Dave Portnoy Gets It: GameStop, Memestocks, And The Future of the Populist Fight

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This week saw massive and inspirational direct action against the financial arm of the Globalist American Empire. Users of the r/wallstreetbets subreddit forced parasitic hedge fund speculators to the brink of insolvency by purchasing GameStock, AMC, and other short sold stocks. Amidst the righteous revolt against globalist finance, the financial freedom fighters have found an unexpected champion: millionaire media mogul Dave Portnoy, founder of the comedy and entertainment website Bartsool Sports.

On Thursday, Portnoy took to Twitter to call for the arrest of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, after the popular retail trading app banned users from buying stocks being short sold by Cohen’s fund. He also used Twitter to engage in a back and fourth with Cohen himself:

He capped off the night with appearance on Tucker Carlson:

Portnoy’s courageous act of class treason should not come as a total shock though. Portnoy has a long history of sticking his finger in the eyes of our current elites. In the modern media atmosphere where every outlet is dominated by regime propaganda, his Barstool Sports website has been an oasis of decidedly non-woke entertainment. A 2019 profile by NBC News described the site as an example of “the persistence of traditional masculinity in sports culture”. While that may sound like a good thing to a normal person, NBC intended it as an insult.

Conservative ideology appears to be a core part of Barstool Sports — especially its portrayal of gender roles, with hypermasculine, sports-loving men and hypersexualized, submissive women. The site’s reinforcement of conservative American values is what makes its content stand out from its competitors, Marie Hardin, the dean of Penn State’s Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, said.“In many ways, Barstool has resisted some of the more progressive discourse around sports. And I think there’s a niche for that,” she said. “There’s a market there and they’re able to capture that.” [NBC News]

Dave Portnoy founded Barstool Sports in 2003 as a publication covering Boston area local events. The website has since expanded into a multimedia hub for general pop culture and sports news and is currently valued at approximately half a billion dollars.

Portnoy’s persona is in many ways similar to that of former President Trump. Like Trump, Portnoy is a successful businessman with politically incorrect views who is constantly attacked by the mainstream media for being “racist” and “vulgar”. Also like Donald Trump, Portnoy has proven hard to cancel.

In June of 2020, leftist activists tried to get Portnoy fired from his own company by circulating old videos where he made humorous comments about the appearance of unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Unlike others who have found themselves in similar positions, Portnoy shot back, “They’ve been trying to cancel me for two decades — I’m uncancellable,” he said in a Twitter video. “I’m big. You’re little. I cancel you.”

A month later, Portnoy was in the media crosshairs again, this time for having the audacity to interview the sitting President of the United States.

Some of the less masculine employees of Barstool Sports even gave interviews to the press attacking their boss for his decision to talk to Trump. Portnoy refused to apologize though, and the storm passed. To this day, he continues to maintain creative control over the company he founded almost 20 years ago.

More recently, he announced announced the creation of The Barstool Fund, a fund to help small businesses that are at risk of going under due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. From the Evansville Courier & Press:

Whether you love Barstool Sports or hate it, there’s no denying Barstool founder Dave Portnoy is putting his brand name to work lately in helping small businesses through their pandemic-related struggles.

The “Barstool Fund,” as Portnoy calls it, started as a $500,000 fund on Dec. 17 and has raised $9.6 million in just 12 days. Funds have been distributed to 42 small businesses across the country — and counting. [Courier & Press]

This video of Sieberts Clothing in Jasper, Indiana receiving relief from the Barstool Fund will warm anyone’s heart.

Following Joe Biden’s installation as president, electoral politics seems an increasingly futile effort for opponents of the Globalist American Empire. Acts of system collapsing collective action in this context seem to be a far more worthy expression of political energy than turning yet again to electoral charade and vowing for the ten thousandth time to “get em in the primary.”

No potential strategy must be left on the table though. Dave Portnoy has proven to be a consistent champion of normal, average Americans. Could he be a potential successor to Donald Trump as leader of the patriotic conservative resistance? Wallstreetbets’ financial guerilla warfare combined with Dave Portnoy’s media advocacy show us a potential path forward in these bleak times.