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Susan Raine, Kilian LaBonte-bon |Witch Hunts and Gendered Politics
death in each case, the Clinton Body Count conspiracy
gained traction within Republican circles, especially
with those on the far right of the political spectrum
(Matthews, 2019). The original theory continued
and continues to evolve as conspiracists—including
Trump—reignited interest in it by linking the Clinton
Body Count conspiracy theory to political events and
high-profile individuals.
Accusations were numerous and varied. For example,
the Clintons arranged for the deaths of Bill’s opponents
in Arkansas during his term as governor of the
state. Another alleged that they were responsible
for the murder of federal agents during the violent
confrontation between the Branch Davidians and
federal law enforcement in Waco, Texas, in July 1993. A
variation on the Waco accusation asserted that Hillary
Clinton specifically was the instigator of the deaths.19Yet
another allegation stated that the Clintons ordered the
murder of some of Bill’s campaign workers in addition
to military members who had served as part of the
Clintons’ security detail. Although the original catalog
of accusations is too lengthy to discuss here, their most
prominent alleged victim, Vince Foster (1945–1993), is
worth a deeper investigation.20
A childhood friend of Bill Clinton’s, Foster became a
prominent attorney during Bill’s time as governor of
Arkansas. He hired Clinton to work at the Rose Law
Firm, and when Bill Clinton became president, he
appointed Foster as deputy White House counsel. In his
role, Foster helped screen applicants for administration
positions. Following the withdrawal of two applicants
for the position of attorney general due to disclosures
that they had hired undocumented immigrants,
Foster felt a sense of failure that he had let down the
president. Furthermore, Foster was implicated in
other subsequent White House scandals, resulting in
punitive, humiliating, and unforgiving press coverage
19 Thompson shared her conspiracies in the video, Waco, The Big Lie.
Moreover, she, Rush Limbaugh (1951–2021) and others would flood the
AM airwaves with blatant lies and false accusations, often embedded in anti-
feminist rhetoric. Limbaugh was one of the most prominent conservative
commentators of the 1990s, hosting radio and television shows. He wrote
several books and continued his highly successful broadcasting career
through the 2000s. He was critical of feminism, environmental movements,
and other ideologies that were at odds with his brand of conservatism.
20 He was, at least, the most renowned until serial sexual predator
Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019) was added to the list in 2019. Within a few
hours of reports of Epstein’s death, Trump retweeted claims (by sharing
the #ClintonBodyCount) that the Clintons were involved in Epstein’s death
(Timm and Johnstone, 2019).
(Matthews, 2019 Yglesias, 2016).
Foster had a history of depression and committed
suicide in July 1993. Immediately, right-wing conspiracy
theorists accused the Clintons of being behind his
death (D’Antonio, 2020 Yglesias, 2016). Republican
televangelist Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) accused Clinton
of having a sexual relationship with Foster before his
death. Moreover, he offered VHS tapes for sale that
purported to show evidence of Bill Clinton’s complicity
in the mysterious deaths of several Arkansans (Kurtz,
1998 Hitt, 2007), further confirming to conspiracists
the legitimacy of the Clinton Body Count accusations.
Several investigations into Foster’s death—including
those conducted by the US Park Police and the FBI—
repeated the original findings that Foster had taken his
own life when he shot himself in the head (Yglesias,
2016).
When Hillary Clinton announced her presidential bid
in January 2016, the Clinton Body Count conspiracy
gained traction once again, and online conspiracy
theorists widely shared the story. Moreover, this time
it was incorporated into a much larger and more
complex narrative. During the twenty or so years
since the Body Count theory emerged, the nature of
conspiracy theories had changed quite dramatically:
following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
conspiracy theories garnered more public attention as
they started entering mainstream media and politics
(Barkun, 2013).
Furthermore, a shift occurred from event conspiracies
with a narrow focus and systemic conspiracies that
incorporate larger plans for domination by a particular
group to the dominance of super conspiracies, in
which numerous conspiratorial narratives are linked
hierarchically. Thus, “[e]vent and systemic conspiracies
are joined in complex ways, so that conspiracies come
to be nested within one another. At the summit of the
conspiratorial hierarchy is a distant but all-powerful
evil force manipulating lesser conspiratorial actors”
(Barkun, 2013, p. 6). The rapid growth of super-
conspiracies—greatly facilitated by the rise of the
public internet—resulted in an increasingly fraught,
unpredictable, and unreliable political landscape
in the United States, as political and other figures
capitalized on the dissemination of false information

International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 9, Issue 2 2026 26
via conspiratorial narratives.21 Critically, over the last
few decades, the focus of conspiracies has shifted from
outsiders and othering to the conditions of modernity
and suspect insiders—that is, enemies within (Aupers,
2012). No American political figure has weaponized
conspiracy theories more than Donald Trump (1946–
).His promotion of them erupted in the countdown to
the election as he and the United States most influential
conspiracist, Alex Jones (1974–), reveled in hunting
Hillary.
