Wednesday 11/22/2017 marks a full a year since the /r/Pizzagate subreddit was banned on Reddit. A lot has happened since then. This article was originally written in the beginning of 2017 with plans of publishing it on 11/07/2017 but is being published today.
As the founder of /r/Pizzagate part of me knows this story should have been published a long time ago, but I suppose better late than never.
If there is enough interest I may write a followup piece.
The Legacy Media has worked relentlessly to spin the truth on what the Pizzagate investigation actually is, but the /r/Pizzagate subreddit and Pizzagate/Pedogate movement have ALWAYS been about investigating the existence of an international human/child sex trafficking operation that is perpetuated by the elites and covered up by various government agencies throughout the world.
Comet Ping Pong Pizza was just ONE lead discovered in John Podesta’s emails leaked by WikiLeaks. While there is absolutely no question Comet Ping Pong Pizza and James Alefantis should be thoroughly investigated to the fullest extent of the law, this one lead does NOT define the Pizzagate investigation.
The Legacy Media has tirelessly attempted to call Pizzagate a partisan witch-hunt, however the /r/Pizzagate subreddit and movement has ALWAYS been non-partisan. The subreddit /r/Pizzagate NEVER condoned or encouraged any kind of harassment or violence towards anyone being investigated.
This can all be proven by looking at any of the early archives of /r/Pizzagate and viewing the text on the sidebar or viewing an archive of the original rules post.
I have been following WikiLeaks closely since its inception in 2006 before they ever even released a single document or leak, so I was already quite familiar with their track record for accuracy. Additionally, while I hold primarily libertarian views, I do lean to the left socially, and in 2016 I was originally a Bernie Sanders supporter. I followed his campaign very closely. I watched all his rallies/speeches, followed a wide variety of news sources covering his campaign, and I watched the DNC National convention live.
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It was very obvious to me (and anyone paying attention) that there was a blatant bias in the Legacy Media coverage of Bernie Sanders, as well as astroturfing occurring throughout online social media platforms to discredit Bernie Sanders and promote Hillary Clinton.
I will never forget watching Reddit go overnight from being pro-Bernie Sanders to pro-Hillary Clinton, it was one of the most inorganic and unnatural online social experiences I have ever witnessed.
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On July 22nd 2016, WikiLeaks first released the DNC Emails which included 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee covering a period from January 2015 until May 25th 2016. The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC.
The contents of these leaked emails prove that the DNC rigged the 2016 Democratic Primary against Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton by colluding with the Legacy Media (MSM) and Super PAC’s in numerous fraudulent, unethical, and unfair practices to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic Primary.
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On October 7th 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of emails from John Podesta’s Gmail account in a series called “The Podesta Emails“. Back in March 2016, the personal Gmail account of John Podesta had been compromised in a data breach. The Smoking Gun reports, “Podesta received an email with the ominous subject line “Someone has your email” that appeared to be from Google on March 19. It warned that “someone just used your password to try to sign in to your Google Account” and said Google “stopped this login attempt.” The date, IP address, and location of the supposed breach were all listed, and the email recommended changing the password associated with the account “immediately,” providing a link to do so.”
How Podesta got hacked: ‘Password’ email revealed in WikiLeaks dump
Throughout the rest of October up through early November, WikiLeaks released new installments of the Podesta emails on an almost daily basis. In total WikiLeaks published over 20,000 pages of John Podesta’s emails . I was following Twitter closely to keep up to date with developing information, and I participated heavily in the subreddit /r/DNCleaks which came into existence to cover these leaks when it became clear that the rest of Reddit was suppressing the information contained in these leaks from a mainstream audience. I also began to follow the development of the investigation into these emails on /r/The_Donald and on 4chan as well. I ended up finding out that the /r/The_Donald community on Reddit was actually a very useful resource, as they were heavily involved in dissecting and investigating WikiLeaks releases of John Podesta’s emails.
At this point in time after thoroughly examining evidence of Hillary Clinton & the DNC engaging in a variety of criminal behavior and treasonous activities uncovered by WikiLeaks release of John Podesta’s emails, it became very clear to me that Hillary Clinton was completely unfit for the presidency. It was obvious to me that the DNC should be investigated under R.I.C.O., and that people needed to go to jail to say the least. Around this time I also decided that I was going to vote for Donald Trump, instead of Gary Johnson as I had in 2012. However, just like I had followed Bernie Sanders, I had started to follow Donald Trumps campaign very closely. I watched all his rallies/speeches, and followed a wide variety of news sources covering his campaign. I decided he was not the bogeyman the Legacy Media’s propaganda had tried to convince me he was, and that he was without a doubt the lesser of two evils next to Hillary Clinton.
