“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’ll be honest, I’m ok with what happened. Someone at work gave me shit over “oh but he has 2 kids …”
Murder in the general sense is not ok. People shouldn’t be able to end the lives of other people just because without response. But this guy… How many lives did he decide to end so he can get a little bigger of a paycheck?
The kids? Yeah, as a parent, I have sympathy. But as a human, fuck that shit.
If a drug dealer who had 2 kids sold fentanyl laced drugs that killed several people just to make some money got murdered in the streets nobody would say “oh but he has 2 kids”.
They might say the drug dealer was doing something illegal. How this CEO was running things should be illegal. Countless (innocent) people died so he could get more money.
Oh also he was doing illegal things including insider trading and drinking and driving so there’s that.
Yeah.
Honestly I see Brian Thompson as way worse than this hypothetical drug dealer.
Obviously, the drug dealer is bad: he’s effectively killed people by selling fentanylaced drugs (presumably without telling his buyers what they were actually buying). But Brian has effectively killed thousands.
In both cases I have sympathy for the kids. In the drug dealers case, I might not be crying my eyes out about the death; but I still wish some form of non-lethal recourse had been taken. This person’s death doesn’t send a very effective message, as most other people in his position have already accepted the risk inherent to what they’re doing.
In Brian’s case, non-lethal recourse wouldn’t have been effective. If he was left alive he would’ve just kept killing people for his own profit, but his death sends a message to others in his position. People who usually wouldn’t see any sort of consequences for their actions.
I feel bad for the family. Losing a loved one sucks. I don’t know anything else about him, his family, or their life outside of this story to build an opinion on their suffering, but I’m sure it is immeasurable and only made worse by the media circus that has developed.
But one thing I do know is that this same terrible thing happens to so many families across the world every day. And the impacts can be harder than just dealing with the loss - what if the person murdered was the earner for the family? Or supported their disabled partner or child? What if a couple wasn’t married/legally bound, so the partner can’t get any of the deceased’s benefits? Imagine having to try to figure out childcare if you were a stay at home parent and had to go back to work. Imagine having to go back to work period after suffering a loss like that?
This is where my lack of sympathy for the current situation manifests - because Mr. Thompson’s family is ridiculously rich from his time as CEO of UHC, they will not have to worry about these scenarios. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy safety and security and eliminate worry. They will be able to fully mourn their husband and father, knowing that their millions and millions of dollars are sitting there earning more money without them having to lift a finger. Their future is secure.
To become that rich you either profited off the efforts of others, or profited from the suffering of others. Or both.
I personally find it absurd that a murder involving a few people makes the world talk about these health problems much more effectively than street demonstrations of thousands of protesters. The real fact is that the protesters are us, here on the net, now much more impactful online than one on the street, and I don’t know if this is worrying or not but this is the reality (at least in many contexts).
People like Brian Thompson enjoy(ed) a life of care free luxury and comfort because people have been abiding by societal norms…the social contract. Eventually, those care free days are going to be a distant memory and “corpos” are going to need armed security 24/7 like every cyberpunk novel ever has predicted.
There is one truth about Americans. You do not want them to agree that you are the baddie they should focus on.
You reminded me of something by mentioning cyberpunk: if this case does not lead to an actual mass movement, it will probably accelerate in the opposite direction, of unlimited capitalist liberalism in which every CEO is a demigod with a private army for his personal defense. Which, as you well said, is narrated in every cyberpunk story but which is a symptom of its realization.
I do not condone murder. But this was not a murder, this was an assassination, and we need more of that.
More random assassinations by lone wolves will yield more state brutality, more cop cities and expanded security state powers.
(In case anyone thinks I’m speaking from a liberal position…)
More random assassinations by lone wolves will yield more state brutality, more cop cities and expanded security state powers.
It was not random, it was clearly targeted.
Cop cities, state brutality and expanding state powers are already the realitiy in the US.
By random I mean it is not organized. It is random people doing their own thing.
I feel SO BAD for that CEOS kids! And ZERO Sympathy for the Tens of Thousands of Parents and Kids who he Killed through his Denial of Healthcare Coverage!
It’s immoral to be more mad about Brian Thompson’s death than about the countless millions he killed and tortured and bankrupted with his pen.
The killer is a symptom, not of Brian Thompson but of the system he was a replaceable figurehead for. If we have less violent means of stopping insurance executives murdering millions, we should jump at them. Can’t let millions die like that though. Do anything else.
Even making the discussion about Luigi is a little misleading in the wider sense, although it’s not invalid by default to discuss it.
