Vigilante Justice: the ethics of assassinating Brian Thompson

No one saw the former valedictorian as a future assassin. Equally surprising is that he has triggered what may become the most important public health care discussion in US history.

Democrats have been trying and failing to have this conversation in the broader society since the 1980’s–including during the presidential campaign just weeks ago–yet only now, because of the shooting, are the unnecessary deaths and personal bankruptcies from sleazy practices of an industry driven to deny its customers the care they and their doctors say they need on the tips of our tongues.

Reading about Luigi Mangione made me wonder if his murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was influenced by 19th-century slave abolitionist John Brown. Was he imitating Brown’s violent fight against slavery? The deadly act raises questions of ethics and social-political morality that need discussion, but which we usually ignore.

Utilitarianism: The Best for the Most

Utilitarianism is the view of morality that the ethically proper act is the one that brings about the best overall consequences. Every time we act, we change the world. The utilitarian holds that we are responsible for making it as good as we can for everyone. Our choices have effects beyond ourselves and we need to treat everyone’s interests equally. In this way Utilitarianism is a very democratic approach to determining the right thing to do.

In teaching these thinkers for years, I find that American students’ favorite utilitarian is the 19th-century philosopher, John Stuart Mill. Mill argued that promoting liberty for the individual is the most fruitful path toward social progress. The individual is the one who best knows what they need and the government’s job is to protect the liberty of citizens in seeking it. When we are free, our best interest is what we naturally seek and the structure should allow us the space to do this unimpeded as long as we are not harming others.

When a government fails to do this, when it is absent from regulating social overreach against individuals, oligarchs take over the government, ushering in the very mercantilism resisted by Adam Smith, the 18th-century founder of capitalism. For Mill, the protection of this liberty requires collective discussion. Discourse is critical. This is why we love free speech. The truth is often in unexpected places and we need to hear and critically evaluate a wide range of views in order to have searched everywhere for what is correct. This does not mean that everyone always gets to talk. If a view is false, then it gets eliminated, but it has to have a fair turn in being rationally considered.

For a democracy to be functional, no one gets to own the discussion. Dominating the discourse—by shouting down others, purchasing a megaphone big enough to drown out their voices or employing an algorithm to boost your own preferences and depress those whose politics you disagree with—impedes the liberty of others, thus working against the interests of society. Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences for speaking, it means that we all get to analyze the full range of legitimate contenders for truth. A state abandoning the debate, absenting the person from it, is an authority denying justice to the people.

John Brown

John Brown lived when the law protected slave owners while treating enslaved people as mere objects, property to be bought, sold, and used like tools. From Brown’s puritanical Christian standpoint, American justice was doing the devil’s work. He set out to kill the devil.

Does Mangione’s murderous violence share Brown’s messianic impulse? Like Brown, he’s guilty of homicide. Like Brown, he views the government as abetting the bloodshed of those denied liberty. And like those who once celebrated Brown, many today are celebrating Mangione. Will Mangione become a social hero?

Hero or not, John Brown was executed in 1859 for treason against the commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia charged him with the murder of five supporters of slavery, not one of whom owned a slave, and for inciting a slave revolt (treason) in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, today West Virginia. Brown was convicted for breaking laws, albeit unjust, immoral rules used to protect slave owners and to deny slaves their humanity. Was he wrong to break these laws? Were his actions a net gain for society?

Vigilante Justice

Is it acceptable to assassinate oligarchs using the law to criminalize vulnerable individuals, robbing them of justice? If the law and the structure enforcing it are corrupt does that justify going outside of the law in search of justice?

It is no surprise that insurers use the law — as slave owners used it—to justify denying care for profits. Their corruption has few limits. The insurers — just as slave owners did – write the laws passed by Congress that guarantees their profits deserve better protection than the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of those seeking medical care/treatment.

Their greed infects us all. They have pushed millions of Americans into bankruptcy, drowning in medical debt. 650,000 Americans are annually tripped into bankruptcy from medical costs. Medical bankruptcies make up sixty percent of all yearly bankruptcies. Middle-class and vulnerable Americans are being priced out of life and thus liberty. America is the only country where this happens, so it is not a necessary price of modern healthcare. Under Mill’s reasoning, this is bad for both a capitalist economy and a democratic society.

I suspect Mangione agrees with Mill. Mangione’s elite education and wealth shows he knows who passes through gates of opportunity and on whom those gates slam shut. He knows that health insurers’ profit seeking algorithms decide for doctors, not the other way around. He knows resistance has many shapes and options. But in this case, did he have any other option than killing when the law has irredeemable contempt for the vulnerable? Is he a modern-day militant Robin Hood?

Schadenfreude

A friend’s 24-year-old daughter who is a contemporary of Mangione and who grew up not far from him, accused the McDonalds employee who 911’d Mangione of being a “snitch.” She’s not alone in this. Ballads have been written celebrating the assassination: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brian-thompson-ceo-killed-deny-defend-depose-song-tiktok-b2661040.html Merchandisers are cashing in: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/united-healthcare-ceo-killer-suspect-merch-luigi-mangione-rcna183444

Editorial writers across the country have been astounded at this reaction. With a small handful of notable exceptions, political violence does not have a deep history in the United States and its victims lionized. Most cities have a building or a road named for John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, there is an unusual sense that this particular crime can justifiably be regarded with dismissive snark.

