A week following the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk last December, an Axios poll posed a surprising question to 1,000 registered voters: Was the murder “justified” or at least “somewhat justifiable”?
Seventeen percent answered “Yes.”
This means that 17% of Americans in powerful corporate roles considered it acceptable to shoot an unarmed individual in the back. More alarmingly, for voters aged 18 to 29, that number jumps to a staggering 41% who deem murder somewhat acceptable.
Such statistics should certainly give us pause. Yet, instead, there was a rally for Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League graduate accused of the crime. At a Manhattan court hearing, over a hundred women showed up, eager to catch a glimpse of him, resembling fans at a rock concert. His defense fund received more than $1 million, and he surprisingly gained a fan base, with reports stating that he had to ask admirers to limit their fan mail to five photos at a time.
We’ve somehow turned Mangione into a kind of celebrity—or, as some put it, a “martist.”
This brings us to a tragic new case.
The latest victim, Wesley Repatner, was a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, just 46 years old, a mother of two, and a philanthropist, tragically shot in a midtown Manhattan office building by an individual struggling with mental illness.
The shooter believed he suffered from NFL-related brain damage, despite never having played at a professional level.
He had no knowledge of who Repatner was nor did he care. Yet, that did not stop some online commentators from mocking her, making her death a spectacle.
According to Jesse Arm from City Journal, online platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and X quickly filled with laughter and posts ridiculing Repatner’s success, even calling her death a metaphorical act of retribution. One meme crudely depicted her face with bright red lettering, and another juxtaposed it against cheerful balloon graphics with the phrase “CEO Down!”
There seems to be a name for this grim trend: “Louism.”
As Arm notes, Louism doesn’t require justification—just a victim and a profile.
Those who partake in this aren’t merely upset; they see themselves as defenders of “justice,” justified in dehumanizing others through their self-righteous anger.
This warped mindset would make Orwell rethink his writings and perhaps even please Marx. It’s not just youthful immaturity; it’s fundamentally wrong.
Praising murder and trivializing real human suffering in the name of social media commentary crosses a serious moral threshold.
Louism shows no bravery, no guiding principles, just a pervasive cruelty.
If we fail to identify this as deceitful, paranoid, and dangerously un-American, we risk witnessing further celebrations of those who fall victim to this mentality.
