In the days following the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, something remarkable happened. Across social media and beyond, people expressed a surprising solidarity with the act - not necessarily with the violence itself, but with the frustrations it laid bare. The sentiment wasn’t about glorifying a death; it was about recognizing a brutal truth: millions of lives are shaped, diminished, and ended by a healthcare system built to profit from suffering. For a fleeting moment, the collective response wasn’t shock or confusion - it was clarity: this system is intolerable, and something has to change.
But now that a suspect has been identified and arrested, that clarity is being systematically rewritten.
The media has wasted no time casting the suspect, as a radical extremist. They emphasize his alleged manifesto, his use of a ghost gun, and his Ivy League background - details designed to isolate him from the broader frustrations he briefly symbolized. The narrative is shifting from the system’s violence to one man’s alleged pathology.
This pattern isn’t new. When an act of violence threatens the status quo, the immediate response isn’t just suppression of dissent - it’s rewriting the story. One striking historical parallel is Leon Czolgosz, who in 1901 assassinated President William McKinley. Like Brian Thompson’s assassin, Czolgosz acted against a figure seen as emblematic of systemic exploitation. McKinley was widely viewed as a champion of corporate interests during the Gilded Age, a president who presided over extreme inequality and crushing labor conditions.
Czolgosz himself was clear about his motives: he was deeply inspired by anarchist critiques of capitalism and believed the system was irredeemably violent. Yet the narrative quickly turned. The media and authorities painted him not as a political actor, but as a socially isolated loner - a man consumed by personal grievances and madness rather than systemic despair. His act of protest became a story of personal instability. This reframing allowed the system he opposed to escape unscathed. The public outcry against inequality, labor exploitation, and corporate power faded into the background, replaced by a focus on the alleged derangement of one man.
Now, we see the same playbook unfolding. When Brian Thompson’s assassination first made headlines, the immediate public response was not one of revulsion but of recognition. People understood that this act, however shocking, spoke to the unbearable pressures of a system that denies care, bankrupts families, and profits from death. The solidarity was palpable. It wasn’t a celebration of violence; it was a naming of violence - the bureaucratic, institutional violence that millions endure every day. But solidarity like that is dangerous to the ruling class. It had to be managed, reframed, and erased.
What’s happening now isn’t just about any assassin’s guilt or innocence - it’s about erasing that initial solidarity. The media’s narrative isolates him as a radical extremist, a lone wolf, a dangerous outlier. By focusing on the minutiae of his alleged manifesto or weapon, they sever him from the context of systemic despair that shaped his actions. The goal isn’t just to prosecute an assassin - it’s to protect the system he protested against.
This isn’t about one man’s actions. It’s about the system that creates the conditions for such desperation. When people briefly recognized the systemic brutality Thompson represented, it terrified those in power. They know the truth: the healthcare system is a machine that grinds people down for profit. The suffering it creates is immense, and the anger it generates is justified. But justified anger must be neutralized. It must be reframed as irrational, extreme, or dangerous. The assassin becomes the story, not the system.
Leon Czolgosz’s story teaches us that these tactics aren’t just effective - they’re deliberate. Czolgosz wasn’t a maniacal loner lashing out at the world; he was a desperate man acting out of a coherent, if extreme, political philosophy. But the ruling class couldn’t let his act stand as a symbol of systemic critique. By turning him into a caricature - a weak, awkward outcast - they deflected attention from the system’s violence and ensured the outrage he symbolized wouldn’t take root.
What’s happening now is no different. The outrage that Brian Thompson’s assassination revealed - the quiet solidarity, the understanding of the system’s cruelty - is being systematically erased. The focus is shifting to the assassins supposedly personal relationship to his actions, and the initial clarity is being buried under a deluge of narrative control.
But even if the story is rewritten, the conditions that created it remain. The healthcare system is still a profit-driven engine of suffering. The despair it generates still pushes people to the breaking point. And the solidarity that briefly surfaced still lingers, even if it’s been forced underground.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: solidarity is dangerous to the ruling class. That’s why it has to be erased. That’s why the story has to be reframed. And that’s why the anger this assassination tapped into can’t be allowed to dissipate.
The system that profits from pain is the real violence. And the fact that so many people responded with recognition, not revulsion, speaks volumes. Just as Czolgosz’s act exposed the brutality of his time, this moment exposes the same. It’s up to us to remember what they want us to forget.