Posted on 08/17/2025 7:14:40 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Several weeks ago, an unknown 27-year-old named Shane Tamura walked into a skyscraper lobby in midtown Manhattan, took out an assault rifle he carried with him from Las Vegas, and opened fire. His killing spree resulted in the death of four individuals; it is the worst mass shooting in New York City for over two decades.
Within hours, social media was awash with memeified images reminiscent of those that circulated last December, when an otherwise reclusive 26-year-old named Luigi Mangione walked to the New York Hilton Midtown, pulled out a 3D-printed pistol, and fatally shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Both shootings occurred within a few blocks of each other.
Tamura’s violence may have been aimed at the NFL offices in the building, motivated by a claimed head injury. However, on social media, an alternative narrative quickly emerged—one rooted in Marxist class struggle and bolstered by conspiracy theories. It claimed that Tamura was following in the footsteps of Mangione. In other words, many came to believe that the shooter had committed an act of revolutionary political violence on the streets of New York.
The main evidence cited for this narrative was that one of the killer’s principal victims, Wesley LePatner, was CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust. Widespread chatter on X applauded her killing, falsely accusing her of helping orchestrate the firm’s post-2008 purchase of homes and of financially impoverishing millions of Americans with high rents. Many posts were content simply to cheer the death of a wealthy CEO. According to our analysis, mentions of “CEO Down” on X spiked to nearly ten times their average baseline between the start of July and the New York attack last week.
Many responses to coverage of LePatner’s murder embraced the familiar conspiratorial notion of a high-level coverup. In one version, commentators on X claimed that a coalition of media forces was working to hide the fact that she had been “Luigi’d”—Internet slang for being the victim of explicitly anti-capitalist violence. They dismissed as misdirection the claim that Tamura “accidentally” killed LePatner, as well as the idea that he had been targeting the NFL and simply got off the elevator on the wrong floor. All such explanations, they insisted, were whitewashing meant to keep people from “waking up” and seeing the truth.
Two viral memes circulating on X within hours of the NYC shooting.
Some commentators on X saw proof of complicity in mainstream media headlines. The Wall Street Journal’s coverage, originally titled “One of Blackstone’s Highest-Ranking Women Killed in Shooting,” was cited as evidence of a conspiracy. Why? Because LePatner was a CEO of Blackstone, not merely a senior executive; conspiracists claimed the paper was “downplaying” her role. Such narratives reflected the online belief that the purpose of this supposed coverup was to shield the ruling classes from the inevitable revolt that would follow successful acts of political violence against the corporate elite.
The prevalence of this chatter on social media reflects the unabated growth of what the Network Contagion Research Institute has termed “assassination culture.” Primarily found in left-leaning digital spaces, this online subculture glorifies the political violence epitomized by Mangione’s killing of Thompson last year. Indeed, those affiliated with such an ideology will commonly share memes of Nintendo’s Luigi to cloak the celebration of such violence.
We’ve previously identified how these actions appear to be associated with left-wing authoritarianism (defined as willingness to use coercion for ostensibly progressive objectives) and poor external locus of control (reflecting the degree of powerlessness that people feel in their own lives). People who feel more helpless in controlling their own future are more likely to cheer the murder of wealthy, high-status Americans as a solution to their troubles.
The consequences for American civic life are ominous. The slow but steady rise in justifications for political violence bodes ill for any democracy. Praise for Tamura’s actions—regardless of his true motive—points to a growing belief that electoral politics no longer work and that violent extremism is the only way to challenge a corrupted system.
If it happens it’s the CEO’s fault. They went to all these liberal colleges, I’m sure they read Das Kapital, they shouldn’t have the first part as a freaking manual. It’s funny honestly how much the CEOs of the world seem to WANT to inspire a communist revolution. Cause they just keep deliberately making it @#%$ier and @#%$ier to try to be a worker in a America. And of course no matter what happens the CEOs always come out on top. My company finally fired our cheapskate micromanaging POS CEO, who’s run the company into the ground with constant layoffs, and no new equipment, and hiding it all with acquisitions. But his contract included $20 million parachute. Would I be at all sad if something happened to him (and I’m not necessarily saying violence, he did have a leukemia scare 6 or 7 years ago, that could come back)? Not a chance. #$%^ that guy.
