#Pizzagate, A Lone Gunman, "Fake News", and You
On Sunday, a man with a rifle fired several shots inside of Comet Pizza, in Washington D.C., a restaurant believed to be the alleged "ground zero" in a Clinton-linked child-sex-trafficking conspiracy better known as #Pizzagate.
I say alleged, because the reaction every single news outlet has had to Pizzagate seems about as inorganic as it does synchronized.
Apparently, we are now being 'invaded' by fake news. Every news network reporting on Pizzagate has hit the ground with pieces calling it a “fake-news conspiracy theory”, that went so far as to "fuel an attack" on innocent people. And it is most definitely a totally-fake-made-up-conspiracy-theory, which is why it was put in nearly every god damned headline you'll read on the topic.
The problem with this approach, is that instead of settling the issue, addressing Pizzagate in any capacity (especially one where no real attention or explanation is given about the material actually presented in Pizzagate) inadvertently forces the issue into mainstream discussion the same way mainstream media effort spent on attempting to address the Loose Change 9/11 theory failed to quash discussion, that then only grew more lively thanks to the mainstream platform it was provided. In fact, if you browse your favorite news outlet's comment section right now, you'll probably be witness to some sort of argumentative hairball between several varying fronts of people with their own opinions on the subject.
On one front, you’ll have people who never stopped believing the MSM narrative and still refuse to falter even in the face of stunning electoral embarrassment, who don’t know anything about Pizzagate but won’t think twice about repeating what they’re told by authority and would love nothing more than to "research" the topic (usually via a quick Snopes or Buzzfeed visit), so they’ll have more material to make fun of “right wing conspiritards.” The fact that every single mentioning of pizzagate since this incident have also arguably all been void of detail save for vague references to it being "Clinton-linked", definitely isn't an attempt to rile up HRC's voting base into waging their own war on "fake news", the new leftist-boogeyman-scapegoat entity being blamed for Clinton's defeat.
On another front, you’ll have people who are skeptical of the MSM, who also may not know much or anything about Pizzagate, who also will go looking into the topic to either attempt to find the “truth” or at the very least be knowledgeable about the theory, if only enough to bash their ideological “libtard” counterparts. Many of these people undoubtedly would identify as Trump voters, or at the very least as leaning right-wing. Many of these same people view the constant references to "fake news" as little more than a codeword for anything that doesn't follow and put out a tangible progressive narrative.
Finally, you have all the people of disparate backgrounds and beliefs who know already know about the Pizzagate theory and know how and what to look for via Wikileaks and other sources, who are very skeptical of the MSM in all it's forms- everything from Fox to MSNBC. Whether or not they think it’s true, the reaction they’re seeing from the MSM, the establishment and people like Hillary Clinton, are only going to drive them to either end of the debate, further away from skeptical curiosity and towards a committed belief or disbelief in the theory. And as they are driven towards these ends of the spectrum, they are going to get much more vocal in their beliefs, either fueling or out right joining in with one of the above two groups.
It’d be all too easy to write this all off as a another attempt by the establishment to divide and conquer people by getting them to fight among themselves, but it’s increasingly apparent with every passing day that the script off of which the establishment thought it was going to be able to run once Hillary took her rightful place as President-Elect isn’t finding the necessary footing. Moreover, even as a tool used to divide, this is the last kind of gossip anyone would want to intentionally let slip. Rumors of financial wrongdoing generally pass into the void of irrelevancy more easily than child abuse.
The ideologically-driven media segments full of constant accusations and dismissive complaints about “fake news” rolling out like clockwork, ultimately don’t have any real bite because an arguable multitude of people now associate fake news more with the constant “Hillary has it on lock” election forecasting than they even do with, say, The Onion- mainly due to the fact that The Onion doesn’t hide the fact that it’s satirical publication, and doesn't try to convince anyone otherwise. Regulating speech and the press to ensure "truthful" reporting and journalism has been an issue for “both sides” in the US, the most egregious attempt in recent memory being Senator Dianne Feinstein's attempt at limiting freedom of speech and of the press to anyone who isn’t an “officially approved” journalist based on criteria set by the government. Many would argue that this would be a perfect opportunity to do just that, going so far as to suggest the shooting itself was a false flag in order spark the necessary public outrage to fuel a push for tighter regulations on freedom of speech and freedom of the press to help mitigate "fake news", which in this context is arguably a placeholder term for alternative news sites- like yours truly- many of which were distinctly "not with her", or at the very least skeptical of Hillary's alleged impending electoral-domination.
Moreover, the timing of the shots-fired incident is just in time to set up a few marketing segways to a new movie coming out this week.
That movie, “Miss Sloane”, is another example of ideologically driven media that was partially built on the marketable possibility of a post-election Hillarytopia. Jessica Chastain plays the part of “Elizabeth Sloane”, a “highly sought after and formidable lobbyist in D.C.” who is tapped to “take on the NRA ‘gun lobby’”, a premise almost too direct to qualify as allusion. Given the time-overlap of the production of the film with the past year and change leading up to the election, it is by no means a stretch of the imagination to see how this film, especially after this incident, could have easily been seized upon by the would be President-Elect Clinton to promise big action on "gun control" and"fake news".
I know, I know. It is very easy to retroactively correlate current events with past ones, and to point a finger and say, “This is what they wanted, this was their plan, false flag”. However, I would argue that the question as to how such a politically convenient scenario has unfolded, as well as how easy it is for people to jump onto the all-too-familiar “pass-a-law” bandwagon, isn't such an egregious breach of rational thought as it's already being made out to be. Nor is it irrational to suggest the media colludes with the government, (or the DNC for that matter), to pursue certain narrative with given topics.
I don’t for a second doubt there are forces behind the curtain with their fingers in this, attempting to manipulate the masses for their own personal gain. But these days, especially with Brexit, Trump's election, and now the recent Italian referendum, elections and populist movements seem to wiping the “New Progressive World Order” away, and it feels more like a fading old guard struggling to keep their control over a world changing too fast for them to keep up.
For now, I'm just relishing the anticipation of waiting for all of these news outlets to realize that if they're going to keep attempting to preemptively establish Pizzagate as a "fake news conspiracy"- especially as hard as they have been- they are actually going to have to get into it in detail. And, they are also going to have to be faster and more accurate than the invisible hand of the internet, driven by wiki-walking skeptics and sleuths, who have thus far run circles around them on everything else.
While I have my own beliefs-and doubts- on the subject, I would only suggest that if you do decide to (carefully) do your own research into Pizzagate, to "think outside of Google", and to get as wide of an ideological variety of sources as you possibly can. If you look really close from article to article, you'll notice biases and trends, and more importantly, gaps. It's not just what they're saying, and how they're saying it, that you should be paying attention to.
It's what they're not saying at all.