The strange reaction to the UnitedHealthcare shooting

The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week revealed "two very ugly" aspects of American life, said The Atlantic. "A healthcare executive was shot dead, and because he was a healthcare executive, people cheered."

Then shortly after police announced that they had detained 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the fatal shooting, "the internet exploded into a frenzy", said Newsweek. Social media posts and memes glorified him as a folk hero, proposed whip rounds to fund his legal defence, and even declared him "too hot to convict", as one user wrote on X.

'No excuse for cheering murder'

Thompson's shooting by a masked gunman in downtown Manhattan early last Wednesday morning was immediately linked to his role at the head of one of the world's largest health insurance companies. Shell casings found at the scene marked with the words "deny", "defend" and "depose" – common terms used by insurance firms when refusing a claim – appeared to confirm this.

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The shooting has "fostered a morbid wave of admiration for the alleged killer among people with anti-capitalist views or aggrieved with the country's costly and often capricious healthcare system", said the Financial Times. According to Gallup, just 31% of Americans have a positive view of the healthcare industry, with only oil and gas, drug companies and the federal government more unpopular.

"The suspect has become a meme that channels widespread grievances with the healthcare industry and dark humour to legitimise targeted violence," Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser to Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute, told the paper. Noting that UnitedHealthcare rejects more medical claims than other American insurers, many posters shared and liked scathing jokes suggesting that Thompson's fatal bullet wounds would not be covered by his insurance.

"There's no excuse for cheering on murder," said The Atlantic. The online "zeal" for the apparent assassination of a health insurance CEO "demonstrates both the coarsening of public discourse and the degree of rage Americans feel over the deficiencies of the US healthcare system".

'Hot assassin'

"How is it that so many of us can gloss right over the idea that someone might be a violent killer, so long as they have chiselled abs and a sharp jawline?" said Cosmopolitan. The "collective hysteria" over Mangione is reminiscent of "Hot Felon" Jeremy Meeks, whose photogenic mugshot went viral in 2014, and the even older romanticisation of serial killers like Ted Bundy. In this case, though, there are also "complex emotions" at play around the healthcare system, with those who have been negatively impacted by its failures able to "project personal frustrations" onto the shooting.

"Regardless of your politics" or opinions on the US healthcare system, "a man still died in all of this – a man with children, a wife and family", wrote The Independent's Emma Clarke. They too will now "have to face the fact that the murder of their relative has spawned endless memes" along with "unsavoury comments about the main suspect in the case".

Beyond the fawning over the so-called "hot assassin", the more telling aspect of the shooting is the "whiff of populist anarchy" it has unleashed. In a time of extreme political division, this is "notably across the aisle", said Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker. Murder should never be met with "indifference", but such a reaction is not a surprise when the CEO class demonstrates such "indifference to the suffering and death of ordinary people".