1) The party leadership is a crime syndicate.
2) The activists are a terrorist organization.
3) The rank and file faithful are a death cult.
They should be treated accordingly.
Okay. So let’s say you determine the CEO is worthy of execution. I assume you would have no problem walking up and putting a bullet in the back of his head then.
How about the people who work with him, sat in on the meetings and reached a consensus. on this issue. That is how things are done. If you don’t know, I can tell you for a fact that is how it is done.
Are those people who helped make that decision as they sat around that table complicit in the murder of hundreds or thousands of people?
If the answer is yes, I presume you would be willing to shoot those people in the back of the head as well?
How about the people who took their marching orders from the people who made the decision, created policies and procedures to carry out those orders, made adjustment to the computer systems that manage it, and created new workflows to execute the policies that were carried out resulting in the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people. Are you going to shoot those people in the back of the head, all the way down to the person behind the window talking to the patient who says “Your insurance claim has been denied. There is no recourse, you will have to pay.” Shoot her too? Right there in the lobby of the hospital, right through the glass.
But if the answer is no, they are not complicit, why not? Is it because all those people below the CEO were just following orders that resulted in the death of “hundreds or thousands” of people and are not responsible? It seems just that they were powerless employees who just did what they were told, right?
So, if you answer yes, that they are culpable, they they ALL, top to bottom, from the CEO to the cold clerk who tells the patient they have no recourse, all of them, should be taken out and shot in the back of the head, and YOU, someone who posts as an ostensible conservative on THIS forum, would be fully willing to carry out those executions?
If you answer no, and you feel that those people below the CEO are just following orders, they have no power to refuse orders from above and are just insignificant drones who have no choice in the matter. In other words, they were just following orders. Is THAT your stance? The CEO is culpable and fully deserving of a .45 ACP to the back of the neck, but everyone else was just following orders?
I know you are likely not a complete dunce, and you can see exactly what the point is.
If the answer is YES, you believe the CEO is complicit and you yourself would be willing to carry out the execution, then you must extend that “punishment” down to everyone who touched it, right up to the person who spoke to the patient. You must own that.
If the answer is NO, and that the people underneath are not responsible for carrying out this exploitation of the suffering of humans who need medical care to gain profit even though those people down the chain actually did the denying straight to the patient’s face (as the CEO did not) again...who IS responsible?
If you characterize the deaths of these patients as murder, even though the CEO did not pull the trigger, who pulled the trigger?
Someone did, and it is likely the mid and lower level employees who pointed that “gun” of “non-eligibility” at those patients and “pulled the trigger that resulted in those “hundreds or thousands” of deaths.
That defense (that they were just following orders) is called The Nuremberg Defense”, and has been morally, intellectually, and legally rejected in every civilized country’s legal system around the world.
LT Calley was just “Following Orders” in Vietnam when he murdered up to 504 non-combatants in the My Lai massacre.
I suggest you rethink your position.
Because if you hold that position that the CEO got what was coming to him, and that only he is responsible, you are no conservative, and you have no business degrading this website with your presence. People on this site are not trying to shut you up because we believe more (and better) speech is the solution to bad or inconsistent speech.
I didn’t say they’re worthy of execution. I said it’s no surprise this is going on. The fact of the matter is CEOs are out of control, have been for a long time. And should freaking know better. We know they all read Das Kapital in college, so they should know what kind of behavior causes the revolution, and who will be first against the wall.
Really you should take it from the other direction. The CEOs should all be asking themselves “if I get assassinated tomorrow with this action be on the list of reasons why people think it was justified?” And if the answer is yes DON’T DO IT.
Really? Name one.
Well. Others on this thread say that he WAS worthy of execution.
And with the derangement of the Left, I agree this is no surprise this is going on, after all, they tried to murder President Trump twice, and no doubt more attempts will happen.
That is is not surprising is not in itself a surprise. What is surprising is that people, even on this website, support what was murderously done.
We are generally conservatives on this website, and most conservatives believe in the rule of law under constitutional guidelines, not the rule of law of one man who decides to be judge, jury, and executioner and walks up in the middle of the street and plants a bullet in the back of someone’s head.
I disagree that I have to take it from the “other direction” discostu. I think taking it from the law and order perspective, and the underlying constitutional perspective has far more worth.
