[EDIT] Inb4 more people try to suggest that I’m mourning the loss of this scumbag capitalist fuck: No, I’m not sad he’s dead. No, I don’t think corporate murder is acceptable and no, I would not ever rat to police if I knew the shooter and yes, I believe the punishment fits the crimes he’s committed against untold thousands of people. THAT SAID…
I’m not down with vigilante murder or anything because it seems like the slipperiest of slopes toward chaos, but what other option is there in a situation where someone seeks to make an impact in this way? You can’t just beat up evil CEOs and let them go back to work. It would be naïve to expect them to change their ways when faced with consequences for their actions and then promptly let go. It just seems like the chances that it emboldens their penchant for exploitative behaviour and disdain for people in need are too high.
We’re just born into and strapped to this capitalist ride and expected to sit quiet and make these leeches their billions. How else can this cancerous greed possibly be dealt with? Is vigilante murder the only effective option? Honest questions. I’m terribly conflicted and I’m genuinely curious what more reasonable and intelligent minds than mine think about this because I can’t think of an alternative to murder in this case.
Ideally, we wouldn’t have to resort to vigilante killings to level the playing field but I 100% understand that we don’t live in a society where the rich will ever give a fuck about the rest of us or would ever sacrifice their power over us in the name of goodwill.
OP, can you please edit your question to make it clearer. Remember, open-ended and thought provoking.
I tried. Not sure how much clearer I can make it if this doesn’t do the trick.
Six words:
soap box
ballot box
ammo box
more words than that:
First you try talking. You campaign, you protest, you petition. None of that has worked during my lifetime.
So you turn up to the polls to vote. Because of how elections work in this country there are only two actual choices, one wants to actively destroy the healthcare industry and the other isn’t all that bothered by the destruction of the first. Everybody in congress owns stock and they get paid for fucking over the citizens. When the citizens say “give us healthcare” and the Republicans say “no” and the Democrats say “No. 🏳️🌈 #BLM” We’re kind of past it.
The only option left is violence. Isn’t it amazing how much unifying power there is to be found in the act of putting three little bullets in one little executive?
Yeah it’s so weird that more than 30 countries have managed to implement public healthcare without assassinating CEOs. Mind boggling.
If violence isn’t a solution then why does the government use it?
This is a very interesting question that would require so much more talk than is proper for a lemmy comment.
I’ll try and make a stupidly short summary:
In political philosophy, it is commonly accepted to define a state as a political community where the government detains the monopoly over legitimate use of physical force.
Basically what allows you to feel safe in such a community - as opposed to a more tribal one - is that you know that you can’t be harmed by your fellow citizen. When you buy your groceries you don’t want to worry that the shopkeeper will beat you up because he doesn’t want to give you change. When you are outside enjoying your sandwich you don’t want to worry about a random guy cracking your head open in order to steal it. You are not worried because you know that their violence would be considered illegitimate, and would be met by legitimate violence.
This only works if everyone agrees to delegate their use of violence to the state, who in turn executes that violence through the appropriate means (police etc) using the appropriate rules. If violence is taken into one’s hands the whole foundation of the political community breaks down, which means that the state has existential interests in prosecuting whoever does it.
States where violence is not really prosecuted are those commonly considered failed states.
Now I know this is rather abstract and the real world is more complex than that, but as I said this would require a lot more space than is available here. But there is your answer: [privately administered] violence is not the answer.
OK I get that, but the social contract has broken down.
“Health care industry” is a horrible, horrible concept. You and I both know that these corporations get in between doctors and patients. Why? Profit. Everyone knows this.
I’m not going to go out and murder a CEO but I’m sure not going to give a shit that this one got murdered. Godspeed, murderer.
I’m with you. I was just addressing the general question, which doesn’t get addressed as much as it should :)
I would rather see the conversation going towards reforming the broken system rather than going in the direction of “fuck the state it’s all broken anyway” which wouldn’t help anybody.
Let’s call this murder an act of political violence. If it’s the first, brutal step towards reform, then it’s one thing and we can “celebrate”. If it’s the first step towards Dodge City (which is the vibes I get from some comments) then there is very little to be happy about.
I think it all boils down to that nebulous concept of “the social contract”. The most naive interpretation of the justice system is that it will provide justice when justice is demanded. It is, after all, called “the justice system”. But what constitutes justice? And who receives it? We have already seen two separate supreme court decisions that state unequivocally that the police are neither obligated to serve nor protect people. We have also seen that young black men are 7 times more likely to be falsely convicted of serious crimes than young white men, so we know that the justice system does not work for all of us. We know that rich people get convicted far less often, and for far shorter sentences than poor people, and we know that the legal system saps the opportunity to acquire generational wealth from those who do get convicted.
It is illegal to shoplift $100 of groceries from a corporation, but it is perfectly legal for that same corporation to drive out competition and then raise prices, in essence stealing from the entire community. It is illegal to intentionally harm someone, but it is perfectly legal for a medical insurance company to deny coverage to paying customers for necessary medical intervention.
When justice is completely out of reach by legal means, the flimsy fiction of the social contract is voided. New York City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 murders per year, which means that there have probably been 5 or 6 other people who have been murdered in the city since Brian Thompson was shot. Are the police putting the same effort into tracking the killers of those people as they are into Brian Thompson’s murderer? The reality is that the vast majority of us are intentionally excluded from the halls of power. The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Does the present situation in this country feel to you like equality? Because to me, it feels like there is an owner class, and a peasant class, and brother… we ain’t the owners.
The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal.
The guy who wrote those words was also raping his slaves. It’s always been this way.
not down for “vigilante” murder? so you are down for corporate murder?
I don’t know when we got the idea that killing someone with a pen is better than killing someone with a sword. at least with a sword you have to look them in the eyes while you do it
Nope. That’s not what I am suggesting at all. I literally said that I don’t think there’s any other option besides vigilantism, which to me presents a difficult situation to reason through.
I’m allowed to find this situation conflicting and ask about other’s people’s thoughts on it to help me understand my own.
Not to toot my own horn, but I’m a rather intelligent person. I have done a lot of thinking and reading about these problems. I have tried to consider ways that might change their minds without violence and come up with little.
The rich NEED to be afraid of the poor. Or there needs to be no rich. Those are the options for a prospering society.
thing about people being afraid of something is that it tends to lead them trying to kill it
The poor have been afraid of the system for decades…
We subject to largest psyop in human history tho
Things are changing due to deteriorating socio economic conditions
How do you feel about the French Revolution? Storming the Bastille to kill the governor was an act of vigilante murder, and there’s an entire holiday celebrating it.
Violence should only ever be a last resort when all else has failed. But there have been numerous times in history where we consider violence to have been a just last resort.
The hard part is recognizing when it’s truly time for that last resort. I can’t say for sure where the line is drawn. Maybe it can never be clearly drawn in the moment and will just have to be something for future historians to judge.
Before you prick your finger and commit to the contract, lemme remind you it took about a century for France to settle down into a republic and then still didn’t establish some basic rights until the 20th century.
And that century included an attempt to take over the world (by Emperor Napoleon), a bunch of ambitious dictators, the invention of the Piano, and consequently, romanticism and multiple instances in which the guillotines had to be pulled out and heads piled high because the ownership class refused to play nice.
Okay, you’re slightly better informed. Do do some research.
Sign away.
the invention of the Piano
So the French Revolution led to the career of Billy Joel?
I am down for it. If more of it happens I’ll laugh just as hard every time.
Because fuck em. They’ve spent the last half century recreating The Gilded Age. If now is when the bill comes due. Good. Happy I’m alive to see it instead of just reading about it.
You’re a savage pretending to have morals
The fuck you think billionaires are?
Bootlickers been so hurt recently haha
I have morals. I have empathy. For the homeless. For the destitute. The poor. The hungry. Victims of war.
For parasites like Brian Thompson I have nothing but vicious mockery and laughter. Fuck them all. May they die screaming.
Edit - hold up, I’m not done.
I am a savage. The product of my environment. An environment that has told me all my life that 30 dead kids every week or two is the price we pay for freedom. That a million dead civilians on the other side of the planet is good and just because we’re the good guys. That the predatory monsters at the head of all these companies that have made life here worse year over year are the smartest and most qualified and that what they do isn’t only legal, but just. That the poor don’t deserve food water and shelter. It’s fine if they starve. Because they didn’t work hard enough or maybe they’re on drugs. That corporations have no responsibility whatsoever to anyone but their shareholders. They deserve everything they can take from us. Because that’s Capitalism and Capitalism is just the best. That women don’t deserve self determination because of a 1700ish year old book of shitty fairytales.
So yeah. [redacted] all the ceos. All the billionaires too. Why should I care? They’re just meat. Fuck em. A few more bodies on the pile. No big deal.
Edit 2 - Same country that handwaves off a goddamned genocide. Funds it, supports it, and tells me it’s not a big deal. 100,000 dead civilians this year. Tells me that I can’t boycott the country using MY MONEY to ethnically cleanse an entire indigenous population.
Two wrongs don’t make a right I’m afraid.
Edti: Like you don’t exactly need to be Kamt to see that setting a precedent for extra-judicial killings isn’t going to end well.
I don’t care if it ends well. I’m just enjoying the ride.
I’m not afraid. I have nothing to fear. When I die the entire country wont celebrate like Ewoks watching the 2nd death star explode.
