Deny, deflect, distract
Capitalist media working for the ruling class
We live in an era of so many flashing lights and notifications and distractions that an event cutting through the noise is exceedingly rare. Piercing the churn of the news cycle is so uncommon that even historic events are passed by before the dust settles. But the killing of this CEO is different. Brian Thompson’s assassination cut through the incessant buzz. The world hasn’t stopped, but, in rare fashion, the attention of millions has remained riveted on a single event day after day.
The staying power of this moment comes in large part from how it’s drawn out the sharp lines latent in the amorphous coalitions that form the American political landscape. Millions and millions of people across the divides that riddle this country have felt little hope of changing the fundamental problems afflicting us for many, many years. The cost of living, and the cost of healthcare in particular, has been an intractable problem. Attempts to solve this immensely painful dilemma have floundered, the political class has shied away from transformative solutions, and all the while people in this country pay more than anyone else on Earth for their medical needs. At the same time corporate profits go up and up and up.
We all know this. Some very small percentage are insulated from it, but 99% of people feel the pain of this reality. Then a healthcare CEO is assassinated, and regardless of whether or not people agree with the method, an event that shatters the political reality of this country and violently brings down some of walls between left and right is powerful, unignorable, and gripping.
One of the clearest indicators that something different is happening here has been the reaction of right-wing audiences. Fascist stooge Ben Shapiro’s viewers are a prime example. For years he’s spewed conservative nonsense and been a gateway to the right for young men. He has over 7 million YouTube followers, but if you look at his videos about this CEO killing, the comments might shock you. One reads, “Ben Shapiro is out here trying to convince us that paying $90 for a $12 drug is normal.” Another says he’s helped bring together the left and right: “Imagine being so blatantly in the wrong that you manage to unite two opposing ends of the political spectrum during one the most divided periods in recent memory.” And yet another comment is vaguely threatening: “Remember guys, Ben has more in common with that CEO than he has with any of us.” These comments have thousands of likes and every video he has on this event is full of similar sentiments flooding the replies.
Lines are not being drawn here so much as they’re being revealed. One of the roles of the Ben Shapiros of the world, of all right-wing propagandists, is to obfuscate class lines. They feed people hatred for many reasons, including their own prejudices, but the ultimate purpose they serve is getting people to buy into fascist beliefs, which requires abandoning your class in order to support the owning class and their oppressive efforts. Suddenly, explosively, an event that does what countless counter-propaganda efforts could not takes place. And defending a healthcare CEO who denied treatment to millions of people rings hollow and dishonest to a whole lot of people of every political persuasion. This is not to say that working class conservatives will now change their politics entirely, but rather that there’s a substantial crack in the ideological armor, or cage, that the right has developed for its acolytes. The killing of Brian Thompson has brought things into too stark a relief for a total rejection of class politics to hold.
Just as the right-wing ecosystem has been rocked, the media pillars of the status quo — the ideological bulwark defending neoliberalism — have also been shaken. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic have found themselves scrambling to dismiss Luigi Mangione, and more importantly what he represents. When The Atlantic published a piece entitled “Luigi Mangione’s Commonplace, Deplorable Politics” they followed it up with the subheading: “From his actions, and the glee that they have elicited, one learns not that the health-care system is broken but that many people are.” This piece was written by Graeme Wood, who also wrote “It is possible to kill children legally” when discussing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Immediately discounting the reality that our health insurance system is fundamentally flawed, prioritizing profit over human lives, is a surefire way to get most people to tune out. Even the note reportedly found on Luigi Mangione reads, “The US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy.” Dismissing the problems most people face with health care shows just how unwilling venerated U.S. media institutions are to engage with the profound difficulties faced by the working class. As Akilah Hughes recently wrote, “Writers in newsrooms from The Atlantic, to The New York Times keep putting out dimwitted op-eds reducing Mangione’s violence to meaningless barbarism, failing to engage with the horrifying realities of healthcare in America.”
But after this initial failure to engage, the scions of these establishments have pivoted to something more sinister. The Washington Post shared one of their pieces a few days ago, pulling out the following quote for their audiences of social media: “Luigi Mangione, a son of a prominent Baltimore family and an Ivy League graduate, had seemingly lost his way. Brian Thompson, a son of small-town Iowa who ascended to become CEO of UnitedHealthcare, appeared to be reaching new heights.” The executive is really the little guy. Never mind the $10 million he took home last year. Never mind his role in society, and how he fundamentally profited off being a traitor to his class.