Needless to say I was not the only one to reach this conclusion based off my own independent research into WikiLeaks releases.
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On November 3rd 2016, WikiLeaks released Part 28 in their series, which included an email thread between John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and his brother Tony, an influential Democratic lobbyist. In this email, Tony asks his brother if he is able to attend a “Spirit Cooking dinner.” He says the artist hosting the dinner, Marina Abramovic, “wants [him] there,” and in a previous email in the thread shows the artist herself requesting John’s presence at her New York City home.
On November 4th 2016, political news website We Are Change published an article titled“Spirit Cooking: The Most Disturbing Podesta Email,” showing a video in which Abramovic is seen painting a recipe for “spirit cooking” with “what appears to be thickly congealed blood” on several walls. WikiLeaks Twitter account tweeted a link to the article, and that day the hashtag “#SpiritCooking” started trending worldwide on Twitter.
“Spirit Cooking”: WikiLeaks Publishes Most Bizarre Podesta Email Yet
November 3rd, 2016, the same day the “Spirit Cooking” emails became public knowledge, an anonymous 4chan user posted a thread to the /pol/ board regarding this latest batch of Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks, discussing Comet Ping Pong Pizza having a connection to a pedophile ring.
Another anonymous 4chan user replied to this users post advising readers to search for possible code words in the leaked emails.
Earlier the same day Redditor /u/PleadingtheYiff aka William Craddick had made a post on Reddit in the subreddit /r/The_Donald titled “BREAKING: I believe I have connected a convicted child abductor who was caught stealing children in Haiti with the Clintons“. This post detailed the connection between convicted child trafficker Laura Silsby, former director of The New Life Children’s Refuge and the Clinton Foundation.
Shortly after this WikiLeaks tweeted out a link to William Craddick’s Reddit post which received nearly 17,000 retweets and 14,000 likes. This well sourced lead retweeted by WikiLeaks was the original lead that first sparked the internet to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s potential connections to an international human/child sex trafficking operation that is perpetuated by the elites and covered up by various government agencies throughout the world.
On November 4th 2016 a Pastebin titled “archive of PIZZAGATE(?) information” was created by an anonymous user, and later that day Reddit user /u/DumbScribblyUnctious made a post in the subreddit /r/The_Donald titled “Comet Ping Pong – Pizzagate Summary“. This lead is often credited as the source of the Pizzagate investigation but the Legacy Media conveniently ignores the evidence discovered a day earlier by William Craddick that connects child trafficker Laura Silsby, former director of The New Life Children’s Refuge and the Clinton Foundation. The various questionable legal activities engaged in by Clinton Foundation have been by far the biggest lead uncovered in this entire investigation of WikiLeaks release of John Podesta’s emails. The Clinton Foundation needs to be investigated under R.I.C.O.
Initially I was following the research and reading as much as I could in hopes to find something that convinced me this was all a hoax so I could stop being concerned about it. The more I did my own research the more convinced I became that there was without a doubt something sinister going on here. Throughout the course of my research into this something in my brain suddenly clicked, and I remembered that I had read a similar topic in /r/Conspiracy in the past about the existence of a global human/child sex trafficking operation run by the elites and covered up by government agencies throughout the world.
Late in the evening of November 4th/Early November 5th 2016 the internet discovered James Alefantis’s Instagram account. The night James Alefantis Instagram account was discovered is a night I will never forget. I remember following this and searching his Instagram account myself and seeing all of this unfold live. The contents are beyond bizarre and the contexts of the posts and comment chains are quite disturbing as well.
After searching through Alefantis’ Instagram account and the Instagram accounts of Alefantis’ friends myself, I had no doubts that the internet through WikiLeaks had stumbled onto a deeply disturbing connection to a massive US government scandal, and that this was all very likely connected to the same global human/child sex trafficking operation I had read about years before.
James Alefantis Instagram Archives
On November 7th 2016, the day before the election and exactly one month after the first WikiLeaks release of John Podesta’s emails, I decided that no matter who won the election that this was far more important needed to be looked into further and not forgotten, so while I was sitting at my desk at work I created /r/Pizzagate on an account that I used to Reddit at work. I began compiling useful information and posts from other subreddits related to Pizzagate, and posting them on the subreddit.
I had briefly advertised /r/Pizzagate on a few other subreddits, and within 24 hours /r/Pizzagate had already had several hundred subscribers. By the end of the first week we were gaining close to 1000 subscribers per day, and the Google Trend data for Pizzagate searches had shot through the roof.
Immediately I decided that I did not want my work account and its post history attached to this subreddit. So I created the account /u/pizzathrowaway777, and deleted the work account that I had originally created /r/Pizzagate with. I also deleted my original Reddit account of 8+ years just to be safe.
