaurant and fired shots. The shooter, 28-year-old Edgar Welch, was an InfoWars listener.
This Tuesday, the Washington Post gave an analysis on how the story went viral from Jones’ show:
The notion quickly moved to other social-media platforms, including 4chan and Reddit, mostly through anonymous or pseudonymous posts. On the far-right site Infowars, talk-show host Alex Jones repeatedly suggested that Clinton was involved in a child sex ring and that her campaign chairman, John Podesta, indulged in satanic rituals.
The video, which has been viewed over 427,000 times, has since been “removed by the user.”
But Right Wing Watch was able to recover the video’s audio (below), where Jones says that Clinton is “one of the most vicious serial killers the planet has ever seen,” and goes on to accuse her of being a pedophiliac child killer.
In a video published on December 5, a guest hammers Jones for using the #PizzaGate hashtag in the past, along with instances where InfoWars posted videos promoting the bogus claim.
At the outset of the video, a slightly nervous Jones implored his audience to “be careful about stuff like this,” going on to claim without irony that he’s “one of the middle-of-the-road guys, and I’m being accused of being involved in it now.”
“So this is serious. We do not need violence. We do not need people marching into pizza places with guns,” he added.
Jones then went to his guest Sharif Silmi, who was an eyewitness to Welch’s storming of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in D.C.
“I do hold you responsible to some extent for the events that took place,” Silmi told Jones.
“You have been on the forefront of attacking Comet Ping Pong,” Silmi continued as Jones shifted in his seat. “All of a sudden after the incident that went down [on December 4], you’re shifting your position somewhat…”
As Silmi laid bare Jones’ guilt in front of his audience, the InfoWars host shook his head disagreeably.
“You’re attacking hard-working people there,” Silmi continued, referring to the employees of Comet Ping Pong. “People that are grinding for 14-13 dollars an hour, you know, putting a target on their back by this innuendo…”
Jones’ response was as pathetic as you’d expect, rambling between trying to distance himself from the urgency he gave the claims in the past, while at the same time seemingly coaxing Silmi to admit that there might be some validity to the story.
Watch the exchange in the video below:
Featured image via YouTube
Leave a Reply