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Support For CEO Shooting Suspect Ramps Up On Social Media

Support For CEO Shooting Suspect Ramps Up On Social Media

On December 4th, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in Manhattan. Thompson was on his way to the Hilton Midtown hotel when a masked man came up behind him holding a pistol adorning a long black silencer, shooting him in the back and ultimately killing him.
The shooter would soon be revealed to be 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League graduate who comes from a wealthy, privileged background. Mangione has been marked as an attractive, innocent-looking man across social media platforms, making him a large topic of conversation. The flood of public opinion surrounding the case has revealed interesting insight into American society’s views and values, making many of us question what exactly our country has come to.
Information surrounding the shooting has spread like wildfire across social media and many of the posts are garnering anywhere from thousands to millions of likes. When opening the comment section of a post describing a fatal shooting, you’d expect the comments to be outraged at the perpetrator and sympathetic to the victim. But when you look at the posts surrounding this case, you’ll find quite the opposite. The majority of the comments read as little blurbs of support for Mangione such as “He’s innocent, he was helping me mow my grass yesterday from 6 pm to 6 am” or “Absolute hero. We’re all sick of corporate greed”, even after Mangione was found with the gun used in the shooting, bullets, fake IDs, cash, and a handwritten “manifesto” on his person.
The American people have defended Mangione relentlessly, even though most of them know he was the shooter. This presents a question to the morals of American society, is murder now acceptable if under the correct circumstances?
Very few people seem to feel sympathy for the victim of the shooting Brian Thompson. The lack of sympathy stems from his social position and the negative connotations that come along with it. As the CEO of a large corporation, especially a healthcare-related corporation, many people will feel a certain level of frustration towards him and his company. The whole American healthcare system has been seen very unfavorably for decades, with the $2.8 trillion dollar industry still charging people unfathomable amounts of money for necessary procedures, the American people are fed up. Universal healthcare has been a controversial topic throughout politics for a while, and the political divides within the country have led many to feel desperate. That’s why strangely, instead of society seeing Mangione as a cold-blooded killer, they see him as a vigilante.
Lots of people have mixed feelings on the topic, with some being happy about the fact that their frustrations were finally heard and making national news, but also understanding that a man was murdered. But across social media, it has seemed that people feel worse for Mangione than they do for the murder victim.
“I feel like he’s being unfairly idolized and people are forgetting that a man was murdered,” Abby Burton (12) said.
It seems we’ve come to an odd place in our country where citizens are so fed up with the way corporations and politicians are taking advantage of them, that even murder seems like acceptable retaliation. People are ready to go to extreme lengths to see change, and it’s time for our country and its people to take a step back and reflect on what we want from this country and the correct ways to obtain those things.

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