Two white men in their twenties kill a man in New York. One suspect gets charged with terrorism; the other man gets a photo with the president. In this article, I do not want to mainly focus on the violence of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as many have already done. Instead, I will focus on the philosophical implications of the two presented murders and the vast difference in their handling. It raises the question of who gets away with murder, how different lives are valued, and the role of race, class and gender in the legal system.
The day the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot was also a day that painted a picture of the societal divide more clearly than ever: From the differences within the media landscape and the internet, to the difference of power within politics and the justice system, to the class difference between those suffering and those profiting off the privatized health care system in the US. When many media outlets condemned the murder, the internet made memes. Many, from left to right, went from sympathizing with the assassination to glorifying and thirsting over the main suspect.
Luigi Mangione, currently awaiting trial, is an Ivy League graduate who learned engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He was valedictorian of a private high school in Baltimore. Further, he comes from a wealthy background, his family owning multiple businesses like clubs, resorts and health services. According to his various social media profiles, he has been fed up with the US healthcare system for some time. At the time of his arrest as a main suspect, he was found with a 3D-printed pistol and suppressor, fake IDs, and a handwritten letter criticizing the U.S. healthcare system. Currently, Mangione faces multiple charges, including first-degree murder, terrorism-related charges, and federal offenses that may lead to the death penalty. Attorney General Pam Bondi argues for this as she describes the murder as a „premeditated, cold-blooded assassination“. Most politicians were not amused by the murder. Conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene warned that this murder could inspire a left-wing political movement. Progressives often sympathized with the critique of the current healthcare system, focusing on the violence within healthcare instead of engaging in conversations about the murder itself.
Around the time conversations around Luigi Mangione arose, Daniel Penny was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide, and a charge of second-degree manslaughter was dismissed. The former US Marine choked Jordan Neely, a homeless Black man with mental health issues, to death. This happened in public, on the subway. Neely and his defense team argued that he choked this man to protect other people, as the homeless man seemed to have been in a mental crisis. Many conservative politicians framed him as a hero for public safety. At the same time, on social media, others raised concerns about the racist implications of the incident. Being homeless already makes one invincible to many. Being of color adds to being perceived as the other, less, if at all, worthy of empathy in the eye of racial capitalism. Violence did not seem to hold Penny back. He argued to act in self-defense, or rather prevention, as Neely seemed to threaten people. Some politicians and other people in power did not seem to be concerned about the fact that what could have been stopped at prevention turned into a murder; the opposite was the case. Trump and Vance invited him to join Trump’s suite at a football game. He was also offered a new job position in the prestigious Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz. The specific division of concern „invests in founders and companies that support the national interest: aerospace, defense, public safety, education, housing, supply chain, industrials, and manufacturing,” according to the company’s own website.
Both Mangione and Penny, unite not only their class background and privileges but also their gender and race. These two individuals can be considered “promising young men” in a system that operates under a patriarchal, systematically racist and profit-driven economy. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore precisely put it, Capitalism demands difference; racism enshrines it. And so do other forms of oppression.
Even though both of these men lived through many privileges offered by the position they were born in, they chose different paths: one would challenge a system criticized as unjust with his alleged violence, the other brutally affirms the violent logic of this system. For that, both are seen as heroes, but by different people. While conservative and right-wing politicians and other people in power compared X to Batman, everyday people compared Mangione to Robin Hood, some idolizing him as a folk hero.
This precisely tells us about the injustices of a justice system operating under capitalism. We might assume a justice system is obligated to treat each individual in a system the same way, innocent until proven guilty, focusing not on their position in society but on the acts they have or have not committed. Yet these things seem to matter mainly on the surface. Lives are not treated equally. A person’s capital seems to be conflated with the worth of their life – and of their death. Thus, the repression of those threatening said capital correlates with this conflation.
We can also see different treatments in the justice system from a different angle. That a person’s position within a structurally unjust system easily makes them a target facing harder repressions than others is not a surprising incident. We see it as protesting students worldwide are deported, we see it when femicides happen every 10 minutes globally but remain ignored by many, and we see it as police officers murdering BIPocs without facing consequences.
Therefore, this illustrated example is not the exception but exceptionally useful in examining how injustice is reproduced. And it raises, like many other cases before, the question of how justice can be made.
Als der CEO von UnitedHealthcare getötet wird, beginnt eine mediale Auseinandersetzung, die ein besonders interessantes Licht auf ökonomische und soziale Verhältnisse wirft. Was als Gewalt gilt, wen wir als Verbrecher sehen und was (Un-)Recht ist, sind nur ein Bruchteil der Fragen, die aufkommen.