“Executive Safety”
Security shouldn't be reserved for CEOs
In this peculiar country, manhunts are a given. You turn on the TV in the United States and you’re liable to see cops chasing someone through the streets of a major city, or a report about the latest FBI search, or a reward for someone you know nothing about. We must, of course, side with the police at all times in this venture. Never mind how about 300 cop chases per year end in someone dying, often over a piece of lifeless property. And never mind that all this only results in police clearing 8.2% of motor vehicle thefts. The show must go on.
The particular show we’re collectively witnessing right now is especially farcical. The killer of the UnitedHealth CEO appears to have left behind a backpack filled with Monopoly money in Central Park, and 40,000 of ‘New York’s finest’ have so far concluded nothing other than that he probably left town on a bus. But the search continues, with the NYPD offering $10,000 for information, and the FBI now offering $50,000.
The manhunt is such a common media item that most of us have probably seen this search for the CEO killer dominate the media far longer than most news and haven’t questioned it. Of course they’re searching for this guy, however incompetently, and of course it’s big news. I wasn’t really questioning the whole theater of this search, but then Rax King posted something relatively simple, but paradigm-shifting. She wrote: “It’s eye opening the time and resources presently being devoted to catching the person who shot the UnitedHealth CEO. There wouldn’t be a large scale, balls to the wall, full court press police manhunt on behalf of any of us.”
The longer I sat with her comment the angrier I got. Why does this one man merit a nationwide search? Why does this one guy, whose career was immensely harmful to so many people, deserve the entirety of the police apparatus searching for his killer? We not only know that you and I would get some paltry fraction of the resources devoted to our killer if we were murdered, but we have striking, current, real examples in New York that testify to this truth at this very moment.
Most notably, Yeremi Colino was brutally killed the day after CEO Brian Thompson. But Yeremi was just 17, he was a migrant, and his killers appear to have been anti-immigrant racists. His murder also took place in Manhattan. It was this past Thursday night, and three men attacked Yeremi and another teenager who was presumably his friend. Before stabbing the teens, fatally in Yeremi’s case, the men asked if they spoke English. It infuriatingly and tragically goes without saying that the resources that are being used to find the killer of a CEO have not been devoted to finding these three racist murderers.
We are expected to simply tolerate this, just as we are apparently expected to tolerate a health system that profits from denying us care. Mobilizing police forces across the United States that collectively receive more money than nearly every single army on Earth on behalf of one CEO while other killers walk free is yet another example of the casual violence of the status quo. We are told, in more ways than can be summed up here, that our lives are far less valuable than the lives of the rich and powerful. And we are expected to just take that.
We don’t need to accept this status quo in any way. And we certainly should not accept the even bigger and more pronounced capitalist reaction to this killing. In addition to the police resources, aka our money, being funneled to search for this killer, our health insurance money is now going to provide additional security to corporate executives. What’s even more noteworthy is that companies in other sectors like Amazon and BlackRock are also putting up ads for executive security positions. They are taking these steps because they know they could be next, and they know why they could be next. In other words, the massive corporations know the harm they cause and the anger they foment, and instead of addressing and changing how their business models are built on exploiting people, hurting people, and at times killing people, they are instead attempting to sort out how to go about their business without changing a thing.
This is not fundamentally about one CEO killing. The assassination of Brian Thompson will likely be looked back on as a pivotal moment, but because of the far larger phenomena it brought into the spotlight rather than because it ended the life of one man. And the ruling class is painfully, frightenedly aware of this. They’re far more aware of the class war that’s been raging throughout the history of capitalism than most of the working class is. In fairness, their awareness comes largely from the fact that they’ve been the primary actors waging it. Their wealth is built on exploiting workers, and they’ve determinedly fought both worker organization and any regulation that might impact their profits since the dawn of this era.
Now, they refuse to back down. Every indication is that their plan for the future is doubling down on systemic violence. When the people rose up in record numbers against police in 2020, the ruling class backlash that continues to this day looks like increased investment in policing, the demonization of criminal justice reform, and the inception of dozens of Cop Cities across the country. As the climate crisis and the economic exploitation of Latin America creates more migrants and refugees, the dominant response from both parties has been increased policing of the border and a willingness to deport immigrants. And now, when a CEO is killed because his company denied people health care, there is not even one symbolic conciliatory gesture. Not one politician has mentioned increasing health care coverage or implementing universal care. Instead, we get a national manhunt and more “executive security.”
And the response has just begun. It appears to be a matter of time before the NYPD asks for more funding, and other departments request or even demand the same to protect the super-rich. The security of this class has always been the paramount purpose of policing, and now CEOs will get their protection while the rest of us get growing precarity. The underlying crises, the growing chasm of inequality, the cost of living – none of this can be examined. Maybe the ruling class knows that if they gave an inch we might take a mile, or maybe they’re simply too ruled by greed to offer a single concession. Or maybe they’re scared for their lives.
I don’t know how they see the world, but I do know that hyper-exploitation and the greed hardwired into this neoliberal capitalist system make anything that would require a reduction in profits almost impossible for the rich and powerful to entertain. And while they might not be willing to give an inch, we can take a mile anyway. We don’t have to accept that CEOs get all the resources, even in death, while millions of people struggle to pay rent, homelessness hits record highs, and most people have inadequate health care while paying more than any other nation on Earth for it. We don’t have to accept the violence of the status quo. We can organize and break out of this paradigm and build something radically different. If we don’t, the mass and mundane violence of this system will continue. Striking out in a new direction won’t be easy, but it’s certainly necessary. So let’s construct a society where we’re all safe and cared for, and where that privilege isn’t increasingly reserved for those who take our money and use it to pay for security details.
All those dystopian movies you watched as a kid, where some obscenely rich guy in his business tower dispenses life and death to whomever he wants with his private army, while his employees work like new-age plantation cotton pickers just to live in a mechanical closet? Yeah - that's where we've been heading now for decades.
Excellent article 👍 Of course the ultra rich are entitled to this. We "human capital" are merely here to serve and nothing more. We're the hosts for these parasitical ghouls who suck the life force from us from cradle to beyond the grave. I remember during COVID when Mitch McConnell called the human workforce "human capital". It shocked and appalled me. We're nothing more than a commodity... not living beings.
These corporate ghouls are soulless creatures who are drunk with power, entitlement and sick with greed. Whoever this assassin is he's a hero to the little people. A modern Robin Hood of Elysium.