Especially in a discussion of this type, on this subject.
I may abhor the decisions by the CEO (which as I state, were NOT made in a vacuum, but were decided on via consensus) and may, in my heart, wish for the bad things to happen to Brian Thompson who was in the eyes of many “responsible” for the death of my loved one, but I wholly reject the open and pre-meditated murder that was done to Brian Thompson.
Piffle ... there will ALWAYS be somebody who is bothered by any decision or even no decision at all. Are you going to live your life and make life's decisions on the fear of somebody being offended by your actions or lack of action? Just like the poor, the nuts will be with us always and I refuse to worry about the reactions of an uncontrollable rabble.
How do you know this? Do you work for UHC? Do you have a copy of the guys speech? Do you know this or are you doing what leftists always do… projecting what you would do if you had the power.
Ya… you are a non liberal all right. You’re a freaking communist.
I’m not gonna disagree with them either. This is the problem with the world the CEOs have made. THEY have created an us or them situation. THEY have created salary boards to make sure they all make a lot of money. THEY setup corporate cultures that revolve around layoffs. THEY have decided that corporation that delivers they least at the most profit is the right corporation, even if what they’re supposed to be delivering is keeping alive. THEY have decided their should just hoard assets, like housing, to drive the price up, don’t worry about how homelessness is increasing.
There is NO law and order in this country. Just look at Epstein. The rich are not accountable. He got busted multiple times before it was finally so egregious they just had to throw him in jail. And some of this stuff shouldn’t be against the law. I don’t want the government declaring how much a CEO can make. I want the CEOs to recognize there’s a logical moral cap to how many times what their average employer salary they should get. But it’s not the government’s business. So no, law and order will NOT solve this. The CEOs either get it or they don’t. And since we’ve been talking about CEO salaries being way out of whack for 30 years, it’s clear they don’t get it. Maybe they’ll start listening.
This is the world they made. And now they have to audacity to be shocked that a growing percentage of the population is thinking “or we could just shoot the bastards”. Again, they went to liberal colleges, they read right books, they know what inspires the revolution, they know who’s first against the wall. It’s nobody’s fault but their own that they’ve decided that’s what they want to happen.
It’s not about being “bothered”. It’s about these decisions just being evil. They’re costing people’s lives with this junk. When a health insurance company decides to deny all claims at least once and make the people go through resubmittals that take time and force doctors to try to find some cheaper path people DIE. When housing companies decide to buy every house in an area the minute it comes on the market to create shortage and drive up the market price people DIE. When a car company cheaps out on the airbags people DIE.
This isn’t about people being offended by the CEOs actions. This is about people DYING from their actions. And people finally deciding to die em right back. Again, they made this world. They decided bottom-line uber alles. They don’t get to be surprised when a new bottom-line shows up, and they’re on the wrong side.
Still more piffle ... who gets to make the determination that something is “evil”? Liberals and Progressives think we’re evil for opposing abortion, for wanting to deport illegal immigrants, for trying to protect girls and women from the antics of the transexuals. For heaven’s sake, don’t state aloud what you actually may believe or what you want to do ... someone like you, who thinks that because they believe something is “evil” they can take the law into their own hands, may decide to act upon their “feelings”.
How about us. It’s not that hard to spot evil. Honestly. If you think it is, well, sounds like a bunch of piffle.
All of that has been reported and linked on FR.
I think my fundamental disagreement with you is that I don’t believe we can live in a society where we have “Cafeteria Constitutionalism” where we can pick and choose which ones we agree with and support, and those we don’t and refuse to observe.
Doing this in your own mind is one thing. Doing it in the real world, and advocating for it is wholly another thing, and I am not willing to go there.
If we accept there is NO law and order in this country, then we are done, finished. But I maintain that if there is no law and order, it is not because this is the foundation of our Republic which you characterize as non-functional.
It is because people tasked with seeing that people observe laws ranging from homicide to election processes simply decided to not observe the laws and became scofflaws, and have not been called on it. In other words, they became “Cafeteria Constitutionalists” and that will not work. Ever.
We have to live under laws we pass.
I think that can still happen, because it is happening.
Who said anything about cafeteria constitutionalism? I’m simply pointing out the reality of the situation. We know CEOs make too much damn money, hundreds of times what their average employees are making. We’ve known that for decades. We know that they continue to treat their workers worse and worse. We know that they now treat their customers like crap too. These are facts. And we also know that if you kick a dog enough eventually the dog fights back.
No, accepting that there is no law and order in this country is step one to fixing it. You can’t fix what you won’t admit is broken. Once you’re rich, once you’re a big donor, you are immune from the laws. That’s a fact. Been that way for a long time (like a REALLY long time, read up on how the railroads happened). It’s not because it’s the foundation of our republic, it’s because the foundation has been subverted.
We have to live under laws THEY pass. And THEY don’t. That is what is happening. Has been for a long time. Will continue to happen. Which is why the dogs are biting.
Thank you for your input. I’m not sitting at a keyboard, so I can’t deliver the same effort in a response.
But yes. Yes, what you’re saying is accurate.
“I was following orders” is the defense, in a nutshell.
I welcome further conversation if you would like. I am a reasonable human. I can explain how i came to this end.
If I shake you awake in the middle of the night and ask you what you are fighting for, after you reach for your gun, what do you tell me? (read this out loud and think about it.)
........
Not gonna happen in this house. There’s gonna be 2 large dogs and a couple of very fierce mid-sized ones on your ass pronto. And momma and daddy are both armed every day all day and night long.
It was me who brought up “Cafeteria Constitutionalism. Perhaps you have never heard it in the form of “Cafeteria Catholics” or “Cafeteria Christians”.
It has to do with the concept of picking and choosing what parts of something in Catholicism or Christianity you choose to pay attention to, and which ones you don’t.
I was making the analogy to Constitutional Principles, and was describing people who are “Cafeteria Constitutionalists” where they pick and choose what parts of the Constitution they wish to observe and which ones they wish to ignore or discard, if that wasn’t clear.
I am of the opinion that when it comes to the Constitution of the United States, we cannot pick and choose lest the document becomes meaningless.
We either abide and support abiding by it, or we do not. If we don’t, we are not a Constitutional Republic and there is no way around that.
This is where we disagree, I think. There are many conservatives (including myself) who know that law and order is broken in this country and that laws are enforced unequally, but they will not capitulate to lawlessness and instead hold onto the hope that can be remedied. But as you correctly state, knowing it is unequal is the first step to addressing it, and there are plenty of us who DO recognize it.
If you and I disagree on this because you feel that the disparity in law enforcement (among other things) cannot be remedied, then we have to agree to disagree because I don’t see that as a lost cause yet.
By the way-I discount completely the issue that the money that CEOs make in comparison to their workers. Primarily I don’t see that as having any bearing on the cold-blooded murder of someone who makes more than they do.
It is wrong enough in my eyes to justify the murder of someone because that person is a rich CEO that people want to make responsible for the deaths of of people (for whatever justification they have) without compounding that issue by conflating the issue of class with the issue of culpability in the deaths of others, because you are making that linkage (with your opening comment about CEOs making too much money) and I think one has nothing to do with the other.
This has always been the case that people who run companies have, and always will make in salary many multiples more than those they employ, and although it is a fertile field for those inclined to class warfare (where plenty of people will always be found who will sign on) if we are going to start talking about corporate greed and CEO salaries should be limited, we are leaving the domain of conservatism and entering a domain where we begin to allow a government to decide the worth of a person’s work, and as Frederick Hayek eloquently describes in his book by the same name, that is “The Road To Serfdom”.
We can disagree, but I see no reason we have to be crosswise with each other about it.
I understand your point of view.
I think what we will see from some quarters is that the people following orders had no option but to take part in this wholesale murder of “hundreds or thousands” of people.
If we take this to its logical conclusion, these same people will have no defense against following orders to commit murder (as people maintain) because if that is the defense, they too are murdering for financial reasons, ie they don’t wish to give up their jobs and look for another job in which they won’t be called on to participate in the murder of any number of people.
They are absolutely free to do so, and SHOULD do so if they feel they are being forced by the need for a paycheck to take part in. those murders.
It is their choice NOT to leave. At least Nazi soldiers who were executing people had their own lives that might have been ended if they had stood up and said they wouldn’t do it. If a paycheck is the motivation not to leave, that leaves them with no leg to stand on.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.