The Murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Indicates a Need to Address Left-Wing Violence
“if any MAGA professors or journalists were online publicly defending the killing of perceived political enemies, there would be thousands of wringing hands lamenting the menacing rhetoric of conservatism”
The reaction to this targeted killing by mainstream progressives has been shocking and shows a need to tackle this issue head-on.
David Harsanyi writes at the Washington Examiner:
It’s time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
If reports are true, it looks like the targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York last week was politically motivated. The alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, a former Ivy Leaguer from an affluent family, was reportedly caught with some kind of manifesto.
Even before we knew who the shooter was, however, the reaction from far too many leftists was to either justify, celebrate, or rationalize the shooting. There’s a real debate going on in some quarters of the progressive Left over whether slaying CEOs is a bad thing. And it’s unsurprising.
Of course, if any MAGA professors or journalists were online publicly defending the killing of perceived political enemies, there would be thousands of wringing hands lamenting the menacing rhetoric of conservatism. And rightly so.
It should not be lost on us that there is a clear ideological continuum between people who rationalize the shooting of a CEO and those who rationalize the murder and rape of Jews by Palestinian terrorists and those who rationalize the burning down of cities for social justice.
If you’re convinced your opponents are abetting some (imaginary) “genocide,” you have a moral duty to stop them. And much of the left-wing violence we’ve seen is predicated on the idea that the enemy is irredeemably nefarious.
On his Goodreads page, Mangione quotes left-wing terrorist Ted Kaczynski (though his reading list is mostly mainstream left-leaning technocratic authors). The Unabomber’s unhinged demonization of modernity and capitalism was a fringe position in the ’90s. Now the unhinged demonization of healthcare insurance, the pharmaceutical industry, and Big Oil (all industries, despite their inadequacies, that make lives better for everyone) is the norm. A generation of college students have been indoctrinated into believing the profit motive is killing people when the opposite is true.
One expects Mangione’s writing will be largely indistinguishable from what a person hears from elected progressives and pundits. Yet few will ponder why a seemingly rational Ivy League-educated engineer decided to become a hit man.
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But… But… But… The greatest threat to America is white nationalist MAGA Christians. It must be true, because a brain-damaged grifting Democrat influence peddler said it… Not once, but three times.
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