I could start today and 🔫 my way through the entire fortune 500 and I’d have less blood on my hands than Brian Thompson had. (giggled at “had”)
Got no love for the dude. Clearly wasn’t a boyscout. Also have to admit it was a slick assassination given that they are still at large.
I just feel celebrating it (encouraging it?) is immoral Nihilism might seem appealing but it’s basically just giving up.
Killing in the defense of others is a legal defense to homicide.
If the guy were attacking people with a machete, nobody would dream of prosecuting the person who put him down.
The fact that he’s doing it slightly more slowly, but on a massively larger scale should not change anything.
The fact that he’s doing it slightly more slowly, but on a massively larger scale should not change anything.
This is something that I hope society learns to comprehend and act on more effectively in the future.
A lot of today’s huge problems we’ve known about since I was a kid 30 years ago - climate change, corporate greed, housing crisis, immigration, etc. I spent most of my times growing up arguing with adults, having my lived experience questioned. I thought there would be a tipping point when I started working, or paying my own way through life, where the condescension would stop but it never did.
The current older generation has lived longer than any other in history, and they’ve clung to control for as long as possible. Even when younger leaders come in, they’re still trapped in these outdated values—Victorian at best—that keep pulling us backwards. Somehow, they’ve convinced themselves that investors deserve their returns more than people deserve to live. It’s soul crushing.
This is an age old topic and there is no right answer to it. You need to decide where you draw the line. Unpersecuted vigilantism will lead to chaos, on the other hand, we live in an unjust and structural violent system where rich people kill by signing papers and poor, desperate people die. They sometimes even vote for the elite before dying.
I glued myself to the street to protest our government not acting on our planet heating up. I knew I broke the law but I felt like I needed to. It was a rough experience, still I don’t regret it because I did what felt necessary to me. The guy shooting the CEO probably feels the same, and pathetic “Proud Boys” chasing immigrants do so as well. For me, violence against other people is a line I don’t see myself crossing. But I can think of scenarios where I would understand people resorting to it.We’re on the same page. Thanks for your response.
If any other avenue existed: it would long have been tried and replicated. They have the judiciary, they have the legislative bodies, they have the senates, they have the presidencies/head of states whatever. There is no influence left except appealing to their literal and undeniable physical humanity
For now… Eventually the bastards will basically be like D&D liches and can only be destroyed if you find their phylactery: Their consciousness uploaded to a computer kept in a fortified bunker, miles underground.
I’m really not comfortable with all the cheering of this evevtm
The guy might have been a huge POS, he was not personally responsible for a broken and violent system that Americans have created for themselves. Americans continue to democratically elect individuals from the dominant class who promote inequality, they have the system they deserve.
When Obama timidly tried to correct the healthcare system, Americans voted, twice, for someone who promised to destroy what was build and replace it with the “concept of a plan.” They made a democratic choice, they chose a pedophile billionaire to run their country, this is no french revolution.
That CEO guy was just one of millions who WANT the system to be unfair. What is this shooter gonna do, kill every capitalist in the US?
We hung the “just following orders” guys after WWII.
They weren’t personally responsible for the system they perpetrated. But we hung them anyway.
Same thing here.
Or is your gripe that it came from the bottom up instead of the top down? That it was righteous fury instead of cold legality? Because the legal side has utterly failed us. Been corrupted if not outright captured. It serves them not us. Million dollar fines on billion dollar profits aren’t a penalty. They’re a rounding error, an operating expense. Already accounted for in the budget.
Leave people with no recourse. No justice. They’ll make their own way.
They weren’t personally responsible for the system they perpetrated. But we hung them anyway.
A couple of questions for you:
Will you be shooting every capitalist in the US? Is an Amazon worker “perpetuating the system”? Is an Amazon consumer is? Who will draw the line between the victim of the system and the responsible for it, you?
And no, we didn’t just hung every German who followed orders.
Again, I’m deeply anti-capitalist. But Americans choose this system over and over, of course the shit will hit the fan, I just don’t believe shooting CEOs will fix things, unfortunately.
Doubt this is an honest question. The obvious answer is to stop being a radical, help yourself, get to work, and build something nice.
I think this reasoning is why everyone is in this current situation.
It’s just a constant stream of pushing goal posts. Before you know it, you have a dictator running the country and they’re sending immigrants (or previously Jewish people) to be killed en masse.
I know that’s a very harsh comparison, but it all starts with people accepting small changes.
Question everything your government is doing, even if you agree with it. (Obviously not to the point of conspiracy theories haha)
That’s the thing… Most people do not have opportunities for this because of a parasitic owner regime is sucking everybody dry but top 10-20% of larpers who enable them
In fact most people do have the opportunity to go to work and help themselves.
