“Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare since 2021, was shot and killed outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, New York City, on December 4, 2024. He was in the city to attend an annual investors meeting for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare. Authorities believe the attack was not random. Thompson had been criticized for UnitedHealthcare’s rejection of insurance claims, and his family reported that he had received death threats in the past. The shooting occurred early in the morning, and the suspect, initially described as a white man wearing a mask, fled the scene.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson
(edit) I would like to point out that Luigi Mangione is only a suspect and there are currently doubts about the integrity of the evidence.
More random assassinations by lone wolves will yield more state brutality, more cop cities and expanded security state powers.
(In case anyone thinks I’m speaking from a liberal position…)
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Adventurism
This. This may be a moment where American class consciousness has flickered to life, but without theory and organized movements nothing will come of it besides crackdowns.
It was not random, it was clearly targeted.
Cop cities, state brutality and expanding state powers are already the realitiy in the US.
By random I mean it is not organized. It is random people doing their own thing.
Sounds like anarchism to me
At this stage though I can’t really condemn it, I’ve seen class consciousness only evaporate more and more over the course of my lifetime across the general populus, while concentrating in a few unions, which isn’t bad of course as it gets workers better material conditions, but it’s a far cry from a revolutionary movement. At this stage I feel all that’s left is individual actions, though perhaps I’m dooming.
I think prolewiki is a bit overly critical there, nobody thinks tagging a wall like some teenager is going to spread class consciousness enough to lead to anything, though a good art piece or slogan may make people stop and think, we’d be overwhelmingly closer to any kind of lefty utopia if the guy shooting trump didn’t miss.
I don’t see how. He’d just be replaced by Vance or some other clown. Trump isn’t some unique villain, his rise is a product of late-stage neoliberalism. Fascism isn’t on the rise all over the Western world for no reason, it’s because of grinding neoliberalism throughout the imperial core.
Bruh I know what the imperial core is.
Yes trump would be replaced, that much is obvious as there is a league of even shadier mfers behind him, but whether his replacement would have the charisma to actually succeed in getting enough people energised to suceed is a different question entirely.
Yes there is a global rise in the far-right and yes it is in large part due to the decay of brief prosperity for the imperial core countries due to the failure of neoliberal policies, in many ways failure that is created by inherent contradictions within capitalism as described by Marx, but this rise is also tied together by strong charismatic leaders who are able to seize the moment in ways the left can’t counter because we cannot offer the simplicity of lies.
So to avoid the pendulum swinging to the right, keeping those individuals out of power is our only option and is a shared want between us and the establishment.
I see no reason not to seize the opportunity and utilize electoralism to our advantage, even in the absence of meaningful change, a rightoid passing legislation means a press environment even worse than typical neoliberal press, and that makes it that much harder to organise, to do mutual aid, talk about theory or spread solidarity.
Everything leads there anyway