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).

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Susan Raine, Kilian LaBonte-bon |Witch Hunts and Gendered Politics
We can unequivocally assert that Clinton is innocent
of the accusations made against her both in the Body
Count and Pizzagate conspiracies, and in the others we
discuss subsequently. It would require a great suspension
of disbelief to accord any validity to the Clinton
Body Count and Pizzagate narratives. As mentioned
previously, even Thompson acknowledged that she had
no tangible evidence linking the Clintons to the deaths
of the people listed on her site. Moreover, as the list
grew over time—and included also the disappearances
of allegedly cannibalized and sacrificed children—
accusers still could not provide any. Numerous and often
sadistic and vicious attacks made against Clinton during
and beyond Pizzagate morphed along with QAnon
to become part of a seemingly endless and insatiable
conspiracy machine that perpetuated a witch hunt of
unimaginable proportions against Clinton and those
aligned with her. The Clinton Body Count periodically
gains further attention for example, picking up steam
again in 2019 following Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide while
jailed awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges (Bleakley,
2021 Gatehouse, 202). Accepting that both theories
offer fantastical false narratives, we can reaffirm the
innocence of the accused.
Criterion 2: Unlikely Perpetrators
Wood et al. (2017) describe an unlikely perpetrator as
a person for whom the deviant or criminal activities
accused would be atypical. The Clinton Body Count
conspiracy theory alleges that the Clintons have
others commit murders on their behalf (D’Antonio,
2020 Mikkelson, 2001). Pizzagate and QAnon
narratives insist that Clinton and other members of
the Democratic Party are cannibals (Brisini, 2019
LaFrance), pedophiles (Bleaky, 2021 LaFrance, 2020
Merlon, 2019), and are part of an elite group that
harvests adrenochrome (discussed later) from the
blood of children to maintain their youth (Schwarcz,
2022). Even if we were to accept that some individuals
might have numerous people put to death for their
own political gain and that the same individuals also
would cannibalize and murder children (as well as
sexually molest and traffic them), it is impossible to
identify Hillary Clinton as a likely perpetrator of these
and other alleged crimes.
Clinton has spent her career advocating for and
supporting children’s rights (Bordo, 2017 D’Antonio,
Lesley, 2016 National Women’s Hall of Fame). She is
a mother to her daughter, Chelsea, and a grandmother
to Chelsea’s two children. It is highly improbable that
an individual who has devoted so much of her life to
the benefit of children would be responsible for the
debasement and death of them. Moreover, with a
demanding political career and a family she loves, it is
unlikely that Clinton could covertly engage in multiple
felonies that would require the silence of innumerable
others. From a logistical approach alone, Clinton
would be unlikely to even have the time to run an
underground child sex trafficking ring, organize hits on
prominent citizens, and establish a trade network for
the purchase of adrenochrome, amongst other alleged
activities. Such activities would undermine the strides
she made for children’s healthcare while in the White
House (Patrick, 2016) and would ensure the complete
ruination of her reputation. Furthermore, typically,
the perpetrators of child murders are known to their
victims and are usually male (Wilson et al., 2022).
Finally, given the rarity of ritual abuse and cannibalism,
it is unlikely that most people in the United States are
perpetrators of such behaviors, including Clinton.
Criterion 3. Bizarre Accusations: Frazzledrip,
Adrenochrome, and Kuru
Arguably, all conspiracy theories targeting Clinton are
so strange and improbable that they exist in a realm of
destructive, chaotic fantasy. One could further argue,
however, that some narratives take the concept of strange
and improbable to new levels. Bizarre accusations refer
to a situation where more than one accusation portrays
behaviors that are “not only criminal, sexually deviant,
or violent, but also bizarre” (Wood et al., 2017, p. 901).
In this segment, we address three particularly peculiar
accusations, while acknowledging that those we have
discussed already and those we are yet to cover also fall
into this category.
Frazzledrip is an extremely odd conspiracy theory
linked to both Pizzagate and QAnon. The theory
purports the existence of a snuff video allegedly showing
Clinton and her staff member, Huma Abedin, torturing
a young girl. The accusations based on the alleged
video are that Clinton and Abedin removed the skin
from the victim’s face and wore it like a mask, and then
ritualistically sexually assaulted the victim. Allegedly,
they then harvested her blood for adrenochrome prior