In what at least one scholar is describing as a concerning indication of radicalization among certain elements of the American populace, tens of thousands of people have shown support or sympathy for the death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO on social media.
People sometimes question why we want these execs dead, because they wroteA few hours after the CEO, 50-year-old Brian Thompson, was shot dead in Manhattan by a man brandishing a silenced pistol, Taylor Lorenz, a former journalist for the New York Times and Washington Post, wrote a post on BlueSky. Lorenz later added, “No, that doesn’t mean people should murder them,” in response to criticism.
Within hours following the murder, Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute found thousands of posts that were identical. More than 8.3 million accounts might have viewed the postings, but according to NCRI, they received 180,000 likes and 24,400 retweets.
Alex Goldenberg, a fellow at Rutgers and a senior adviser for NCRI, expressed grave worry over the rise in social media posts that glorify and praise the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson.
The names of other CEOs in the healthcare industry as well as those who are glorifying the shooter are being circulated in highly active forums. It is particularly concerning that this occurrence is being framed as a class conflict opening rather than a heinous murder.
Law enforcement authorities have been warning for years that a small number of Americans, mostly on the right, who have become radicalized on social media and are immersed in conspiracy theories, pose a greater threat of engaging in political violence.
According to Tobita Chow, a climate activist whose post summarizing the mood reached millions of accounts, these posts seemed to originate primarily from accounts that have espoused far-left beliefs, although some also came from far-right accounts. (The motivation of the murderer has not been disclosed by the police.)
The majority of my alerts are a stream of heposted populist fury. Looking at people’s profiles, I see that they come from a wide range of political backgrounds: MAGA, leftists, liberal Democrats, libertarians, and many more whose participation on this site is completely apolitical.
Many of the posts about the Thompson murder were driven by the central idea that insurance companies, including UnitedHealthcare, kill and injure Americans by refusing coverage for financial gain. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which provides insurance to people in Connecticut, New York, and Missouri, said last month that it would no longer fund anesthetic care if a surgery or procedure took longer than a certain amount of time, regardless of how long the operation took. This statement was the subject of numerous posts. (On Thursday, Anthem BCBS changed their mind on the policy.)
One X user said, “Then people wonder why a health insurance CEO was shot dead because insurance companies pull this garbage.”
The majority of responses to UnitedHealth Group’s (UnitedHealthcare’s parent business) official Facebook post regarding Thompson’s passing included the laughing emoji. The Haha emote was used by 35,000 people out of the roughly 40,000 reactions on the post, while the Sad emote was used by 2,200 people.
Following the incident, several of Reddit’s most popular sitewide posts were celebratory; these included memes congratulating the gunman and top replies in subreddits such as r/nursing that mocked the coverage review and claim denial for Thompson’s care. Read a reply with more than 2,400 upvotes stating that this deadly shooting has been examined by a peer and is regarded as an experimental procedure that is not covered.
Thompson has two adolescents as children. The phrases “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” were discovered inscribed on shot casings discovered at the shooting site, law enforcement authorities told NBC News. The subtitle of the 2010 book Delay Deny Defend, which reads, “Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it,” seems to be echoed in those terms. The writer chose not to respond.
In addition to posting the photo of another insurance business CEO with a birthdate and a blank date of death, Lorenz, who worked as a technology writer for The New York Times from 2019 to 2022 and as a columnist for the Washington Post from 2022 until earlier this year, did the same. (That post has been taken down since then.) She also linked an article that asked whether sending out a simple “you’re next” email to other insurance CEOs would be regarded as an actionable threat.
In an email to NBC News, Lorenz, who currently hosts a well-liked podcast for Vox Media and publishes a Substack weekly, stated that she was not attempting to defend violence. “I hope people learn the names of all these insurance company CEOs and engage in very peaceful letter writing campaigns so that they stop ruthlessly murdering thousands of innocent Americans by denying coverage,” she wrote in a subsequent post.
She stated in the email to NBC News that she didn’t mean to imply that she personally desired the deaths of healthcare executives.
The royal we is used in my post that you referenced below to express how the public feels about the occurrence. Because healthcare executives are accountable for unimaginable quantities of misery and death, people fervently want them dead. Because of the deaths and suffering they enable, people have a legitimately strong dislike for the CEOs of insurance companies. The fact that you don’t think about that brutality is interesting.
She went on to say that just because I highlight comments made by OTHER individuals, like Jenny, doesn’t mean that I agree with them or their posts. It’s unbelievable that in 2024, I will have to tell a reporter that retweets are not endorsements.
Chow, the climate activist, wrote one of the most read X posts on the topic. He said in an interview that he was drawing attention to popular ire at the private health insurance system rather than endorsing the murder.
“I think political and industry leaders might want to read the comments and think hard about them,” he wrote in a post that received 137,000 likes after seeing mainstream news coverage of the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO on TikTok.
One user said, Compassion withheld until paperwork can be given proving the bullet holes were not a preexisting condition.
According to Chow, there is a lot of populist ire over the way private health insurance companies can simply mistreat people, destroy their lives, and in the case of health insurance, even perhaps allow them to die profitably and without consequence. Vigilante assassinations are obviously not the answer to that, but I believe political and corporate leaders should take this feeling seriously.
He claimed that the murder sparked a wave of grievances, particularly against UnitedHealthcare.
Among the main insurance carriers, UnitedHealthcare had the highest claims denial rate, according to a figure shared on social media by numerous users from the finance website ValuePenguin.
According to Drew Neckar, a lead consultant at COSECURE, a security and risk management firm, healthcare industry experts have seen an increase in threats, even though the gunman’s motivation is still unknown.
aggression, including physical aggression, threats, and other forms of violence, has increased significantly in the healthcare industry in particular. Although it has been an issue for many years, he claimed that since the pandemic, it has greatly risen.
Although he has observed a rise in threats against healthcare CEOs, Neckar pointed out that the majority of the threats are directed at frontline healthcare professionals like physicians and nurses.
According to him, there hasn’t been a single healthcare institution I’ve worked with in recent years that hasn’t seen a rise in both real and threatened violence against employees of at least 25 to 50%.
The founder of Moms Demand Action, a nonprofit that works to reduce gun violence, Shannon Watts, remembers clearly the never-ending, futile fights her family members fought against UnitedHealthcare to get coverage for her late stepfather, who passed away from glioblasto in the early 2000s.
Watts was appalled to read the hate speech directed at the deceased executive, even if she was still upset about UnitedHealthcare’s treatment of her stepfather.
You are aware that it was present on every platform. “Seeing well-known individuals, not just bots, defend, condone, mock, and celebrate gun violence was shocking to me,” she said.
It is possible that both murder and gun violence are wrong, and that the health insurance system is flawed and needs to be corrected.
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