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Many social media users — including journalists and academics — are celebrating the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday, implying that he got what he deserved.

Anthony Zenkus, a Columbia University School of Social Work professor who works in “anti-violence” activism, took to X to sarcastically “mourn” the late healthcare executive:

“Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down…. wait, I’m sorry — today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires,” Zenkus wrote in a post that received over 100,000 likes.

Rob DenBleyker, the co-creator of the Cyanide & Happiness comic series, wrote, “If all health insurance CEOs live in fear of being murdered maybe premiums will come down”:

Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz has been continuously justifying Thompson’s slaying and even went so far as to post other health insurance CEOs’ names and photos on the left-leaning social media platform Bluesky. 

In a Substack blog post, Lorenz explained “why ‘we’ want insurance executives dead”:

While clarifying that running an insurance company “does not mean people should murder them,” Lorenz argued that “if you’ve watched a loved one suffer and die from insurance denial, it’s normal to wish the people responsible would suffer the same fate.”

Other social media users mocked Thompson’s surviving wife and children, garnering thousands of likes and similar comments:

UnitedHealthcare, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield, CareSource, Medica, and Elevance Health are all among healthcare companies that have taken down their web pages listing their executives since Thompson was gunned down outside a midtown Manhattan hotel, Breitbart News reported.

Thompson, 50, was shot multiple times by a masked gunman as he arrived for a conference around 6:45 a.m. before the attacker “fled eastbound off of 6th Avenue,” according to the New York Post. 

The CEO was later pronounced dead at a hospital. 

New York Police Department (NYPD) officials released security photos of the suspect and said the killing “does not appear to be a random act of violence,” and that evidence points to it being a “premeditated, targeted attack”: