Opinion | Robert Wright
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed on Wednesday outside a Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The shooter’s motive remains unknown. The shooting occurred at a busy Manhattan intersection where Thompson was to attend an UnitedHealthcare Investor conference. The shooter fired three shots into Thompson and then fled, and Thompson died shortly thereafter from his gunshot wounds.
NYPD are still on a manhunt for the shooter, as they piece together digital surveillance from across the city in an attempt to trace his steps. The motive and identity of the shooter remain unknown. NYPD officials reported finding the words “delay”, “deny”, and “depose” on the bullet casings found at the scene. This has led to popular speculation that the shooting was related to UnitedHealthcare’s insurance policies and an outpouring of support for the action online.
Thompson was the CEO of the US’s largest private health insurer, named chief executive in April 2021. In his three years as the UnitedHealth CEO he earned $30 million. A class action lawsuit was filed in May accusing Thompson and other UnitedHealth Group executives of insider trading during a federal anti-trust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice—United Group being the parent company to UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealth Group is also being sued by the Justice Department to block the acquisition of the home health and hospice provider Amedisys, eliminating the competition between the two largest home health and hospice providers, creating a monopoly on the services. One of the most notable recent controversies of UnitedHeath Group emerged in 2023 when a class action lawsuit was brought forward alleging that the they were illegally using an AI algorithm to deny care to patients, an algorithm with a reported 90% error rate.
Thompson’s murder has received a large response online—with tens of thousands celebrating the actions of the shooter. A statement released by the UnitedHealth Group on Facebook itself had garnered over 76,000 laughing emoji reactions, a single instance of the tens of thousands (and counting) social media posts in support of the shooting. According to a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, “Out of the top ten most engaged posts on Twitter/X that mention Brian Thompson or UnitedHealthcare, six either expressed explicit or implicit support for the killing or denigrated the victim.” They continue in reference to post interactions “with highly engaged comments referencing a ‘Class War.’” Compiled in all of this is speculation on the motives and politics of the shooter. This online response is indicative of the ongoing crisis of imperialism, as public resentment of the bourgeois class boils to the top of the American consciousness.
In this sea of seemingly broad support and idolization of this individuals action, where should revolutionaries stand?
In this past year we have seen an increase in actions taken by individuals that express a reaction to the crisis under imperialist decay. While these actions spurred support among sections of people, these were actions taken by individuals isolated from a broader organized mass movement. They resulted in a flare of support that quickly died down after a couple weeks at most. While these actions inspire eclectic support, they don’t inspire organized supporters. The culmination of an increasingly revolutionary situation and the cheers of certain revolutionary-minded individuals does not amount to advancing the revolution, and least of all advancing on a firm scientific footing.
To answer this question, let’s turn to Lenin.
In 1902, Lenin’s work Revolutionary Adventurism examines and combats the politics and tactics brought forward by the “Social-Revolutionaries” of that time. These politics and tactics were explicit in their support for individual acts of terror with the claim “by terrorism we are not relegating the work among the masses into the background.” The Social-Revolutionaries themselves were already aloof and isolated from the working-class movement.
This echoes much of the action we see arise today, acts of terrorism carried out by individuals which stir claims to a broader organization of masses but of course fails to follow through. “…the principal mistake of the terrorists, which they share with the ‘economists’… This mistake, as we have already pointed out on numerous occasions, consists in the failure to understand the basic defect of our movement.” This defect as Lenin continues to describe is leaders lagging behind the movement: “the revolutionary organisations did not come up to the level of the revolutionary activity of the proletariat…”
Lenin’s words here continue to prove themselves immortal, in the reality of our current movement as imperialist crisis deepens and the masses remain unorganized without the Communist Party to lead. This is the reality of the action taken by Thompson’s shooter; we will continue to see slews of social media posts made by eclectic online personalities every time such actions happen because “They confuse immediately tangible and sensational results with practicalness” as Lenin puts it.
The anger of the masses is justified as health insurance has been one of the most egregious offenders against the people, denying lifesaving treatments, skyrocketing the prices for healthcare, and raking in record profits each year. However, the murder of one CEO can only spark momentary intrigue, a short flare that opportunists will attempt to tail. To latch on to and follow the tide from one spontaneous moment to the next, supporting whatever on the surface seems “radical” can lead us to make fools of ourselves without the proper examination of the political aspects in accordance to our principal task. This is an error of amateurism for most, bred through subjectivism and anarchism, that may come as an initial reaction without second thought.
The principal task for all revolutionaries in the US is to reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA. Revolutionary violence is a universal law of resolving the contradiction between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, and the army is the principal forces by which the masses are mobilized to carry out the party program. This must be the basis for our analysis of the situation.
To conclude once more with Lenin: “Without in the least denying violence and terrorism in principle, we demanded work for the preparation of such forms of violence as were calculated to bring about the direct participation of the masses and which guaranteed that participation.”
Organization is the best weapon of the working class. Individual acts and assassinations when the class lacks the preparedness and consciousness to fight its enemies does not result in a revolutionary advance, but leads to demoralization and setbacks. The working class must be steeled to confront not the individual representatives of the capitalist ruling class, but the class as a whole.
Image: A CCTV image shows the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on Wednesday, Dec. 4. (NYPD)
