The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week revealed “two very ugly” aspects of American life, The Atlantic said. “A health care executive was shot, and because he was a health care executive, people cheered.”
Then, shortly after police announced they had arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the fatal shooting, “the Internet exploded in excitement,” Newsweek said. Social media posts and memes glorified him as a folk hero, suggested lashings to fund his legal defense and even called him “too hot to be convicted,” as one user wrote on X.
“No excuse to celebrate murder”
Thompson's shooting by a masked gunman in downtown Manhattan early Wednesday morning was immediately linked to his role at the helm of one of the world's largest health insurance companies. Shell casings found at the scene with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” — common terms insurance companies use when denying a claim — appeared to confirm this.
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The shooting sparked “a morbid wave of admiration for the alleged killer among people who hold anti-capitalist views or are angered by the country's costly and often capricious health care system,” the Financial Times said. According to Gallup, only 31% of Americans have a positive view of the healthcare industry, with only oil and gas, pharmaceutical companies and the federal government being more unpopular.
“The suspect has become a meme, channeling widespread grievances about the health care industry and dark humor to legitimize targeted violence,” Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute, told the newspaper. Many posters noted that UnitedHealthcare denies more medical claims than other American insurers, and shared and liked scathing jokes suggesting that Thompson's fatal gunshot wounds would not be covered by his insurance.
“There is no excuse for cheering murder,” said The Atlantic. The online “fervor” over the apparent assassination of a health insurance CEO “shows both the brutalization of public discourse and the level of anger Americans feel about the shortcomings of the U.S. health care system.”
“Hot Assassin”
“How is it that so many of us can gloss over the idea that someone could be a violent murderer as long as they have toned abs and a sharp chin?” said Cosmopolitan. The “collective hysteria” surrounding Mangione is reminiscent of “Hot Felon” Jeremy Meeks, whose photogenic mugshot went viral in 2014, and the even older romanticization of serial killers like Ted Bundy. However, “complex emotions” surrounding the health care system also play a role in this case, as those negatively affected by its failures are able to project “personal frustrations” onto the shooting.
“Regardless of your politics” or your opinion of the U.S. health care system, “in all of this, a man still died — a man with children, a wife and a family,” wrote The Independent’s Emma Clarke. They too must now “face the fact that their relative’s murder has spawned endless memes” and “unsavory comments about the main suspect in the case.”
Aside from the adulation of the so-called “hot assassin,” the more telling aspect of the shooting is the “thirst of populist anarchy” it unleashed. At a time of extreme political division, this is “particularly on the other side,” said Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker. Murder should never be met with “indifference,” but such a reaction is no surprise when the CEO class displays such “indifference to the suffering and death of ordinary people.”