I have told this story to many people, and I am always asked: “why did you call it /r/Pizzagate?”.
I had seen a couple of people throw around the name Pizzagate, and I had also seen some people opposed to this name being used. When I was searching through James Alefantis’ Instagram account the night it was discovered, someone else had decided to create an Instagram account called “pizzagate2016”. This person began using this account to troll James Alefantis with comments on his Instagram photos about the horrific knowledge the internet had come to learn that evening.
Initially I was annoyed with this person because this meant that James Alefantis and anyone else involved would begin removing all of the evidence and covering this up. Now investigating this was going to be much harder because the people we were investigating knew we were investigating them, but it also meant that this could now become a massive undertaking by the collective global conscious of the internet.
I decided in order for anything to come of this investigation it needed to go viral. It needed to be seen all over the world by as many people as possible to prevent it from being forgotten after the 2016 election. I have always hated the trend of using -gate for every scandal, and I would like nothing more than to see this trend end. However I thought Pizzagate was a catchy name that would grab peoples attention because of how absurd it sounded by causing people to become more curious and interested in reading what all of this was actually all about. Lacking much further creativity, I decided that using the name /r/Pizzagate was the best chance for this investigation to go viral and make a difference in government corruption around the world.
Having been a Redditor since 2007/2008, in my time as a user on this site I have seen Reddit used as a catalyst for mass awareness of important global and socioeconomic issues. I have also seen Reddit used as the driving force behind a variety of important political movements that all managed to awaken the collective global conscious of the internet to work together to achieve things that I would have once thought were impossible. It was clear to me that Reddit of 2016 was not that Reddit anymore, but I hoped just maybe Reddit and the internet could be awakened to use this force to work together for the greater good just one more time.
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The amount of people subscribing to /r/Pizzagate increased every single day, and never slowed down even once. In fact in the days preceding Reddit banning /r/Pizzagate we were gaining around 3000-4000 brand new subscribers every single day.
Needless to say this explosive growth was overwhelming for me to handle the moderation of /r/Pizzagate on my own, as there were already numerous shills posting disinformation and false leads the first week. I knew Reddit was filled with shills after the 2016 election, so I needed to be careful about who I added as a moderator. There was endless moderator drama which I will not get into in this story, but below was more or less the final list of moderators on /r/Pizzagate.
On November 21st 2016, the New York Times released an article written by Cecilia Kang titled “Fake News Onslaught Targets Pizzeria as Nest of Child-Trafficking”, claiming that Pizzagate was Fake News, and in a paragraph about Pizzagate being discussed on various social media websites she stated “A new Reddit discussion thread called “Pizzagate” quickly attracted 20,000 subscribers.”
The New York Times article was followed by an article from Snopes written by Chuck E. Sleaze titled “A detailed conspiracy theory known as “Pizzagate” holds that a pedophile ring is operating out of a Clinton-linked pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong”, which claimed that Pizzagate was a hoax. Snopes decided that Pizzagate was a partisan hoax to discredit Hillary Clinton. Snopes was the first Legacy Media outlet to center Pizzagate around Hillary Clinton, and make the audacious claim it was an alt-right conspiracy theory that started on the subreddit /r/The_Donald, which is 100% false. After this Snopes article came out, the rest of the Legacy Media reporting on Pizzagate jumped onto the same false narrative that Pizzagate was a “Fake News Alt-Right conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a pedophile ring out of a pizza shop”. As I already proved above, the /r/Pizzagate subreddit and Pizzagate/Pedogate movement have ALWAYS been a non-partisan investigation into the existence of an international human/child sex trafficking operation that is perpetuated by the elites and covered up by various government agencies throughout the world.
We were a bit short of 20,000 subscribers when the New York Times article was first released, but /r/Pizzagate quickly surpassed 20,000 subscribers after these two articles were written. Additionally the Google Trend data for people searching Google for “Pizzagate” continued to grow at an increasingly steady rate.
Later that day after various Legacy Media outlets began attacking the Pizzagate investigation/movement’s legitimacy, Reddit user /u/Throw-Away-Journo made a post on /r/Pizzagate titled “On The Legitimacy Of This Investigation (with an important message to fellow journalists I know are lurking on this sub)”. This post received over 3000 up votes, and it was featured on /r/all of Reddit reaching a mainstream audience. /u/Throw-Away-Journo stated that he was a journalist and it would be impossible for him to get piece on Pizzagate past his editor so he decided to post what he wrote on /r/Pizzagate. I personally think that this post reaching a mainstream audience, and providing a detailed explanation into the legitimacy of the Pizzagate investigation is ultimately what lead to /r/Pizzagate being banned by the Reddit administrators, who I think were likely forced to make this decision after being contacted by a three letter government agency.
