The macabre online support of CEO Brian Thompson's murder

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Like many of my fellow Americans, the early details of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson's murder shook me to the core as I listened to the breaking news while driving to work last Wednesday morning.

The late Brian Thompson, 50

When I finally had an opportunity to delve more deeply into the event that evening, I admit that my stomach turned into knots when realizing that Thompson was close to my own age (50), a father, and likely had no idea whatsoever that as he dressed and headed to his company's investors meeting that morning that he would be stalked, shot multiple times in the back, and lose his life on a cold New York City sidewalk.

Still captures of Thompson (blue coat) second before being shot from behind by a still at-large assassin…

The queasy feeling in my stomach undoubtedly stems from my years of work as a criminal defense lawyer who handled multiple murder and attempted murder cases and on several occasions, received death threats that were serious enough to involve local or federal law enforcement surveillance or protection for me and my family. Suffice it to say that I've long known that there are some sick folks out here who are more than willing and capable of killing law abiding folks for whatever reasons they deem worthy in their twisted minds.

But what has struck me as totally bizarre in the wake of Mr. Thompson's murder, which includes an international manhunt for his killer, is the realization that in some quarters on social media—his assassin has become a folk hero!

I first took notice of this the day of the killing, where my social media timelines were flooded with memes about United Healthcare being the number one denier of insurance claims in this highly lucrative American industry. I even read several think pieces that provided details about United Healthcare's business practices, and observed a number of posts that surmised that Thompson, as the CEO who earned millions in salary and stock options for his company's "predatory" practices, essentially "got what was coming" to him in that hail of gunfire.

While my observations were anecdotal, earlier this morning in the NY Times I read analytics from Alex Goldenberg, an adviser for the Network Contagion Research Institute—an organization that tracks online threats—who opined that the social media joy behind Thompson's murder "had left experts 'pretty disturbed' by its 'glorification' and the 'lionization of the shooter.'” Goldenberg added that by Wednesday evening, six of the top 10 most engaged social media posts about the shooting "either expressed explicit or implicit support for the killing or denigrated the victim,” concluding that "what’s disturbing about this is it’s mainstream.”

Disturbing, indeed...

As one who has always been fascinated by the history of human behavior, I cannot help but wonder what are the deeper underpinnings in Thompson's murder? For over a decade, I have wondered aloud about the "tipping point" that could turn rational people into vigilantes and violent anarchists? I posted this question following the racist violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia back in 2017, and I posed it again on January 6, 2021, back when thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Complex in anger over his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden and left six people dead—and millions in property damage to boot.

The January 6th MAGA mob

But those two events could be explained away as extreme reactions to dangerous socio-political ideologies—moments that drew far more scorn than support from the public, writ large.

But the Thompson murder, and the evidence that the killer left by inscribing the words "depose," "deny," "defend" on shell casings—words used by insurance companies to avoid paying health care benefits to those who pay the very premiums that lead to billions in corporate profits, is a horse of another color! Meaning, we ALL have a baseline fear that if we (or our family members) become seriously ill, what happens when the bean counters show up to say, "sorry, your policy does NOT cover this treatment, that surgery, or those medicines?"

But the rational and law abiding among us know that you should NEVER mask up and go and shoot up the insurance company's headquarters or stalk their corporate honchos and yet, last week's events seem to show that an increasing number of people, at minimum, lost little sleep over the fact that Thompson may have lost his life for doing his job, no matter how disdainful, exceptionally well.

Which leads me to ask whether such is only the beginning? Since we know that inflation has been wickedly awful for several years now and many of us are pessimistic that the prices of groceries, goods, and services are about to drop anytime soon, what happens when those prices don't drop? What happens as the value of a dollar is stretched out even thinner? Will armed vigilantes or mobs take to killing other corporate leaders and/or mask up to pilfer and pillage grocery stores and other business establishments?

These are dark questions to consider on this cold late Fall Sunday morning here in Tallahassee, but I feel compelled to ask them to help me understand where we, the people, are when it comes to following the moral law of "thou shalt not kill," and the secular law that punishes murder by life without parole or capital punishment, regardless when we have a legitimate gripe about corporate largesse and greed? In my estimation, Brian Thompson should be alive this Sunday morning, and his death is nothing to laugh at or shrug away with a blithe “oh well” exhortation!

As always, feel free to weigh in with your thoughts below or by dropping me an email!