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Jimmy Kimmel has found that Hollywood misses former President Donald Trump, and to keep him somehow present they have decided to bring back one of the worst lies that has been created in recent American political history: the myth of the Russians, better known as Russiagate.
The political landscape has changed in the USA because of the context, but Hollywood certainly hasn’t one bit. The host of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! began his monologue as usual in front of his audience. The topic he chose to address is nothing more and nothing less, the scandal that has made headlines and prime-time newscasts: the Reddit Revolt.
With dim lights, the excerpt he decided to call MAGA’s Buffoons Take Washington and Reddit Takes Over Wall Street begins by letting the audience know that “GameStop, in case you don’t know, is a video game retailer and, like many companies, they’ve been struggling because of [the COVID pandemic], but also because most people buy games online now.”
“And yet,” he continued, “despite a sharp drop in sales, in the last six months, its stock price has grown by 8,000% because a bunch of amateur investors, maybe even some Russian disruptors, who are part of a Reddit community called WallStreetBets, decided to buy a bunch of GameStop shares, drive up the price and screw the hedge fund guys who had shorted the stock.”
“Now the hedge fund guys are upset,” he highlighted, “and they’re pushing for an investigation, and they’re like, “we can’t have a bunch of Reddit randos manipulating the market. That’s what we do. They’re stealing our stuff!”.”
Russian agents or common citizens?
Jimmy Kimmel’s thesis of Russian “disruptors” would imply one of two things: an incredible intelligence in these Eurasian agents as they would have brought to its knees one of the most powerful countries in the world along with its financial system, or it would imply a worrying precariousness in the security of the American system, as anyone can destroy its stability.
Indistinctly, what happened was not an attack by Russians, but a revolt by ordinary people: one young man even risked the mortgage on his house to “live in the moment.” People trying to take advantage of the financial chaos or hit back at Wall Street. But, in fact, many of the investors were not teenagers, but relatively small investment firms and companies. Jimmy Kimmel calls “Russians” actually citizens who, in the words of Senator Josh Hawley, are tired of what Wall Street has been doing for decades: concentrating power in a few hands. The shock was such that even billionaires could not contain their tears on national television.
Dozens of users of a subreddit (subforum) called Wall Street Bets (WSB) have been furiously buying GameStop shares for days, which today traded at almost $225 per share, amid high trading volume and having started the year at just $17.
Just as ordinary people were looking to take a serious swipe at the fat cats, financial experts were also looking to do the same. The results? The GameStop frenzy was so strong that even Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital, and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, joined in the efforts to trigger even more madness causing more than one shorting wolf to pull several hairs out of his head.
Rafael Valera, Venezuelan, student of Political Science, political exile in São Paulo, Brazil since 2017 // Rafael Valera, venezolano, es estudiante de Ciencias Políticas y exiliado político en São Paulo, Brasil desde 2017