The subscribers of /r/Pizzagate immediately began attacking the accuracy of the false and misleading claims made in the Fake News hit pieces by the Legacy Media outlets trying to discredit Pizzagate as a hoax. Early in the morning of November 22nd, /u/garydeepwebb made a post in /r/Pizzagate titled “A Blow-By-Blow, In-Depth Factcheck of the New York Times PizzaGate Story. [MASTER THREAD]”, which thoroughly refuted all of the claims in the original New York Times article dismissing Pizzagate as false. This post received nearly 1000 up votes prior to /r/Pizzagate being banned later that day, and either was or would have been featured on /r/all of Reddit reaching a mainstream audience. A few hours later another /r/Pizzagate subscriber /u/prevailution also made a post titled “Fact check: NYT article provides no contradicting evidence or explanations against Pizzagate”, which also examined and debunked all of the false claims made in the original New York Times Pizzagate hit piece from the day before.
If my suspicions that the post “On The Legitimacy Of This Investigation (with an important message to fellow journalists I know are lurking on this sub)”, which proved the legitimacy of the the Pizzagate movement and investigation, reaching a mainstream audience was not the final nail in the coffin for /r/Pizzagate’s existence, then certainly a post thoroughly debunking and destroying the false narrative being relentlessly pushed by the entire Legacy Media reaching a mainstream audience on Reddit was completely unacceptable.
While I was at work with barely even two hours notice, I was informed on 11/22/16 by the Reddit administrators that /r/Pizzagate was going to be banned and would be shutdown at 4PM CST. The official reason stated for the subreddit being banned was the Reddit administrators claimed they were seeing “PII of private individuals continually posted on /r/Pizzagate and not being removed by /r/Pizzagate moderators after multiple warnings and discussions with the moderation team.”
As seen in the picture of the /r/Pizzagate moderation team several paragraphs above, I had staffed /r/Pizzagate with nearly 20 dedicated, passionate, hardworking, proficient, and effective moderators who were working around the clock to ensure no content violating Reddit’s TOS was posted on /r/Pizzagate, in addition to removing any content that was. On top of that, on November 22nd I had been personally moderating the new section of the subreddit myself all day long to ensure the removal of any questionable posts on /r/Pizzagate. That day alone we had gained 3000-4000 new subscribers, and it was quite obvious the Legacy Media’s coverage of Pizzagate had caused the movement to go viral.
When /r/Pizzagate was banned the community was in frenzy, and the /r/Pizzagate moderators were communicating on the community discord chats trying to figure out what to do next.
A week or so prior I had been contacted by the creator of /v/Pizzagate on Voat about taking over this subverse, because he no longer wished to be responsible for moderating it. At the time moderating /r/Pizzagate on Reddit was already so time consuming and overwhelming that I turned the offer down. With such short notice, being aware /v/Pizzagate already existed, as well as being aware of the fact that Reddit had turned into a complete shithole over the years, and that numerous other subreddits I never really cared for in the past had moved to Voat for free speech after being banned from Reddit. I decided Voat was the best plan of continuation of the Pizzagate investigation.
So much happened so fast it seemed like /r/Pizzagate was around for longer than it actually was. The subreddit was created on November 7th 2016, and was banned by the Reddit administrators on November 22nd 2016 after accumulating nearly 25,000 subscribers in 15 days.
To conclude this story, the 15 day long internet phenomena that occurred on Reddit in November 2016 known as /r/Pizzagate originated out of John Podesta’s emails released by WikiLeaks. The /r/Pizzagate subreddit spawned the Pizzagate/Pedogate movement that has now gone viral all over the world. This movement has been wildly misrepresented by the Legacy Media under the false narrative that it is a “Fake News Alt-Right conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a pedophile ring out of a pizza shop”. The Pizzagate/Pedogate movement is not, nor has it ever been a hoax of any kind. If you heard this then you have been reading or watching Fake News. The undertaking of this unprecedented massive crowd sourced investigation was birthed by the collaborative forces of millions of internet users all over the world through the use of the popular websites 4chan, Reddit, Voat, 8chan, and Twitter. The Pizzagate/Pedogate movement and investigation has ALWAYS been a non-partisan investigation into the existence of an international human/child sex trafficking operation that is perpetuated by the elites and covered up by various government agencies throughout the world.
The truth has no bias.
By: pizzathrowaway777 aka willIreddittomorrow, redditfuckingsucksyo, FuckCensorship, TheTruthHasNoBias, & HlSNAMEWASSETHRICH