Brian Thompson, Jews, and the Left’s ‘Legitimate Targets’

Almost immediately after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated in New York City, some celebrations erupted online. The loudest voices came from segments of the American left.

One user on TikTok saw the shooting as a promising sign of rising class consciousness in America. “I feel hopeful today.” 

On X, a user wrote, “I hope the UHC CEO shooter is never identified and goes on to become a hero of American folklore for hundreds of years.”

And then there was former Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz, who posted an image of a different healthcare CEO, Kim A. Keck of Blue Cross Blue Shield — an apparent suggestion to any would-be assassins out there: here’s your next target. 

Was Brian Thompson a good person? I won’t presume to judge. He was certainly an extremely wealthy person. He was a CEO, and a CEO in a problematic industry at that — one which is financially incentivized to maximize profit by minimizing claims paid. UnitedHealthcare in particular has a claim denial rate well above the industry average, raising serious concerns.

This is all that many people needed to know before condoning his murder. He was a willing participant in a system they deemed evil. He did not devise that system, but neither did he dismantle it. Worse, he profited from it greatly. 

Most of the people celebrating his death are not true revolutionaries. If the heads started rolling in the streets as they once did in France, many of these individuals would find that they would have no stomach for it. Nor would they much like what comes after. They want to watch TikToks about revolution, but they are not truly interested in heading to the barricades. 

This play-acting is possible for them because the stakes are so low. The hatred they spew against elites like Brian Thompson will never be turned back against them. They are thus free to set as many fires as they like, knowing that their own yards will never burn. In this sense, these posts are a perfect depiction of the very privilege such individuals claim to abhor. 

Jews, however, have no such privilege. When chronically online radicals embrace violence, there are offline consequences for Jews — consequences that the comrade cosplayers can hardly fathom. 

For instance, when online radicals in America embraced Osama bin Laden, as they did last November, they did so knowing that they would likely never be the targets of Islamist terror. 

When they handed out pamphlets on campus praising Yahya Sinwar, as they did at Sarah Lawrence College last month, they did so knowing that no one they love will ever be kidnapped or slaughtered by a Hamas invader. 

When they made worshipful icons of the paragliders that descended on the Nova music festival in Re’im, they did so with the faith that their own community would most likely never transform into a bloody battlefield before their eyes. 

They also know that they will likely never become a “legitimate target” in the eyes of their fellow Americans. But Jews have experienced precisely this, a phenomenon immortalized by the image of a keffiyeh-covered student at Columbia University standing with a sign pointing to Jewish students that read: “Al-Qassam’s Next Targets.”

It was easy for the left to morally justify the murder of Brian Thompson on account of their feelings about the insurance industry. How much easier would it be to justify the murder of Jews on account of their being Zionist, or Zionist-adjacent?

It was easy for the left to morally justify the murder of Brian Thompson on account of their feelings about the insurance industry. How much easier would it be to justify the murder of Jews on account of their being Zionist, or Zionist-adjacent? 

After all, Zionism is, according to the left, a racist, exploitative, genocidal ideology. Once this has been “established,” what synagogue, community leader, or NGO executive is off limits for America’s new vigilantes? 

In the last election, Democrats ran as the party of law and order and democracy, framing Trump as a threat to both. This is, in large part, why Jews showed up for Kamala. We would prefer that this country not dissolve into violent chaos —certainly not for the entertainment of pseudo-radicals on TikTok as they doomscroll our nation toward oblivion. 

But an American left that embraces vigilante executions is a political movement that has abandoned any pretenses of caring about democracy.

And so, this Shabbat, as we utter the prayer for the welfare of the United States, we should perhaps do so with special urgency. 

This tradition goes back many centuries, and while it is a reflection of patriotism, it is no less a reflection of a hard-earned knowledge: when societies crumble, violent antisemitism is never far off.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.