Posted on 12/07/2016 6:46:38 PM PST by nickcarraway
East Side Pies co-owner Noah Polk first heard of the conspiracy theory known as “pizzagate” around the time of the presidential election. The fake news story was started by an online community, fueled by misinterpretations of emails released by WikiLeaks, that claimed associates of Hillary Clinton were behind a child sex-trafficking ring headquartered at the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. The fake story turned into a real crime scene on Sunday when a gunman walked into that Washington restaurant and fired a shot. Now, Austin police are investigating harassment and vandalism that’s been waged against the local restaurant by believers of the “pizzagate” conspiracy.
For Polk’s restaurant, the conspiracy theory first hit home when someone he’d never met left a review on East Side Pies’ Facebook page. The comment mentioned “pizzagate” and Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis. It was the commenter’s second post in a few days. The first had referenced pedophilia.
That day Polk was also alerted to a thread on the message board Reddit suggesting East Side Pies might also be a part of the fictional sex-trafficking ring. Once he went down that internet rabbit hole, Polk was shocked to find myriad posts falsely tying East Side Pies to the debunked conspiracy theory.
East Side Pies is continuing to suffer sporadic harassment and name-calling via social media, and one of its delivery trucks was vandalized with a scrawled epithet.
The online posts have made wild and baseless accusations about East Side Pies. They interpreted the restaurant’s logo as a symbol of the “Illuminati,” questioned the meaning of photos of pizza-eating children on East Side Pies’ Facebook account, inferred that a picture of staffers with former Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell was proof of nefarious political ties and claimed co-owner Michael Freid, an alumnus of the Culinary Institute of America, had “connections to the CIA.”
“This is absolutely insane and unfounded and ridiculous,” Polk said Tuesday of his thoughts after reading the initial posts. “The dots they are trying to connect are so ludicrous. I was not happy about it.”
Polk said he became worried about the safety of his employees, as well as his restaurant’s reputation, and he contacted Austin police and the FBI on Monday.
Austin police on Wednesday confirmed that a report for criminal mischief had been filed Tuesday involving one of the restaurant’s vehicles. A police spokesman said profane and sexual statements had been carved into the vehicle in the 5300 block of Airport Boulevard. The complete report on the incident and additional details weren’t immediately available Wednesday.
The online targeting of East Side Pies had gained steam Saturday when Owen Shroyer — who hosts a live-streaming podcast called “Engage Liberty” and makes videos for the Austin-based conspiracy-fueled website Infowars.com — hosted a 21/2-hour broadcast detailing his visits to multiple East Side Pies locations.
In the broadcast uploaded to YouTube, Shroyer said he was “weirded out and creeped out” by his visits to East Side Pies. What he saw, he says, left him “gripping my gun tighter every night.”
The “weird stuff” he encountered? Employees with large-gauge piercings and blue hair, a “weird locked-up grate in the back” of one location, disturbing rock music and band fliers with “satanic” symbols. The “coup de grace,” according to Shroyer: two children playing dominoes in the presence of an adult.
He also thought the restaurant’s logo, a pizza in the shape of an eye, with the catchphrase “We know what you want,” was a nod to the Illuminati.
While the other accusations probably don’t require much explanation from a laid-back, family-friendly, rock-and-roll pizza joint in the Live Music Capital of the World, Polk offered a quick back-story on the name and logo.
Polk, who opened the restaurant with Freid in 2006, wanted to name the restaurant East Side Pies, written as three separate words. When he told a friend, the guy immediately quipped, “ESP. We know what you want.” Thus was born a clever piece of marketing, soon to be accompanied by a logo with a circular pizza minus a slice representing an eyeball.
Polk has received about a half-dozen calls over the past several days from people using unidentifiable phone numbers requesting interviews with East Side Pies management or ownership.
The co-owners refused the requests from the suspicious callers, because, in the words of Polk, “You argue with the fool, you’re the fool yourself.”
On Sunday, a North Carolina man was arrested in Washington, D.C., after entering Comet Ping Pong with a semi-automatic weapon and firing at least one shot. Police said he later told them he was “self-investigating” conspiracy theories about child slaves there. The incident, which made national news, reaffirmed to Polk that his instinct to contact law enforcement was correct.
