One thing is certain. If you haven’t heard of #pizzagate yet, you will. This 9-letter word has taken social media and mainstream media by storm and it’s a Real Humdinger. Moreover, it’s symbolic value is now immeasurable. The Pizzagate meme has monumentally surpassed its early life as a hash tag gone viral and is now a cultural and political phenomenon. And there’s no turning back.
At a glance, Pizzagate has given rise to two diametrically-opposed forces: the grass-roots citizenry who’ve undertaken an investigation of the Pizzagate puzzle vs. the political establishment in association with the mainstream media who are pulling no stops to discredit any and all aspects of Pizzagate.
Pizzagate Is About You
A Beginner’s Guide to Pizzagate is coming soon but in the meantime, you can check out the highlights here. Whatever your view of Pizzagate and its veracity – there’s no denying that the phenomenon contains the hallmarks of a gnarly psychological thriller: a complex story-line, a distinctive cast of characters, a maze of relationships and incredibly high stakes (for some, more than others). And the Pizzagate Inquiry has grown into much more than a citizen-led investigation. Pizzagate is now a story within a story within a story … Although, initially, confined to 4Chan and Reddit forums, the players now include all of us. Yes, everyone one of us.
The Birth of Fake News
You may ask: “How the hell did I get looped into this pizzagate thing?” You got looped in the first time the words “fake news” made their debut. The term #FakeNews is now screeching like an aggressive horn that just won’t stop honking, obnoxious and incessant, and all the while desperately trying to drown out any rational assessment of what’s what.
What began as a grassroots inquiry, originating from a justifiable curiosity about Wikileaks release of The Podesta Emails, has expanded exponentially. Perhaps even more remarkable is the mainstream media’s unprecedented effort to contain the spread of The Pizzagate Story. Ironically, every effort made by the MSM to restrain this undesirable organism merely serves to accelerate its growth. Take that, CNN. But, what exactly is the mainstream trying to shut down? Why all the fuss?
Increasingly, it would seem that a memo was circulated among the MSM and it went something like this:
URGENT: Alternative Sources = Pizzagate = Fake News = Shut Down
The Washington Post’s earliest coverage of Pizzagate merits its own inquiry. Sensationalistic, dramatic and loaded with countless variations of the term “fake news”, the article failed to address some of the more substantiated and disturbing links made in the Pizzagate Investigation. Anyone who’d been following The Pizzagate Story couldn’t help but notice that the article chose the most scandalous elements, in a manner reminiscent of a Roger Corman film (no offence to Corman), and through astonishing leaps and bounds, published their synopsized version of The Pizzagate Story. Interesting that the Washington Post continues to employ precisely the hack-methods which they attribute to Pizzagate Theorists. The moral of The Washington Post’s story: Beware. This is Fake News. And Fake News Can Hurt You.
And before you knew it, everyone had something to say about The New Menace … Fake News. The New York Times, CNN as well as political figures like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel. This debacle is no longer about Pizzagate, per se, but about the freedom to inquire, inform and exchange ideas. And that’s where you and I fit in.
On November 24, 2016, The Washington Post (perhaps regretfully) referenced an obscure website Prop Or Not and a list of 200 “Fake News Outlets” to beware of. This manoevre reeked of a new McCarthyism – one which I would argue is even more ominous. At least during McCarthy’s reign, distinguished by general hysteria and paranoia, there was a face attached to the assault. During our current Era of Paranoia, there is no particular entity which we can hold accountable for spreading this Fake News hogwash.
Pizzagate has been transformed into the focal point and barometer in this all-new information war. And that’s where you fit in. It appears that the Pizzagate investigation provided the perfect opportunity to launch an all-out attack on much more than Pizzagate. Now, virtually any alternative news source (pizzagateful or not) is potentially in the bull’s-eye. I’m referring to any news source which belongs to the alternative media. And, it appears, increasingly that anyone who critiques or questions the official narrative, presumably defined by the MSM and its usual suspects (CNN, MSNBC , The Washington Post, The New York Times et al) is under attack as a purveyor of, you guessed it, fake news.
Stay tuned for …
The Russians Are Coming
REAL HUMDINGER 