Bernie Bros
I'm ready to hear your theory about Bernie's supporters because this makes no mention of them.
"So how did this fake story take hold amongst alt-right Trump supporters and other Hillary Clinton opponents? Let's start with the facts.
In early November, as Wikileaks steadily released piles of emails from Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, one contact caught the attention of prankster sites and people on the paranoid fringes.
James Alefantis is the owner of Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington. He's also a big Democratic Party supporter and raised money for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He was once in a relationship with David Brock, an influential liberal operative. Alefantis - who's never met Clinton - appeared in the Podesta emails in connection with the fundraisers. And from these thin threads, an enormous trove of conspiracy fiction was spun.
Users of 4chan, a message board known for free speech, extreme content and trollish behaviour, began posting speculation and supposed connections gleaned from internet searches. They trawled Alefantis' Instagram feed for pictures of children and the modern art which lines his restaurant's walls, and dreamt up a paedophile sex ring involving prominent politicians and political donors.
The conspiracy theory bubbled up from 4chan onto the mainstream internet when a Reddit user posted a long document with all of the "evidence" several days before the US election. It first appeared on a section of the site popular with Donald Trump supporters from the extremist white nationalist
alt-right.
Alefantis, along with Comet Ping Pong employees and others, started to get threatening messages. He locked his Instagram account.The fake story remained the preserve of 4chan and alt-right Reddit until mid-November, when Turkish pro-government media outlets suddenly took an intense interest."
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-38156985