“Luckily nobody got hurt during the shooting, but I do believe it’s come to light now, it’s a national story, about fake news,” Polk said. “I do believe people who’ve been on the fence or thought maybe there was something to it … now most thinking people will realize that this is fake and not to get behind it or think there is any truth to it.”
Freid and Polk said the false accusations and character assassination has been “alarming, disappointing, disconcerting and scary.”
“The biggest thing: It was unfair,” Freid said. “We have too many other things to do just to keep our business going every day. It’s completely unfounded and ludicrous. It is absolutely absurd.”
They cannot know it’s not true, but they could know that it is true.
They’re nonstop denials are giving it away.
Too early to say anything, loose lips sink ships etc.
Very good analysis.
If you want to know more details, why not join the NYPD or the FBI and help with the investigation.
Are you just ignorant, or something else?
There is no investigation besides internet sleuths that loosely tie “evidence” together, leave out context purposefully, and come to conclusions based those loose connections and cherry picked comments.
There is nothing to it. If there were there would likely be multiple witnesses and victims. Not a “SINGLE” person has accused any of them of a crime. Unless their disgusting art and e-mail messages are a crime.
What investigation? Oh yea. There isn’t one.
“people, including tons on this forum are accusing these people of what? What crime exactly have they committed, where is the evidence, when was the crime committed, where was it committed. What crime was committed?”
People call the cops all the time when they see skanky women hanging around street corners of their neighborhoods and getting picked by men. Do they really need to know details of everything that goes on to have a good idea something bad is going on?
Oh. Well now that it’s been “debunked” all is well. Who did the debunking?
I lost it on the “accusation” that Hilary and Obammy drank the blood of kids after having sex with them. Sounds like accusation that Jews drink the blood of Palestinian children.
Ha, typical Austin. That's normal, especially for the east side. Welcome to uber liberal hippy dippy freakazoid treehugging Austin. Just keepin' Austin weird. Nothing but a weirdo out for AtTeNtIoN. An Austin 10 pm news is having not one but two segments on this tonight. When Texas secedes, we're walling off Austin and leaving it behind.
I haven’t seen it bunked or debunked.
Starting to look like the entire Fake News meme was started just to stop this story. Every time I read one of these stories, the phrase Fake News is in the first paragraph. Big time tell there. Gravitas anyone ?
Ummm. There needs to be some actual evidence to accuse someone of child molestation. Absolutely.
Maybe there are people involved with pizza gate that are here...on FREE REPUBLIC!!!!Some people here seem to know all about it. Strange isn’t? They link to websites that know more PG than the FBI or Police. If they investigate people here on Freerepublic...well....
“Ha, typical Austin. That’s normal, especially for the east side. Welcome to uber liberal hippy dippy freakazoid treehugging Austin. Just keepin’ Austin weird. Nothing but a weirdo out for AtTeNtIoN. An Austin 10 pm news is having not one but two segments on this tonight. When Texas secedes, we’re walling off Austin and leaving it behind.”
From what I can tell, that’s not typical Austin.
Typical Austin is downtown condo towers with studio units selling for $750k and larger units selling for $5-$10 million and there are not a whole lot of hippies living in those condos, nor on the East Side where a home cannot be found for under a half million dollars.
No evidence of traffiicking? Do you think Laura Silsby was wrongly charged of kidnapping and trafficking children?
Epstein’s sex slave Virginia is very believable. She testified that one night on Pedo Island Bill Clinton joined them for dinner. She wondered what he was doing there, and Jeffrey (Epstein) told her “he owes me big time” or something similar. At the table still, Epstein gifted the former President with two underaged Russian girls (Virginia knew them from Epstein’s NYC mansion). Virginia never saw Bill engage in any sex and she did not herself have sex with him.
All of this is making question 9/11 now./s
Epstein was made rich by some entities. Foreign, domestic, who knows? And then he was able to donate hugely, and invite bigwigs to his parties. Where they were filmed committing acts with kids etc. The entities paying him were then able to reap huge benefits for their troubles.
And? What? Laura Silsby ate at Comet Ping Pong once?
So. F’ing. What.
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