Hot people hurt people

Why murder became folk heroism regardless of politics.

There are people walking around right now forgetting they have bodies.

There are people walking around right now who forget that they have easily googlable workplaces. Home addresses. Bodies that are as vulnerable as the bodies of French aristocrats in the 18th century. They forget this because they live in a world of procedures and rules, laws and barriers to contact — a world they and their class have created, with walls to keep the likes of you and me out.

The procedures, rules and boundaries protect them within the contexts they dominate. But they forget that those contexts are not the whole of life. There is a world the new aristocrats must enter, just to go home. Or to the shops. To the theatre. To a meeting in New York.

And if you give people enough reason, they will find you in that world.

Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, found that out recently. Sadly for him and his family, it was a truth he discovered too late.

Thompson was shot in the street in broad daylight. The suspect wore a hood and a mask and rode off on a bike. Police, scrambling to find him, told reporters that the crime had been meticulously planned and released pictures of a murderer who turned out to be photogenic (hot, actually). The shell casings found at the scene were inscribed with the cryptic words “Deny”, “Defend”, and “Depose”. The comic-book drama, the supposed criminal genius, the enigmatic (and let’s not forget handsome) protagonist conspired to make The Adjuster (as he became known online) into more than a folk hero, but a kind of superhero.

Memes emerged immediately, as they always do, proclaiming the shooter a hero, making fun of the dead man or thirsting after the sexy vigilante responsible for his death. TikTok was flooded with videos naming other CEOs (in a tongue-in-cheek way), explaining the principle of jury nullification, or, tellingly, asking if the bullet might have been a “pre-existing condition”.

For those outside what Americans are forced to call their “healthcare” system, a “pre-existing condition” is what health insurance companies call a medical history, so as to be able to deny claims.

The process actually goes:

1. Deny the claim.

2. When the patient, who might be suffering from cancer or diabetes, or may be a child amputee (these examples are taken from actual video testimonies from real folks’ experiences with denied claims) challenges the denial, Defend the decision.

3. And if the patient or their family get lawyers involved, Depose the patient and make them face some of the best-paid lawyers in the world, whose job it is to tear the claim to shreds, or simply outlast the patient’s ability to pay for counsel.

There are other, similarly alliterative versions of the ghoulish modus operandi of companies like Thompson’s, but The Adjuster’s message was unmistakable to ordinary Americans. Thompson had been killed specifically because he was CEO of a health insurance company. A class of company so universally loathed by Americans that only the corporate-owned media could pretend, in the early stages of the case, that the motive was unknown.

TV pundits had to muster their straightest faces and clutch their strongest pearls to denounce the celebrations of a man’s death. A man, journalists working for companies almost as large as UnitedHealthcare kept reminding us, who had a wife, a family.

The internet responded by reminding us that quite a lot of the people that for-profit healthcare (and the insurance industry specifically) have allowed to die of treatable conditions also had spouses, children, dependents or parents. Where were the crocodile tears from millionaire anchors (now defending billionaire bosses) then? Where was the police manhunt for those responsible?

Support for The Adjuster (people stopped using the name when it was revealed that a suspect in custody was named Luigi, which is just a fun name) was not limited to revolutionaries or even left-wing circles where good takes abound. Conservatives and right-wingers joined in, with followers of professional troll and ventriloquist's dummy Ben Shapiro calling him out when he defended the billionaire CEO. “My sympathy is out of network” was one response to media attempts to humanise the victim. “Thoughts and co-pays” was another.

Class solidarity, aisle-crossing unity on a politicised issue, and the growing of class-consciousness among the American underclass — all of which have seemed unthinkable for decades — were catalysed by the shooting of just one CEO. And the depth and breadth of hatred for the ruling class were revealed.

For those reasons alone, it’s hard to think of the shooting as an entirely bad thing.

Wait. I hear you. How can you say that? It’s a human life. Nobody has the right to take it.

