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On December 4, 2024, United Healthcare (UHC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brian Thompson was shot multiple times on the way to a shareholder meeting in Manhattan, according to the New York Times. What followed over the next five days was a shocking dissonance, as commentators and news media publicized a nationwide manhunt and condemned the murder, while many ordinary social media users praised the murder. News commentators soon realized this dissonance, with this being well demonstrated on Saturday Night Live on December 22, as host Colin Jost seemed shocked by the crowd’s cheering to the mention of the murder suspect’s name.
On December 9, 2024, a suspect was arrested at a McDonalds in Altoona Pennsylvania, according to the same New York Times article. With a mugshot and named revealed soon after, people began to scour the web for more information. Luigi Mangione, the suspect potentially behind the murder, flooded the internet. Old selfies, Goodreads reviews, medical history, and so forth quickly took over social media, as users not only attempted to find a motive, but also fawned over Luigi’s impressive physique. This only furthered the craze over the murder. Memes and fangirling alike were seen across the political spectrum. In another example of commentators versus ordinary user dissonance, Ben Shapiro on the Ben Shapiro Show, an infamous alt-right commentator, condemned the murder on December 10, only to receive a barrage of dislikes and negative comments about his take on the matter.
I have little more to say about the murder and the timeline of events that followed. There are plenty of resources that have journalists likely dedicated to the situation; meanwhile, I’m just a student. However, I do have some thoughts about the response that followed. I think this outpouring of support for the murder and suspect Luigi Mangione highlight a critical tension in American society. You rarely see any support for murder, and rightfully so, so it must follow that this response is exceptional.
One has to look no further than the state of healthcare in this country. Brian Thompson was a relatively unknown person. Only the most news or business savvy people would have known the name before December 4. This attack wasn’t about Brian Thompson as a person, it was about healthcare in America. The murder itself and the resultant support had revealed a long simmering disdain for the healthcare system in America. A YouGov poll conducted on December 5 showed that nearly a majority of Americans had an unfavorable view of healthcare in the country, with only ten percent saying they had a “very favorable” view. This unfavorable view only grew in the following days, as another poll published by YouGov just a few days later showed over a majority of Americans stating they had an unfavorable view.
The murderer of Brian Thompson has done something that few others have been able to do. They united Americans behind a cause, and that scared a few really rich and really powerful people. People celebrated Luigi Mangione, someone who at this point is still only a suspect with flimsy evidence at best. This cultural dissonance between the top and the bottom has resulted in a strong blackout in media discussing Luigi Mangione. The amount of coverage he has gotten after the first week has seen a cataclysmic drop off. For what was such a high profile case, the coverage has all but dried up.
According to a Fox summative article titled “Timeline: Brian Thompson’s murder, Luigi Mangione’s capture and fate”, Mangione has pleaded not guilty, with the court date being pushed back multiple days. On President Trump’s first day in office, the White House press release revealed the restoration of the federal death penalty, which some believe might be used against Mangione if he is found guilty. If true, this is only further proof that there is genuine fear in what Mangione has done, and that it is in some people’s vested interests to say as little as possible, and to make a definitive example of him only when its most advantageous.
Its hard to say where it all goes from here. It appears that both the murder and Mangione have disappeared from the public consciousness for the time being. Perhaps when the trial picks back up again, there will be more discussion. The events of and succeeding the murder highlighted a critical tension, not just between Americans and the state of healthcare, but also Americans and the general political and media landscapes, and yet, nothing of extreme note has happened since. Some extreme takes of the murder included some kind of great awakening in the American populace, and perhaps the beginning of radical change in the United States, but that seems to have not culminated. The current cultural inertia seems hard to change in any meaningful way, and perhaps Thompson’s murder and Mangione’s case will be just a blip in history books afterall. I’d like to end on a quote by one Vladimir Lenin, as I see it especially pertinent to the whole situation, “[there] are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”