When Bernie Sanders was deliberately shafted for the second time by the Democrat party, some observers urged the BernieBros to switch their vote to Donald Trump. As they pointed out, the MAGAs and the Bernie Bros have more in common with each other than they might think. Leave out the identity politics and both are on almost exactly the same page: the working class rising up against the Washington Swamp.
Journalist Tim Poole also points to the very early days of “Occupy Wall Street”, before Zuccotti Park got overrun with rapists and wokesters with MacBooks (because there’s nothing that says “I hate big corporations” quite like slavishly handing your money to one of the richest, most ruthless corporations in the world).
But, after four years of screaming abuse, brawls and riots, it began to look as if America’s political sides would never be able to find common ground again.
Enter GameStop.
Suddenly, Donald Trump Jr, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz are in complete agreement.
This week, the biggest story in the financial markets is the absurdist, pretty-sure-I-hallucinated-it drama involving GameStop, a struggling video game retailer that became the rope in a high-stakes tug of war between Wall Street suits and a crusading internet mob.
So what happened? Essentially, some of Wall Street’s biggest hedge funds were “short-selling” GameStop stock. In other words, investing in an asset in such a way that the investor will profit if the value of the asset falls. Except that a ragtag mob of internet users banded together to “short squeeze”: buying up GameStop stock in collectively massive numbers and forcing its price to skyrocket. The hedge funds who had essentially bet that it would fall lost their bet – and billions of dollars.
Depending on whom you ask, the GameStop saga is either a cautionary story about a bunch of reckless nerds destabilising the stock market for laughs in a way that is likely to backfire on them spectacularly, or a David-and-Goliath morality tale about a fearless band of retail investors cleverly putting one over on corrupt financial elites.
It’s both.
In fact, it’s harder to think of a pillar of the global establishment that hasn’t been trampled by a similar stampede in recent years. Book publishers, movie studios, restaurant chains — all of them have, in some way, been forced to cede power to their online critics. Our politics, too, have been transformed by internet activists, with TikTok teens disrupting presidential rallies and Twitch-streaming memelords storming the Capitol.
No matter what their goals are[…]these internet-based insurgencies tend to follow a similar pattern. One day, a group decides to take action against a system it feels is immoral or corrupt. Members identify structural weak points (a vulnerable political party, a risk-averse studio head, an overexposed short position) and figure out creative ways to exploit them, using social media for leverage and visibility. With enough highly motivated people pushing in the same direction, they eventually prevail — or get enough attention that it feels like they did.
Sydney Morning Herald
Wall Street long seemed immune to such populist revolts, mostly because the barriers were so financially formidable. But, just as the internet has changed everything else, so too, easy-to-use, commission-free trading apps like Robinhood cut down the velvet rope keeping the plebs out of the high-roller room at the casino.
The Empire is Striking Back, of course. Robinhood blocked users from buying shares in GameStop and other “#Stonks” stocks. Discord, a chat app that many of the day traders were using to communicate, banned the “Wall Street Bets” server on “hate speech” grounds.
Which might serve as a wake-up call to the left-inclined types supporting the GameStop revolt.
As one Gab user put it, “40% of those investing themselves into the #Gamestop movement are now experiencing for the first time what it’s like to be called racist, have their platforms shut down and their voices silenced. This is literally a game-changer. Talk about a Great Awakening.”
Another observed, “Call me crazy, but I bet the people that can shut down multiple Wallstreet stocks in the middle of a trading day are the same people that can shut down vote counting in the middle of the night”.
Whether this glorious moment of unified purpose lasts is doubtful, but for those with eyes to see, it’s plain that we have more in common than not – not least that the rule-makers hate us both.
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