I hear you. (And, to be clear, I am not encouraging or condoning murder or revolution, not least because that kind of thing could get a man thrown in jail.)

But consider…

UnitedHealthcare made $281billion last year under Thompson. It is a company that reportedly denies claims at a higher rate than every other health insurer in America. so many, in fact, that UnitedHealthcare pays another company to deny claims. Because of the vertical integration allowed in American healthcare, EvilCorp (I can’t be arsed with writing their loathsome name out every time) can effectively dictate what kinds of medications patients under their dubious coverage can be prescribed. This has resulted in people who are stable on a medication that works being taken off that medication because EvilCorp has found a better deal on another medication.

Brian Thompson oversaw all of this. He was praised for increasing profits. Part of that was increasing claim denials.

Does that mean he deserved to die? I personally don’t want to make that decision for anyone.

What I will say is that America kills its own people a lot through legal means, and most of the people they kill were responsible for less suffering and death than the so-called healthcare industry there.

America has murdered at least hundreds of thousands of civilians and legitimate resistance fighters in its many wars of aggression and its proxy wars over the last 50 years. It allows schoolchildren to live in fear of murder every day. Why should CEOs be immune?

I’m not saying anyone living in fear is right. I’m saying some deserve to live in fear more than most.

But what did this achieve? After all, Thompson was on the way to a meeting when he was shot and the meeting was still held. The other attendees had to step over the blood, as it were, and they carried on with business (keep that in mind the next time you feel like you owe your employer more loyalty). Nothing changed.

Or did it?

A rival company, Anthem Blue Cross, in an act of incredible timing, chose the day of Thompson’s execution to reveal that they would no longer be covering the anaesthetic for the full length of some surgeries.

Let that sink in.

You need surgery. You have paid your premiums. You’re covered. And you will either have to wake up during surgery (obviously that won’t happen, that horror is reserved for children in Gaza) or pay out of pocket for the privilege of not dying of shock or suffering excruciating pain.

That’s another billion dollar company that decided that was something they could get away with. Until Thompson joined that big Board of Directors in the sky (if we are being universalist about it).

They day the sociopaths at Anthem Blue Cross decided to deny anaesthesia for a bunch of surgeries, the news broke that Thompson had been shot in the street like a dog. And Anthem Blue Cross reversed their decision. Just like that.

It happened amid a flurry of calls between the security branches of healthcare and other megacorporations, as publicly available information about CEOs was reshared on social media and some companies frantically tried to remove CEO names and details from LinkedIn (which , for a while, looked like a menu for eating the rich rather than the worst social media platform on earth). It happened after thousands and thousands of laugh reacts appeared on the official post from EvilCorp about Thompson’s death. It happened not because Thompson was murdered, but because most people cheered.

Is that absence of empathy for a victim something that might cause us concern?

Perhaps. If we worry about the spiritual health of a society and measure it purely in individualistic moral terms. It’s more concerning, objectively, if you’re a CEO. If your company does harm in the world. If your industry is part of a chain of suffering that all reasonable people know must be broken. If you are one of the oppressive class. Then, maybe, yes, you should worry.

Tone-policing the reaction has already started on both the Left and the Right, though it is still in the minority — the Hot Take Industrial Complex warming up to get column inches. Some liberals and unthinking leftists have pointed to the suspect’s political history (mostly conservative) and, instead of celebrating the power of class consciousness and a sense of justice to transcend political lines, have said: "‘He’s not our guy.’ The Right, in the form of the media and the professional pundit class (who may themselves be running fingers around the inside of their collars like a cartoon rabbit at the thought of ‘who’s next?’), denounced the reactions as shameful and disrespectful.

The Atlantic (a middlebrow rag that has descended over the last year from being ‘smart but conservative’ to ‘wrong about every moral issue but written by dudes in unironic bowties’) even published a piece calling the general dissatisfaction with healthcare in the US that the suspect in the killing expressed via manifesto “deplorable”, “clichés” and giving away “the absence of thought”. They have not been alone in their tone-deaf analysis, of course.

