Does the United Healthcare Assassination Augur a New Age of Political Violence?

On X, he was immediately dubbed the Claims Adjuster, or simply the Adjuster. The memes that sprouted in the wake of health care executive Brian Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing suggested a Punisher-style comic-book hero, hooded and masked, in a black jacket, with a silenced pistol. Even before many of the facts were known, a narrative had emerged about justice against the corporate elite and redemption and regeneration through violence. In this narrative, the villain is a sociopath deserving of death, the proof of evil his position as executive of a predatory health insurance company whose corporate parent, UnitedHealth Group, has assets valued at $284 billion and is known to profit from denying care to its customers.  

The words found on the shell casings of the 9 mm bullets used in the attack — “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” — quickly took center stage in the national conversation. The third, “depose,” has multiple meanings, but in this context just two: one might depose a health care company CEO in court, and one might also depose a figure of terrific unaccountable authority, such as a king or tyrant.

As the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino noted, Thompson’s company, UnitedHealthcare, is a notorious symbol of such unaccountability, with the highest claim-denial rate of any private insurance company:

A 2023 class-action lawsuit alleges that the NaviHealth algorithm [used by UnitedHealthcare] has a “known error rate” of 90 percent and cites appalling patient stories: one man in Tennessee broke his back, was hospitalized for six days, was moved to a nursing home for 11 days, and then was informed by UnitedHealth that his care would be cut off in two days. After a couple rounds of appeals and reversals, the man left the nursing home and died four days later.

Such stories explain the instant folk heroization of the killer on social media that followed news of his actions. Innumerable posts that lauded his crime — or, at least, pointedly refused to condemn it — were shot through with the rhetoric of revolution, as if the Adjuster’s murderous act had been the opening move in a class war. There was also romance and raw attraction. In an initial photo made available by police, the public glimpsed a handsome smile on the Adjuster’s half-hooded face, as he appeared to flirt with an employee at the hostel where he holed up prior to the attack. This, as with subsequent photos of the man now in custody, Luigi Mangione, has given rise to a number of “thirst trap” posts by adoring female fans. 

The social media response to Thompson’s death often descended into death-delighting schadenfreude by people who apparently don’t care one whit about the gunning down of a 50-year-old father of two from the quiet suburban city of Maple Grave, Minnesota. The humble Facebook eulogy by UnitedHealth for Brian Thompson was met with so many emoji laughs and claps — 77,000 at last count — that comments were shut down. At LinkedIn, UnitedHealth Group opted to stop comments on its post about Thompson’s death because of the flood of people liking, hearting and clapping it.   

Genuine laughter also abounded. A commenter on X worried whether the sidewalk where Thompson collapsed was OK, and another declared Thompson’s gunshot wound a preexisting condition not covered under UnitedHealthcare policy. “My condolences are out of network,” became the common mocking refrain. Another stated, “I’m sorry, prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers.”   

Meanwhile, internet sleuths who had in other unsolved cases come together to find murderers decided to sit this one out with aggressive displays of indifference. 

Another post on X in favor of the Adjuster, captioned “My official response to the UHC CEO’s murder,” showed two graphs that compared wealth distribution in late 18th-century France to wealth distribution in present-day America. The two graphs were roughly the same. Under this post was one that showed a cartoon of the Lorax in colorful Seussian splendor standing by a guillotine and rhyming, “UNLESS someone like you brings out the chippity chop/Nothing’s going to get better. It’s not.”

This was followed by a poster who quoted the French Revolution’s bloody anthem, the Marseillaise, which goes:

Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts.

In American history, has the assassination of an industry executive in the private sector ever elicited such enormous and widespread support? The last attempted political assassination of a major corporate executive occurred in 1892, when Alexander Berkman attempted to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick over his murderous treatment of steelworkers on strike. The script then, even at the height of the Gilded Age, was very different. Berkman was publicly excoriated and widely condemned as an agent of foreign radicalism, while Frick was put on a victim pedestal. The American public turned against the steelworkers and Berkman was sent to prison. 

The reaction to the street-side slaughter of Thompson suggests that, were Berkman to stand trial today, he may enjoy more support than he did during his time. For a number of people, when a predatory power elite proves itself willing to sacrifice the public good for its private aggrandizement, shooting them in the head has become an acceptable solution. We’ve tried lawsuits, petitions, elections; nothing has worked. Whatever one thinks of political violence, it is clear that millions of Americans believe something drastic needs to be done. No one in their right mind wants to test a thesis that ends in mass murder. But it’s looking increasingly like we are in uncharted territory.