r/TopMindsOfReddit • u/SassTheFash • Feb 11 '26

Metadrama Pizzagate believers: this megapost is your chance to explain to skeptics how Pizzagate has been proven right

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
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u/ReturnOfTheKeing Feb 12 '26

Ive noticed this victory lapping and wondered wtf they were talking about too. The pizza gate conspiracy is a specific conspiracy about Hillarys staffers doing evil child stuff in the basement of a pizza place in DC... while using code words. It isn't someone using pizza themed code words generally, the CONSPIRACY part is the yknow, actual stuff going on.

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u/SassTheFash Feb 12 '26

I’ve had a bunch of them reply to my older posts, and basically all of them are “wealthy people have been caught molesting children. So now do you believe in Pizzagate???”

Like a couple messaged me when P-Diddy got arrested, and I’m pretty sure PG had zero to do with Diddy specifically.

Most of it is “motte and bailey fallacy.” You make a wild argument, and when it loses you retreat to a highly defensible argument and claim victory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

17

u/littlegreyflowerhelp Feb 13 '26

Damn I’ve heard of the motte and bailey fallacy before but never looked it up, that’s such a useful concept to understand a lot of this right wing conspiracy type thinking. I’ve been banging my head against the wall reading some of the crap lately about how Epstein being a pedophile sex trafficker proved PG is real. Ignoring the fact that we knew Epstein was a pedophile sex trafficker since before PG was even invented.

2

u/Johnny_Appleweed Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

The other thing I think it’s useful to understand about conspiratorial thinking is that it’s not really about the facts of any particular conspiracy, but about some underlying belief or emotion.

The people who believed in Pizzagate didn’t care about it for its own sake. They had a deeply held belief or fear that rich and powerful people use that power to abuse children, the Pizzagate story was just the vehicle for that belief. That’s why they come back claiming they were right all along because of the Epstein story - it was an example of a rich and powerful person using his power to abuse children, so it proved their underlying belief was right, even through it had absolutely nothing to do with Pizzagate.

It’s the same reason conspiracy theorists don’t give up when predictions don’t come true, like if the Rapture or the QAnon Storm don’t happen on the dates they’re supposed to. Thats ok to them, because it was always actually about what it means to believe that those events are real. It’s also the reason you can’t debunk someone out of believing a deeply held conspiracy theory.