But that particular quote is giving “let them eat cake”.

The Atlantic (which has also attempted to undermine most narratives critical of Israeli violence for a while now) was always going to police the tone of people’s reaction to this killing. As were the billionaire and government-owned media. Liberals and new leftists’ purity tests were also predictable. But most ordinary people have not been buying it.

Perhaps it’s the fact that for over a year we have been told that in order for ‘justice’ to prevail, some innocent people have to die (if those people are brown, Muslim and poor). Perhaps it’s that America regularly executes people who have done less harm than Thompson, or that the USA has consistently settled grievances and sought advantage through violence against innocent people. Perhaps it is just that so many people have direct experience of the horror that Thompson and all of his ilk profited from. But crying outraged tears for Brian Thompson has not happened.

The fact is, that people feel powerless, not just before the might of global capital and megacorporations, but before corporate bureaucracies.

The fact that ‘enshittification’ was named Macquarie Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2024 is no coincidence. We all know the feeling of using a service that is now a subscription and all online, where there is rarely an opportunity to talk to a human being about something that has gone wrong — and we all know the experience of being told ‘sorry, that’s just the way it is’ about something patently unjust.

Some people (many, in the US) just experience this with cancer treatment for their children or pain-easing surgery. Some people die.

But the thing is, if people have no way to appeal and correct mistakes within the narrow rules set up by the ‘service’ they use (those opaque boundaries that some people think protect their bodies), some people will find another way to correct things. And we won’t always like it.

It’s like cracking down on peaceful protest, or union-busting. The ruling powers have forgotten, because of the boundaries and procedures that protect them in their contexts of power, that peace and bargaining were always compromises. There have always been more direct ways of seeking justice. The people have just been kind (or perhaps cowed).

So, as Christians, what should our response be?

I admire the pacifists. I do not think Jesus would pick up a gun. But I can’t judge The Adjuster. Because I admire Nelson Mandela and Che Guevara and Thomas Sankara — and all those who resist oppression as best they can when peaceful means are denied them. I recognise the necessity of fighting Nazis in the Second World War and of punching them now. And I find the hypocrisy of those who cheer Zelenskyy (or who cheered the killing of Bin Laden, or the violation and murder of Gaddafi), but denounce Mangione impossible to respect.

Murder is wrong. Whether you use policies and rules and spreadsheets to do it, or a 3D printed gun. But howls of outrage at injustice, riots as the cries of the unheard and politically ambiguous direct action that unites people across the board — they catalyse mostly empathy for the oppressed in me.

And when such an outburst of indignant rage results (or may result — because it really should result) in fear among the oppressors, I can only cheer. And pray.

Because prayer is needed for the CEOs (and more than them, the boards of directors, the major shareholders who prompt oppressive policies) if they are going to repent.

And repent they must, if they are ever going to feel safe in our world.

Because the pressure valve has been opened, but people are still having claims denied. And they will continue to. And now the pressure has an example of where to go.

It’s not too late for other people in power (and the companies they hide behind) to learn the lesson — a lesson that might get their attention through fear, but should be learned out of a basic sense of decency, justice and morality.

Let’s pray they see the light and have a change of policy and strategy, as well as heart. And while we pray for that, I’ll pray to be able to love the oppressor-enemy. One of these prayers, however, seems more urgent, if only in terms of those bodies having to walk around in the world.

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S(h)ibboleth magazine

Like that take? Then you might like a new print magazine launching in a few weeks’ time. It’s called S(h)ibboleth and it’s separate from Beer Christianity, but the podcast and newsletter crew are all involved in putting it together. It’s pretty cool.

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Oh hi. You made it to the end! Thanks! I hope you are doing okay. I’m fine. Which is nice. Much love. J