Even before we learned that Luigi Mangione's targeted killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was politically motivated, many on the left were justifying, celebrating, and justifying the shooting.
There's a serious debate going on in some parts of the progressive left over whether killing CEOs is a bad thing.
That's not surprising.
Of course, if a MAGA professor or journalist publicly defended the murder of a supposed political opponent online, thousands would clasp their hands and deplore the threatening rhetoric of conservatism.
And rightly so.
But unrestrained demonization of the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and Big Oil is now the norm.
A generation of college students have been led to believe that the profit motive is killing people, when in fact the opposite is true.
Follow The Post's live coverage for the latest information on the United Healthcare CEO killer
There is a clear ideological continuum among those who justify shooting CEOs. and Justifying the murder and rape of Jews by Palestinian terrorists and Justifying burning down cities for the sake of “social justice.”
One might expect Mangione's writing to be largely indistinguishable from what they hear from elected progressives and commentators.
But few people think deeply about why a seemingly rational, Ivy League-educated engineer decided to become a hitman.
Instead, the public is constantly warned that white supremacists are gathering in the shadows and attempting to stage a coup.
What we know about the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
- Brian Thompson, CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in a “brazen, targeted attack” outside a luxury midtown hotel on Wednesday, police said.
- Mr. Thompson was appointed CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Justice Department.
- Thompson's wife, Paulette, said she had received threats before her husband was killed.
- The Thompson shooting sparked an online frenzy and even sparked a tasteless lookalike contest in New York.
- A dignitary was arrested by police inside a McDonald's store in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
- The suspect has been identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, of Towson, Maryland. He was an Ivy League graduate who hated the medical world.
Follow the Post's live updates on news about Brian Thompson's murder.
An impending “large-scale civil war” in 2023 was so dangerous that the Justice Department created a new category of extremism to “track and counter” “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism.” Founded a sect.
When BLM riots swept across the country, causing billions in damages and killing thousands of people, it was almost impossible to get members of the media to even acknowledge that riots were occurring.
On the left, parents who protest school boards over critical race theory and mask mandates are “domestic terrorists,” while people who burn down cities are “mostly peaceful.”
The left has been prone to violence since year zero.
Follow the latest information on the murder case of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson:
In the early 1900s, the United States was inundated with communist and anarchist bombings, culminating in 1920 when 30 people were killed on Wall Street.
Most cultural depictions of the 60's upheaval were of a genteel, peace-loving movement, but they were also influenced by extremists.
By the 1970s, left-wing terrorist groups such as the Weather Underground planted bombs at the Capitol, police stations, the Pentagon, and state attorney general's offices.
In an 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, left-wing groups committed an astonishing 2,500 bombings in the United States.
Worse still, violence was often ignored or idealized by the “intellectual” left, both then and now.
When I was young, self-proclaimed socialists would commemorate mass murderers like Che Guevara and Mao Zedong on T-shirts.
Today, prominent modern intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates write best-selling books glorifying terrorism.
The late Kathy Boudin, a former Weather Underground member involved in the Brinks truck robbery that killed two innocent people, ran Columbia University's Center for Justice for decades. was.
And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Angela Davis, who is widely considered a hero by young progressives. Not only did he advocate murder and a regime of terror throughout his life, but he also purchased two of the guns used in the Black Panthers' 2016 courtroom kidnapping and shootout. In 1970, three hostages and a senior judge were murdered in Marin County, California.
There is simply no equivalent to the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism.
In 2018, it was James Hodgkinson who walked into a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, and opened fire on the Republican Congressional delegation.
He was a Bernie Sanders fan.
Indeed, not a single reporter ran through the halls of Congress asking every elected Democrat whether they intended to lower the temperature of their rhetoric.
Nor did they do so when left-wing assassins showed up at Judge Brett Kavanaugh's house and promised to “stop the reversal of Roe v. Wade” by “shooting three justices.”
After years of hearing about the Supreme Court's demonization, the man showed up with a Glock, zip ties, duct tape, and various other paraphernalia.
When Paul Pelosi was attacked by a deranged man, the entire media conversation revolved around conservative rhetoric.
During Donald Trump's two assassination attempts, most leftists could barely stop calling him Hitler.
None of this is to argue that right-wing violence doesn't exist.
Of course there is.
It simply means that we should acknowledge that much of our modern political violence comes from the left.
And much of that is fueled by a shift in mainstream American politics away from the far left and toward progressives.
David Harsanyi is a senior reporter at the Washington Examiner. Twitter @davidharsanyi