The Pizzagate conspiracy theory surfaced at the end
of October 2016, just before the election in the United
States. The conspiracy contends that an evil cabal
comprised of Democratic Party leaders, including
Clinton, sex trafficked children in the basement of a
local Washington, D.C., pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong
(Bleakley, 2021 LaFrance, 2020 Merlan, 2019).
Adherents to Pizzagate used references to pizza orders
in Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman John
Podesta’s hacked emails to accuse Clinton of engaging
in pedophilia. Alt-right news sources like Alex Jones’s
InfoWars went so far as to say that she murdered,
chopped up, and raped children, along with calling her
a psychopathic “demon” and accusing her of “stink[ing]
like sulphur” (Gatehouse, 2022 Robb, 2017). Indeed,
Jones was more responsible than anyone else for the
extent of Pizzagate’s dissemination online (Merlan,
2019). Michael Flynn (1958–), a former United States
general and member of Trump’s camp, Tweeted claims
that Podesta participated in ritual sexual abuse against
children and consumed blood and other bodily fluids
(Bleakley, 2021). The Pizzagate conspiracy became
mainstream and spread rapidly through online sources
like Twitter and Facebook however, components of it
had appeared on the subversive imageboard website
4chan in the months prior to October 2016, following
the release of John Podesta’s private emails by WikiLeaks
(Robb, 2017). Narratives like Pizzagate that posit
liberals as Satanic, anti-theist threats to the Christian
foundations of the United States are reiterations of the
1980s Satanic Panic (Bleakley, 2021 Merlan, 2019).22
21 See PBS documentary, United States of Conspiracy (2020), for a
compelling and chilling overview of Trump’s ascendency to president via his
relationship with America’s most prominent, prolific, and morally bankrupt
conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones.
22 The Satanic Panic was in part stoked by conservative religious
responses to feminism. Working women placing their children in daycares
amongst ‘strangers’ were attacked by vocal evangelists who sought to
reprimand them for allegedly endangering children by stepping outside of
religiously coded gendered expectations that they remain in the home (Yuhas,
2021). In an era when stranger danger narratives dominated, many failed to
recognize that most children are sexually abused by people they know—often
1 Secretive evil cabals or societies often are at the core
of conspiracy theories. They are depicted as “virtually
invincible” (Barkun, 2013, p. 10), partly because of the
belief that shadowy figures hold real power instead
of governments (Barkun, 2013). Indeed, the issue of
who holds power in society is central to conspiracy
narratives. Paul Bleakley’s (2021) analysis of Pizzagate
finds that as QAnon became a prevailing source of
conspiracy theories, tweets referencing Satanism
dropped off, at least partly due to QAnon’s fixation on
a secular deep state. Clinton had come to embody the
enemy both in religious and secular terms.
The intensification of the years-long witch-hunt
against Clinton attracted even more participants when
the populist conspiracy theory movement, QAnon,
absorbed and reinterpreted elements of the Pizzagate
narrative into its own growing rhetoric (LaFrance,
2020). QAnon is a far-ranging and convoluted
conspiracy movement that began on 4chan before
moving to 8chan and, eventually, 8kun. 4chan, 8chan,
and 8kun are anonymous imageboard sites that tend
to produce right-wing, alt-right, misogynist, racist,
and anti-Semitic discussions and memes.23 Put simply,
QAnon contends that there are forces of good (Donald
Trump) and evil (Hillary Clinton and the Democrats)
at work within the United States political sphere
(LaFrance, 2020 Gatehouse, 2022). This dichotomous
and simplistic approach (Barkun, 2013) illustrates how
QAnon successfully convinced its adherents that all of
the evil the United States faces is attributable to Hillary
Clinton and her alleged cabal. And, not surprisingly,
almost a year after Pizzagate, QAnon reaffirmed to its
followers that Clinton’s evil cabal kidnapped, trafficked,
and sexually abused children (Bloom &Moskalenko,
2022 LaFrance, 2020).24
family members (Lanning, 2005). Devout Christians, especially Evangelicals,
regarded the claims made in the Pizzagate conspiracy as tangible evidence
of the reality of the devil’s work on Earth (Merlan, 2019). Furthermore,
both Pizzagate and the Satanic Panic’s focus on violence against children
including sexual abuse, torture, sacrifice, and cannibalism is a repeat of the
claims made during the medieval period against Jews. Christian blood libel
accusations have persisted and morphed over time (Merlan, 2019).
23 8chan is where the Christchurch and El Paso mass shooters’
manifestos were published (LaFrance, 2020).
24 The very first post by QAnon’s leader Q was almost a year to the
day from the first Pizzagate post on Facebook in October 2017 its contents
stated that Hillary Clinton’s arrest for crimes against the State (in the form
of her unauthorized private email server that she used during her tenure
as Secretary of State) was imminent (Gatehouse, 2022 Hoback, 2021). Q
is an anonymous figure who allegedly holds a Q-level security clearance (a
high-level, Top Secret clearance issued by the Department of Energy) and is
positioned close to then-President Trump (LaFrance, 2020).