The Cannon Fodder Conspiracy Theorists

There's a reason why the likes of Elon Musk are so keen to spread dangerous conspiracy theories, and it has nothing to do with uncovering the truth, reports Graham Williamson

Edgar Maddison Welch surrenders to police in Washington, December 2016. Photo: Sathi Soma/Associated Press/Alamy

It took the media around a week to realise who had been shot. Edgar Maddison Welch was pulled over by police in Kannapolis, North Carolina on 4 January 2025. According to a statement issued by Kannapolis police, he refused to drop his weapon and was shot, dying in hospital two days later.

It's a fairly common American story; the University of Illinois's Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project estimates it happens to around 600 people each year. But Welch had a history. Exactly eight years and one month prior to his shooting, he travelled from North Carolina to Washington DC with a rifle in order to raid the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. He did this because an online conspiracy theory had taught him that Hillary Clinton and her associates were torturing child sex slaves in the basement.

The conspiracy theory in question was Pizzagate, spawned from feverish over-analysis of the Clinton campaign emails leaked in the late stages of the 2016 elections. Puzzled by references to "cheese", "pizza" and "hot dogs", the too-online wing of the right decided they must be coded references to child sex trafficking. The evidence came thick, fast and poorly researched. When it was discovered that Comet Ping Pong's owner had made a social media post showing one of Jeff Koons's infamously explicit photographs of him making love to his ex-wife Ilona Staller, it was interpreted as an image of an underage girl. (Staller was forty when she married Koons)

If you know anything about Pizzagate, you know how it ended. By the time Mr. Welch went to Washington, the conspiracy theorists were fully convinced that Comet Ping Pong's basement was the place where the children were being held. If any of them had ventured out from behind their laptops and investigated, they might have discovered what Welch did: that Comet Ping Pong has no basement.

This was all treated as a very funny joke by sceptics and other opponents of the far right. It looks less funny now, and not just because Welch is dead. Rather than being embarrassed, the communities where Pizzagate was born elaborated on their mythology until it became QAnon. The original Pizzagate story resurfaced on TikTok, and in 2024 Elon Musk went on a posting spree promoting the theory on X.