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eran_morad @lemmy.world

In Grim Twist, Some See Suspect in C.E.O. Killing as Hero or Heartthrob

A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.

Four days after a gunman assassinated a top health insurance executive in Midtown Manhattan and vanished, the unidentified suspect has, in some quarters, been venerated as something approaching a folk hero.

118 comments

  • He's not only hot; he's making an example out of cruel millionaires .. millionaires who prefer money and let people die, without ANY hesitation. So yeah, it's not like being attracted to Dahmer, it's more like being attracted to Katniss Everdeen.

  • America is finally united

    Corporate response is buy more security

    Is the start of the first corpo war?

    Cyberpunk main quest activated?

    • After some recent events I read Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. It includes bit on how well trained, extremely prepared USSS agents were unable to stop a single practice gunman whose identity they knew. All variables were in their favor and they were far more competent than hired security will be. I’ve included an excerpt at the end.

      Corporate security will not stop someone willing to go to jail or die for it, such as someone terminally ill and fucked by their insurance. Media puff pieces overstating security effectiveness— spread through outlets owned by the ultra wealthy— would be far more effective in preventing another event like this. Presumably the more people that know, the more emboldened they would be to repeat this heartbreaking, earth-shattering tragedy. Which would just be terrible. Certainly I would be horrified and thus suggest suppressing this info. We should be spreading how corporate security is infallible to protect heroes like Mr. Thompson’s peers so they can continue to be upstanding members of society.

      “In the wake of the Wallace shooting, the Service conducted more frequent and intensive drills on how to handle different kinds of attackers on a rope line. Agents and officers practiced over and over, playing the roles of detail agents and spectators on either side of the line. The drill instructor warned the agents ahead of time that a person in the crowd would play the role of the shooter and approach the principal with a gun. The drill instructor even pointed out who that person was.

      “The agents were told who had a weapon,” said one former agent. “And the guys are working the rope line and they’re constantly looking at this guy waiting for the moment when he’s going to pull the gun. They know who it is.”

      Agents swiveled their heads back and forth from the spectators in front of them to the mock gunman in the crowd. They tried to anticipate his move and readied themselves for the fastest dive or lunge. No matter how many times they did the drill, the result was the same. “They never once stopped him before two shots,” the former agent said.”

    • good time to start a career in security as a non-American because these scumbags literally can't trust anyone in their country to not step out of the way at the first opportunity, but I can't see anyone else taking a bullet for them either so ... good luck to them.

  • “It’s being framed as some opening blow in a broader class war..."

    That's what many of us are hoping for. But this author, and nearly all other mainstream news outlets can't understand that. They can't understand why we would want a class war, why would we want something so disruptive, so destabilizing, so potentially destructive? It baffles and disturbs them, but that's because they can't, or won't, see the harm being done by the current system. They are blind to the harms of late capitalism, willfully.

    For many of us, the problems go much deeper than a few greedy and unethical CEOs, it's the system. The inhumanity of health insurance providers is just a very egregious and obvious tip of the iceberg. This CEO wasn't just some exceptionally bad guy, he was a product of the system. He'll be replaced by another one of thousands and thousands of people who come out of our business or economic schools, and who would have run United Healthcare the same way he did. The problem is a system in which the private profits of a relative few are prioritized over all else; over human well being, and over sustainability and environmental protection. Many of us believe that that system must be abolished and replaced. We don't want war, but if war is what's necessary to destroy this unsustainable and inhumane system, then so be it.

  • Engels:

    When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

    Start posting this Wikipedia page y’all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder This shit has needed to be taken seriously for ages and this might be the context where that starts taking greater hold.

118 comments