“Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare since 2021, was shot and killed outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, New York City, on December 4, 2024. He was in the city to attend an annual investors meeting for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare. Authorities believe the attack was not random. Thompson had been criticized for UnitedHealthcare’s rejection of insurance claims, and his family reported that he had received death threats in the past. The shooting occurred early in the morning, and the suspect, initially described as a white man wearing a mask, fled the scene.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson
(edit) I would like to point out that Luigi Mangione is only a suspect and there are currently doubts about the integrity of the evidence.
I’m surprised these replies in an anarchist comm haven’t brought up concepts like Propaganda of the Deed already. (that said, I know for a fact some people responding aren’t anarchists)
While I consider PotD of the 1890s-1900s to have failed in its intentions and is worth strongly critiquing, and while the crappy neo-Nazi imitation advocated by their popular text Siege has also been extremely ineffective, this assassination has provided an interesting case study - the killing of a healthcare CEO with no innocent bystanders is one of the least controversial extreme deeds yet. I’ve seen people even claiming this could become the new Columbine (we’ll have to wait to see if that prediction is worth anything, but it would be nice to see the ruling class be shot up for a change).
I think the biggest issues with the gilded age PotD was that a lot of them hurt innocent people, or had collateral damage which hurt everyone in the case of a lot of the bombings. Not all of them by any means, but when innocent bystanders got hurt or killed it made the deed a lot less supportable. Plus there’s just something about a health insurance CEO that makes literally nobody like them lol.
The innocent people, and also some who the anarchists wouldn’t consider innocent but a typical citizen might. Again, a parasitical CEO, no-one likes them but their squealing fellow upper-class. And this really had the effect of clarifying the economic classes - the booj and their megaphones yelled in unison that this was bad, while the worker class, regardless of any cultural “left”-“right” divide, overwhelmingly said “he got what he deserved”.
Yeah, seeing people from both sides trashing politicians or influencers who spoke positively about Thompson or negitively of the killer has been so cool to see. There are still the liberals opposed go any type of visible violence that didn’t like the murder, but even most of them didn’t support the statements in support of Thomas. The Facebook post with like 100,000 laugh reactions has to be such a sign that no one is mourning a ceo and no one will care if you get killed. Like it’s facebook, if you get that reaction on facebook you know it’s bad lol. I know it won’t lead to anything on its own, but I hope it makes them uncomfortable at the very least. It’s long since time that the owner class feel a modicum of the pain they cause millions daily.
Honestly this is very clarifying and we should be jumping on this as a tool to further understanding of our cause. Not because the shooter was one of ours but because support for him is common ground we can use to talk to everyone who we want to talk to.
I’m amazed they haven’t deleted it:
I think, taking the leaked manifesto as legit here, the guy was aware of this. One of the lines basically says “it seems obvious we need to take matters into our own hands and I guess I have to be the first to do it”.
That said, i think this works because it’s not just propaganda of the deed. These masters of the world are still only human. They have manipulated the world so they get to decide what happens to who, when, and accept no input from anyone else. Well, when they use that power to cause millions of excess deaths it’s no surprise their victims will (eventually, after much patience) simply step outside the social contract to deal with them.