The South African tycoon Elon Musk, owner of companies such as Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), revolutionized his social network after publishing a controversial meme where he suggested that the Pizzagate conspiracy theory is real.
Musk, in a post that he has since deleted and had about 12 million views, published a meme from the popular series "The Office" that contained the following dialogue between the fictional characters Michael Scott and Pam Beesly:
— "Pizzagate is real," Michael comments in the meme.
— "No, it's not, we have experts," Pam replies.
— "Your expert just went to jail for child pornography," concludes Scott.
In addition to the meme, Musk's publication was accompanied by the text: "Does seems at least a little suspicious."
Subsequently, the mogul published another post with a link to NBC News with the story that former ABC News journalist James Gordon Meek, 53, was found guilty of possessing child pornography.
For a while, a theory was spread that Gordon had been one of the expert journalists who had debunked Pizzagate, a theory that claimed, without evidence, that Democratic Party leaders ran a secret child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria known as Comet Ping Pong.
However, a Reuters fact-check revealed that Gordon had never actually covered the Pizzagate theory as a journalist but had briefly mentioned it in a 2017 article on Russian disinformation.
Another British journalist with the same name, James Meek, did discuss Pizzagate in a London Review of Books article in 2020, although also briefly, according to Reuters.
The tycoon was publicly questioned by several journalists who pointed out that the meme had no factual basis. Finally, Musk deleted his post, although after it went viral, Pizzagate began trending.
The meme shared by Elon Musk about the pizzagate conspiracy theory is itself based on the completely false claim that James Gordon Meek, a journalist who recently pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, had debunked pizzagate. Meek never reported on pizzagate. https://t.co/Z7Dc5cgNvJ
— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) November 28, 2023