This leads to profound questions. On the one hand, most of us have strong objections with the profit-driven health care where doctors don’t decide our care, but algorithms do. Are their algorithms stochastically killing vulnerable people for profit? Yes Mangione is right that health insurers are aiding murder by diminishing care to increase profits. But does this truth justify assassinating Thompson? Let alone call for gleeful celebrations? Before answering, ask yourself: if a slave murdered their master, a rapacious, violent slave owner in 1850 Georgia, would you see him as a hero or a criminal? The law saw the captive as a criminal. A murderer.

What about today? For example, one’s parent, spouse or child dies from denial of a procedure. Has the government contract with one broken? If so, does one have the right to behave as if the government doesn’t exist?  Think back to the film John Q Public starring Denzel Washington: a father takes the law into his own hands to ensure his child gets the surgery justice denied him.

Thompson may not be a slaver, but he oversaw one of the largest U.S. health insurers (part of the conglomerate United Health Group) known to many as the most notorious denier of quality health care in the industry. Do you think Thompson’s execution is a net plus for society at large? Was the assassination beneficial for society? Was it useful for most individuals thirsting for liberty and autonomy?

The celebratory reactions on social media suggest many perceive it as good for society. A net gain. Mangione may be guilty, but whether he’s convicted is another question. If one juror believes society is better off by Thompson’s execution, he may not be convicted. We will see. The public debate on the morality or immorality of Thompson’s assassination has just begun.

Mangione and the Unabomber

There may be reason to think Mangione will be tried and convicted of murder as evidenced by the jailing of another Brown like figure, Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski sent packages to tech leaders that exploded in their unsuspecting hands, killing some and maiming others. He hoped to trigger an awakening, messianically waking us up to save ourselves from the social harm of technology. Unlike Brown, few celebrate him as a hero. Kaczynski is hated, perceived as a terrorist by most Americans, but not by Mangione. He admires him.

Upon finishing Kaczynski’s manifesto, Mangione identified him as an “extreme political revolutionary,” claiming “it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions turned out to be true.” Perhaps channeling 18th century French revolutionaries, Magione quotes from someone: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like [Kaczynski’s] methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.” His words dress Kaczynski as a prophet.

Crediting Kaczynski with moral prophecy runs counter to the political, economic and social defiance of the Hebrew prophets. For example, Isaiah didn’t use violence to remove the veils masking the corruption of the powerful. He used words and peaceful action, an approach exercised thousands of years later by Martin Luther King. King modeled the prophetic strength to love your enemy, showing and teaching his oppressors that Black Lives Matter. King’s prophetic power to love was heroic, but difficult. Vengeance wasn’t his objective. Waking us to our responsibilities & obligations for others was the ambition. King suffered for his heroism. The law treated him as a criminal. Heroes get beat up, imprisoned and often killed by those against whom they protest.

Canary in the Coal Mine?

Healthcare executives mask their gangsterism with the law. Politicians provide them with political cover, eclipsing us from seeing them extorting and sometimes killing the vulnerable for shareholder profits. Working against their clients, attacking them, insurers veil themselves with ads. Their health insurance will help you live more confidently, securely and happily. That is until you get sick.

Legally fighting healthcare corporations isn’t an option for most Americans. Justice is regularly denied to the middle class and economically vulnerable people. It costs, one must pay for it. It’s this understanding that may have, in part, transformed Mangione into a person trying to pull off the insurer’s mask with a gun.

So, do the murderous failures of UnitedHealthcare justify Mangione’s murder of Thompson? Is the assassination a net gain for society?

The facts: Mangione is guilty of slaying Brian Thompson. He broke the law. Likewise, many Americans celebrated the killing on social media, identifying the assassin as a moral actor. Mangione will be a challenge to prosecute. He has the resources to (a)veil himself with legal representation most Americans can’t afford. He may also have sympathetic jurors.

Other Ways

Mangione’s station provides him with privileges most never experience. This isn’t Putin’s Russia, where civil disobedience leads to a window on a top floor or a poison-laced cup of tea. Non-violent options were in his reach to make a lot of good trouble. What do I mean? Look no further than former congressman and one-time civil rights enemy of the state, John Lewis. He never killed for justice while people in power were trying to kill him for making good trouble. There are others. Greta Thunberg makes good trouble against those murdering our ecosystems and thus people, unmasking leaders’ corruption in the sense Isaiah did in his day. Why didn’t Mangione follow their lead?

Mangione should have listened to one who knows what it is to be criminalized while innocent. Mala Yousafzai. Her words are as powerful as the gun used by Mangione. “The best way to solve problems and to fight against war is through dialogue.” Yousafzai has the strength to love.

The gates that always opened for Luigi often slammed shut on Mala. As noted above, Mangione’s education alone shows that he understands who passes through gates of opportunity and on whom those gates slam shut. He knows of Yousafzai. Like her, Luigi Magione has a tongue for speaking, fingers able to write for others, not to mention the education and money to make himself heard. Like Mala, he could have created a non-violent movement that yanks the veil off the gangsters robbing us of liberty. Society didn’t call for him to assassinate Brian Thompson. We require resistance modeling the strength to love, to help us realize what most Americans hope for, Liberty with decent health care, fiscal security, autonomy, and a place to watch heart pounding thrillers on Netflix.