7d ago

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting supporters may target police, courts: Analysts

abcnews.go.com UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting supporters may target police, courts: Analysts

Luigi Mangione -- the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson -- has been greeted by a surge of enthusiastic online support.

Less than two weeks after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down on the streets of midtown Manhattan, his alleged assassin Luigi Mangione has been greeted not by universal condemnation for the brazen violence -- but rather, a surge of enthusiastic support online for his so-called vigilante justice.

The Center for Internet Security (CIS), a nonprofit focused on cybersecurity that partners with government and law enforcement, released a new threat assessment bulletin warning that online support for the alleged shooter risks encouraging copycat attacks.

"Overwhelming bipartisan support for the attack" across social media "has resulted in several narratives encouraging similar violent activities directed at other healthcare executive teams," CIS analysts said.

"The narratives supporting Mangione's targeted attack likely serve to encourage like-minded individuals, particularly as Mangione continues to be viewed by the public as an 'American hero' and sympathetic figure," CIS' bulletin said.

101 comments

No one attacked law enforcement for this thought. They are just fear mongering the police so they will want to protect the rich more.
- That and make it sound like those supporting him are dangerous.
- If cops start acting like bodyguards for rich people, they will for the next one.
  
  you act like they haven't for decades
  
  Start?
- He (Luigi) literally went out of his way to praise law enforcement in his statement. So yeah, this is all just bullshit, and it's bad for ya.
- We did and are mocking them for the amount of attention and resources the murder is getting solely due to the wealth of the target.
  
  I'd say "pissed at" more than "mocking".
- Tells you a lot about why some departments won't accept cops over a certain IQ. You don't want your enforcers questioning who they should be working for. You want easily manipulable peons.
- Honestly this sounds like a reporter chop job to me. The only discrete mention of threats to law enforcement is protests, fake bomb threats, and Swatting.
  They aren't saying people are going to murder court officials and police.

I haven't seen anyone encouraging or even so much as hinting that a copycat should target police or courts. Feels like something made up to try to drive a wedge between the bipartisan support by splintering off "back the blue" type of people.
- This is it. Do not do class war. The rich want you to fight amongst yourselves
  
  The class war has been going on since time immemorial and we aren't winning. But when you recognize that fact and talk about rebellion, some people get all upset.
- Have you looked around this thread?

CIS assessed it "highly likely that threats will continue to target law enforcement] and other public offices participating in Mangione's case."
Translation: South Park they're coming right for us, FIRE
- It worked for Rittenhouse 🫥

ACAB
- It's bastards, all the way up. Never forget.
  
  I think we should crowdfund an art project. Specifically, just to send a message, we should erect a big bronze statue of Luigi Mangione. Put it on a main road close to UHC's headquarters in Minnesota. Make the bastards drive right past the thing every day on the way to work.

Complete bullshit obviously...
But the fact they're worried about it says A LOT about how they view themselves compared to a piece of shit responsible for millions of deaths from denied healthcare.
- I keep running through the difference between the reaction to this vs elementary school kids dying to gun violence. It's one CEO and everything in the media has galvanized to unite around a singular message of horrible violence. Hundreds of children have died and nothing changed. It's fucking infuriating.

Let's compare:
Osama Bin Ladin/Brian Robert Thompson
Number killed by own hands: 0/0
Number killed through orders to underlings: _3,000/51,000
Reason for killings: religious and geopolitical reasons/profit motive
Cause of death: execution by gunshot/execution by gunshot
Date of trial for killings: N/A / N/A
Date of issue of death sentence for killings: N/A / N/A
Response to killing: celebration by US president on national TV, celebration by commoners and elites / celebration by commoners, condemnation by elite.
Consequence to assassins for extra-judicial slaying: national praise / indicted for 2nd degree murder
Race and class: weird Arab guy in traditional garb / rich white man in a a suit
- Where does the 51,000 figure come from?
  