You might not be surprised to hear that the New York Times went and did the same thing in a more ham-fisted manner:
I don’t think I need to explain Bret Stephens, who has called antisemitism the “disease of the Arab mind,” dabbles in eugenics, engages in climate denial and much more. But this isn’t primarily about him, it’s about the New York Times, it’s about corporate media. The most influential papers in the country want you confused about class now more than ever. Their cynical take is that being born into the working class and making your way into the financial elite makes you a working class hero. This is a cynical lie about the nature of class, and they're not fooling a soul by bringing it forward in this moment of ruling class fear. Viewers of Ben Shapiro, lefties, and people across America are seeing the class divide with more clarity than ever. The fact that the fundamental, underlying contradiction in society is the owning class exploiting working people has exploded across boundaries over the last week. The ruling class is united in profiting from our labor and from our pain, and this is the truth that their mouthpieces want to deny.
Now these major publications are large, and they’ve certainly published more than one perspective. But the overarching effort, as the sympathy for Luigi and the rage against UnitedHealth refuse to go away, has increasingly gone towards discouraging people from any sort of class consciousness. And yet this push is failing, not least because the efforts to reform our healthcare system have failed so completely, and the consequences have been immensely painful for millions. So most people remain unsurprised at this act of violence in our indisputably violent country. The one group of people who appear shocked at a CEO assassination is the .01%. They are scrambling, and on Tuesday New York Governor Kathy Hochul will host a virtual meeting with law enforcement and 175 corporate representatives to discuss sharing security resources, according to Politico.
It’s hard to miss which lives matter to the ruling class. One of their own is killed and an unprecedented convening about executive security materializes in a matter of days. Police kill over 1,000 people every year in this country, and a monumental uprising of millions of people who are righteously furious about it is squashed. Cops then get more money. It’s clear which lives matter to the ruling class, and the power of this moment is visible partially in their inability to hide that truth from us.
Earlier this week, when Florida woman Briana Boston ended a call about a denied claim with Blue Cross Blue Shield by saying “defend, deny, depose” she was immediately arrested, and faces up to 15 years for supposedly threatening a mass shooting or a terror attack. She doesn’t even own a gun; she was just angry at being denied care. And, as countless workers around the country have testified to since Briana’s arrest, customer service reps are threatened all the time. Nothing ever happens. But this time, Briana’s threat invoked a larger threat against the ruling class. She remains on house arrest. It’s clear which lives are valued by the ruling class, and how willing they are to enforce that system of value right now.
What might be most noteworthy about these various ruling class efforts to put the cat back in the bag is how feeble they appear. No one believes Brian Thompson was a working class hero, no one has suddenly revised their thoughts on the for-profit healthcare industry. And quite a few articles from less well established outlets and pundits have offered us a glimpse into the reality of what the masses of people are thinking. One of the most impactful, thus far, has been Miles Klee writing for Rolling Stone. Miles spoke to people suffering from spondylolisthesis, or a slipped vertebra. This affliction can have devastating effects on the body, and the pain can change people’s lives, making some activities impossible. Luigi Mangione reportedly suffers from a slipped vertebra himself and may have difficulty being intimate a result, among other effects.
I’ll leave you here with the last paragraph of Klee’s recent piece: “‘I don’t think this story is about Mangione at all, really,’ Basile [who has spondylolisthesis] says, noting that she would never support gun violence. ‘And I don’t think this is about the CEO either. I think it’s about a revolution of the people who are constantly suffering at the hands of greedy insurance companies. I also think that chronic illness and disability communities have been saying this for years and years and years. But if this high-profile case is what it takes for everyone to get to the reckoning point, I’m fully here for it.’”
P.S. I think this is a good moment to check out alternative media. Here are a few sources I look to these days:
Truthout: https://truthout.org/
The Real News: https://therealnews.com/
More Perfect Union: https://perfectunion.us/
Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/
Mondoweiss: https://mondoweiss.net/
Prism: https://prismreports.org/
Labor Notes: https://labornotes.org/
And I highly recommend checking out other organizations in the Movement Media Alliance: https://movement-media.org/
Just as the healthcare system is not really broken, neither is the media ecosystem. Both are working exactly as they were designed to work. Since they're not broken they can't be fixed. We can only build something better.
I have chills from reading the article about Briana Boston. The quotes from the police are so abusive, as if she should know better than to verbally lash out at the insurance reps and therefore expect to be sent to jail. No reasonable person should expect that as the consequence. I talk to insurance reps all the time because I'm living with cancer. I've learned that I need to be polite and when that doesn't work sometimes start to cry - which is my natural response to excessive stress. Sometimes crying works and sometimes it backfires. But other peoples' natural response is anger. I mean...for fucks sakes. This poor woman.