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Comment by alsetmusic | Hacker News Reader

A podcast host commented how this event was having the most unifying effect online in recent memory. I think that’s absolutely accurate.

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It looks that way because we're all in a filter bubble, but I don't think there's much evidence that people generally support murdering executives as a productive theory of change. What you can say is that Twitter feels unified on this --- and even then that's a vibe, not a fact.

I'm not in a filter bubble but I have seen many, completely opposing communities support this murder. On my town's FB tons of "regular" people are very enthusiastic about it. Same with both the left and the right on every platform I'm on. I would say there's a very small minority opposed to this and I haven't run across any of them in the real world.

Sure you are. Literally everybody is. That you believe you aren't is (I know this is a slippery bit of rhetoric, but give it a moment's thought) itself a strong indicator.

Bear in mind what you're saying here is that you haven't met a person who opposes the cold-blooded murder of a health insurance executive. That seems incredibly unlikely.

If you have some sort of proof that people are upset by this action you should post it. Using ad hominem against me isn't accomplishing anything. You can't just claim people's observations are invalid because we're all in a "filter bubble".

I haven’t met anyone my age who is disturbed by it. To me, anecdata seems to indicate that people who share my values, while not supporting murder, aren’t surprised about or aren’t opposed to instilling fear into the ruling class. Especially members of that class that participate in the killing of countless people through predatory business practices. Quel surprise

> but I don't think there's much evidence that people generally support murdering executives as a productive theory of change.

"eat the rich" has been a slogan for at least ten years now. and it doesn't come from nowhere.

When I was in university people from various communists group would often come to try and get youngsters interested into the various topics of communism.

I went to listen to what they had to say one afternoon.

They were open, clear and unambiguous about the fact they had arms (rifles and stuff) and were waiting for any kind of serious trouble in order to try and take over, via lethal force if necessary, in order to establish a communist regime, killing anybody that would get in their way. Those are their words, not mine. They were also open in not acknowledging the state or the european union, or anything different from a communist regime. This was "lotta comunista" in Milan (Italy) circa 2012 or 2013.

The US was their daemon (of course) and you can imagine how well inclined they could be towards CEOs.

So... Yeah, there's lot of general support in murdering executives, particularly in the extreme left factions.

> Those are their words, not mine.

that’s literally 100% your words. Unless you have a video of not you saying them.

> A podcast host commented how this event was having the most unifying effect online in recent memory. I think that’s absolutely accurate.

I think it's unifying the two factions.

The issues with healthcare in US has a long history. To be honest i think it was a matter of time before somebody did what happened.

Regarding this specific CEO shooting: my rationality tells me i should condemn what happened, my empathy says I can't.

What podcast?

I’m not sure but you can see this in Reddit. Far left, right, and also the center subreddits have zero sympathy for United given high denial rates, likely illegal AI based denials, the breach of subsidiary Change Healthcare they leaked everyone’s private medical details, the insider trading from the CEO, etc. It highlights a massive unified appetite to bring megacorps under control.

I'm pretty sure it was Chapo Traphouse. I'm a Patreon supporter, so it could have been on the extra subscription episode. It's a Leftist show.

In anonymous (logged out) context and VPN, I have seen comment sections of a right wing commentator speaking about the incident. The comment section was nearly unilaterally against the opinion of the commentator. Calling out how “out of touch” he was, and his “richness” was showing. Comeuppance was inevitable.

Shit man, even Tim Walz throwing the usual “thoughts and prayers” line caught some serious flak across the aisle.

Usually these types of incidents devolve into “gun” debates, “mental illness”. But this incident unified around how a mass murderer was killed. It was something I haven’t seen in a loong time.

No murderer of any sort was killed in this incident. That's an absurd statement people are feeding you to get you the little dopamine kick of thinking exciting things are happening.

The banality of evil right here. Whatever defense you have of this executive, it's just murder with extra steps.

The real violence being done here is to the word "murder".

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