  About 68,000 Americans die each year from improper denials of necessary care. With UHC's share of the private health insurance market and higher than average denial of claims, a conservative figure is 40 UHC customers per day dying from denial of care. Brian Robert Thompson served as the CEO of UHC for approximately 3.5 years. That comes to about 51,000 people dead at the hands of Brian Robert Thompson.
  Is it fair to pin all of UHC's murders on one man? Maybe not. But he gleefully took credit for the record profits that came from UHC's soaring denial rates. He earned an obscene salary and bonuses from the record profits that those deaths produced. He took credit for all the consequences of these deaths; it is entirely reasonable to hold him morally culpable for them.
  Make no mistake. Brian Robert Thompson killed approximately 51,000 people, or about 17 times as many people as Osama Bin Ladin. Brian Robert Thompson suffered for seconds. Osama Bin Ladin's victims suffered for about an hour. Brian Robert Thompson's victims suffered for months to years. And this is just deaths, not those who suffered injury, debilitation, or bankruptcy at Brian Robert Thompson's hands.
- Osama bin Laden was pretty wealthy too. His family owns a massive Saudi construction company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Binladin_Group

Oh, lol.....they think people are only going to target other healthcare CEO's? That's fucking adorable.
- Hoping our boi Luigi set the stage for a revolution to finally start. Idk what I can do to fight the good fight other than to continue to be loud about all this shit.
  
  At least the more of us are loud the safer each of us are. So free Luigi and may the proles get a little something without society collapsing. Either way it's definitely a good show....
- Radicalization is required as an existential evolution.

Oh come off it already.
Yeah we all agree shooting people is wrong.
But just about everyone in the general public more or less agrees Thompson had it coming. We've all dealt with scummy insurance companies.
Playing up the threat at this point seems like an obvious psyop. And it's not even being done well.
That I've seen, nobody, anywhere, at all, has suggested targeting police or courts. This has been solely framed as a class war between the rank and file citizens of the nation and a very small number (10-25) of CEOs whose companies destroy lives every day. There is no anger with cops or the courts.
- lol, your last sentence is right off the cliff.
  
  I think they mean germane to this killing
  
  I mean in regards to this situation. There is anger with cops, none of it has to do with health care. Two completely separate issues. Thus, to suggest that people like Luigi Mangione or copycats are likely to hurt cops or courts is ridiculous

God, the police are so fucking coddled. "This shit that has nothing to do with police? A threat to police." Anytbing to direct more funding to these fucking babies.
- They're LARPers with a gun; licensed to use real fire bolts against the masses.

The media don't know how to deal with people not caring that the CEO of a parasitic company is dead, so now they resort to fear mongering?
Just because people are not showing outpourings of grief for the death of a CEO doesn't mean people are endorsing violence. Luigi Mangione is in custody and will likely go to prison; being sympathetic to his story does not mean endorsing his behaviour. This is a complex and multifaceted story and people are allowed complex and multifaceted responses.

Welp, its officially in. Anyone who sympathizes with Luigi is officially deemed a terrorist.
Soon, some senator will announce that he/she has a list of suspected ~~communists~~ terrorists who sympathize with Luigi Mangione. This will the know as the ~~Red Scare~~ Green Scare. Mentioning the term "Green Mario" would be a death sentence.
Super Mario Bros will be deemed as terrorist propaganda, and any related media would be confiscated. There would be no-knock searches carried out across the nation, many will be shot in the process.
If you are reading this, your are already on their list. If you are reading this, you are the resistance...
- That doesn't leave many people in the "not terrorist" category.
  
  Brought to you by the "We're all Domestic Terrorists!" party
  🙃

God the police are so pathetically paranoid.
- Literally shooting at acorns falling from a tree
- “Waaah a dog barked at me” then they shoot the dog
  
  They do it because they can.
  
  It was comin right for us!
- You know, if they stopped doing shady shit and unjustifiably killing people they wouldn’t have to be. Pretty simple stuff. If they took protection and serve to heart people would truly appreciate them and they would get the attention they desire.
  
  Protect and serve is puffery.
  Like the Declaration of Independance.
  Sounds great, has no impact in legal system.

Mainstream media playbook 101. When your narrative isn't taking hold lean on fear mongering.

I mean, remember defund the police?
That movement fully targeted cops.
This one is targeting the ruling class, and cops are worried.
It’s like that moment when you criticize a bad thing (like selfishness) and out of nowhere someone gets offended; they are basically telling on themselves.
- That movement fully targeted cops.
  I think if youd look into it you'd find its the protestors who were targetted. Not the cops.
  
  I meant that the focus was about the police problem, this time it’s about CEOs yet cops get offended

In Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was captured on Monday, local police told ABC News they also faced threats and negative blowback for arresting the suspect, as did the McDonald's where he was arrested.
CIS assessed it "highly likely that threats will continue to target [law enforcement] and other public offices participating in Mangione's case."
This is just sloppy reporting. CIS says cops and other officials will receive more threats, not that they will be in more danger. But it's 2024 and ABC is a major news outlet that depends on keeping the government and (especially) His Majesty happy to keep their ota broadcast license.
This reeks of propaganda trying to sway the "blue liners" away from support for the coming class war. It makes sense. The "cop feelings > children lives" set are violently stupid and (usually) well armed.

the police have a training traveling school called Killology and refer to themselves as "killologist."
- the best part is when the police training material prominently features quotes from adolf hitler
  (actual slide)
  
  This is right up there though.
  A video of a former West Point psychology professor who trains police officers using his expertise on what he calls “killology” resurfaced on Reddit on Thursday. The former army ranger said that officers have “the best sex” after killing other human beings,
- Sitting here thinking I thought they had branded it some bullshit like 'warrior training' to make it sound good...

Gotta give it to corpo news and pigs: They got class conscience.
- Cops think they're rich now? Or that their masters will do anything other than use them as grunts in the class war? Cops are working class just like most people, they're just class traitors.
- Class war has been happening for centuries, just for the last 70 years the poor have been idle or ignoring it while the rich kept advancing forward.

"Overwhelming bipartisan support for the attack" across social media "has resulted in several narratives encouraging similar violent activities directed at other healthcare executive teams,"
This assessment has got it all wrong. People don't want further acts of violence against healthcare executive teams. Or, I should say, not just healthcare executive teams. That thinking is far too narrow.
- That's why they're all trying to reframe this story so hard. They're worried a sentiment like this will wake people up to how many other executives are sociopathic murderers.
- Ideally, there would be no more health insurance execs to be mad at, because the exploitative health insurance industry would be abolished. That's what literally everyone except the health insurance execs and investors want.

It would be both sad and pointless if people targeted the owner's capital defense force thugs (police) and bribed middle managers (judges/politicians).
That would muddy the waters needlessly and further the cause of the owner class of keeping us at each other's throats.
Our oligarchs whole thing is keeping us hostile towards one another. They don't care who kills who, kids killing kids, cops killing poor, poor killing cops/judges/politicians, all livestock killing livestock to them, big woop. They only freak out when someone they consider a person is killed, there's only 1 metric that determines that for them, and even most of their bought politicians don't qualify on net worth.

Haven't judges in general been extremely gentle with prosecutions involving Trump because of inordinate numbers of threats made to judges? And yet there's no effort made to stop it? And somehow, this represents an existential threat to the courts?

Police "investigate" citizens and it's fine, but we are targeting cops when we investigate them.
- Information asymmetry is one of the tactics of power.

I don't see any reason to limit it to healthcare executives.
- Hell Elons mom jumped in line as far as I’m concerned. The spoiled rich are so god damn detached from reality. I never imagined I’d be ok with mass murder but here we are.

I wonder how many Luigis the 2nd trump presidency will create. I hope a lot. Call me whatever you want.....
- I mean, I'd only call you an accelerationist if you advocated for a second Trump president because that's what you wanted. There's a difference between predicting/speculating and acting to make something a reality.
  Edit: apparently people think that thinking something will happen is the same as thinking that it should happen.
  Edit 2: accelerationism is bad, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either an idiot or fascist.
  
  This is where we are. Hit it, Jack.

Behind enemy lines folks

Is Hans finally figuring out that he might be the baddie...?
- Not if they think people will target police and courts, rather than other CEOs. It sounds like they're missing the point.

Which one of you has a link to the image file for that free Luigi flyer? Asking for a friend...

Why would I-uh-they... target police?
Police didn't deny no claims.
- Heard of a few people claiming to the police they couldn't breathe

next they are goin to say anyone that supports luigi is a terrorist
- I'm surprised they haven't already. They have said things like calling this extremism etc.
  Unfortunately, that may backfire worse than they think it will. The moment they identify supporters of what he did as terrorists, then a lot more people suddenly become immune to further propaganda towards terrorism.
  The smart thing for them would have been to shut up about it.
  
  i dont know about that, most of the country tends to believe propaganda but i hope you are right

what a great way to drum up support for more police funding and invasive practices

Fear from above is quite entertaining. Next up supporters of Brian Thompson seen with halo's and walking on water.

Oh gosh, wouldn't that be just the worst thing.

Shooting up courts and cops would accomplish very little. They're, well, made for that kind of opposition. The reason Mangione's attack has been so high-profile was because he picked a high-profile target that is NOT made for that kind of opposition. If he'd killed a cop or a judge, it'd've maybe caught an eye or two on the national news before fading away, and accomplished nothing besides. Anyone hauling off and killing a cop or a judge as an attempted copycat is just wasting their time, and their lives most like.
Just a bloodless observation, of course.