Yves here. Tom Neuburger gives a wonderfully subversive argument as to why our CEOs and other overlords deserve only the very best in security.
In keeping with Tom’s theme, the first time I saw snipers on rooftops (and yes, one more than one building) was in the nice suburb of Mexico City where McKinsey had its offices, I assume in the embassy district, in 1984. I thought it could not be very pleasant to be rich if you had to live that way.
And a small addition to his piece: some people make themselves indispensable by being willing to aggressively support the indefensible. Here the example is Kathy Wylde, president for the Partnership for New York City, who we’ve lambasted more than a few times, including as the focus of posts like “Almost Cartoonish Defender of the 1%, Kathryn Wylde” Rears Her Head to Attack Plans to Tax the Rich to Save New York City.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
The case of Luigi Mangione puts people in a bind.
It doesn’t put media in a bind; the media’s covering CEO ass as fast as it can. About Brian Thompson, Ken Klippenstein writes, “The coverage seems more like a knighthood than journalism.”)
Our government is covering CEO butt with both hands as well. In a tweet with near 2 million views, Luke Goldstein notes this about the state of New York’s response:
From the linked Politico article:
State officials want to calm the nerves of New York City’s business elite after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson sent shockwaves through the corporate world.
Gov. Kathy Hochul will broker a virtual meeting Tuesday with state law enforcement officials and about 175 corporate representatives to discuss sharing security resources.
I wonder how many denied claimants Ms. Hochul has calmed. There are so many, I’m sure she’s talked to a few.
About “shar[ed] security resources,” here’s what that means:
[Kathy] Wylde [Partnership for New York City president and the business world’s contact person for this effort] told Playbook that the discussion will include the State Police as well as state Homeland Security and counterterrorism officials to show how intelligence can be shared with corporate security.
Homeland Security. For a lone gunman murder with no terror affiliations. It seems we have a home-grown federal police and its full force will be at their disposal. Nice for the CEO class to be so cared about.
It Really Is Class War
But this piece isn’t about the hypocrisy of the state:
It’s about how right the state is to take this man’s death seriously.
Protecting the Opulent Minority
Bare fact: The U.S. was founded on class war. By “founded on,” I mean from the start. James Madison:
In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. [The Senate] ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
“Opulent” is a lovely word. This is opulent:
The country since has suffered under the war of the classes (or the “orders,” as Madison called them). Jeffersonian democracy was opposed to the elitism of the Federalists. Over the next decades, the franchise was gradually extended, peacefully or not, until after the great Civil War (whose gains for Southern Black swere soon reversed), the very rich became the great dominant class.
But for a brief hiatus caused by the national pain of the Great Depression and its happier aftermath, the rich have held sway ever since.
What’s worse, their power is unlikely to be taken away. Money controls our politics and our laws, more so every day. And the benefits of that control are, well, opulent.
So yes, of course, the CEOs should accept the cover and protection of a state that enables them and which they control. I strongly advise more of it. They should, in fact, have armed guards everywhere.
I’m serious. I think it’s important.
Why I’m in Favor of Billionaire Protection
There are two reasons to advocate seeing billionaires and their CEO operatives ostentatiously and aggressively protected.
First, each American can decide for her or himself whether murder is wrong or not. That decision comes with a catch, however:
- If you support social murder — death at a distance executed by corporate greed — you also have to be fine with retaliation. Justifying one type of murder justifies both.
- If you think all murder is wrong, you should then be strongly opposed to state-sanctioned death, including by corporate bodies who turn death into profit.
You can’t support corporate killing and oppose its deadly response. I myself oppose murder of all kinds. So I want our billionaires and their deadly corporate consiglieri very well guarded. Visibly, grandly, over-ambitiously guarded.
Why? For the second reason.
I want people to see with their eyes who their rulers are, to know without anyone having to launch into speech or explanation. To know by looking and feeling. To know in their bones.
Because class consciousness, folks. Or truth in advertising.
Brilliant essay
Agreed! useful, the stakes, in a nutshell
“First, each American can decide for her or himself whether murder is wrong or not. That decision comes with a catch, however:
If you support social murder — death at a distance executed by corporate greed — you also have to be fine with retaliation. Justifying one type of murder justifies both.
If you think all murder is wrong, you should then be strongly opposed to state-sanctioned death, including by corporate bodies who turn death into profit.
Billionaire protection must be tax payer funded because who will create all the jobs if something happens to them?
i think we’d get by, somehow, if “they” all vanished into perdition…
Yes, and how.
It’s ironic that the government and the media show so little concern when a convenience store clerk , taxi driver, etc. are regularly gunned down. It only becomes a crisis that dominates the news cycle for weeks on end, when the “opulent minority” experiences a rare brush with the kind of violence ordinary citizens routinely face.
I don’t think irony means what you think it means.
Some thoughts from Georges Sorel:
Marx supposed that the bourgeoisie had no need to be incited to employ force; but we are faced with a new and very unforeseen fact: a bourgeoisie which seeks to weaken its own strength. Must we believe that the Marxist conception is dead? By no means, because proletarian violence comes upon the scene at the very moment when the conception of social peace claims to moderate disputes; proletarian violence confines employers to their role as producers and tends to restore the class structure just when they seemed on the point of intermingling in the democratic morass.
“Marx supposed that the bourgeoisie had no need to be incited to employ force; but we are faced with a new and very unforeseen fact: a bourgeoisie which seeks to weaken its own strength.”
I’m not sure I see much evidence of force not being employed – in France (consider the response to the Gilets Jaunes manifestations) nor in the USA (consider the very much class-based January 6 event – I mean the force employed against the protesters). Further, the current Luigi matter is aimed at a very small component of the haut-bourgeoisie – the CEO class – how many are there? perhaps 10 thousand. I suspect Sorel had a broader class in mind….
my brother is by no means a ceo…middle sales management, at best.
makes more in a year than ive made in my whole life of toil.
he defends them…and has become more vehement in this defense over time…as well as more resistant to my rather marxist/hudsonish take on the whole politicaleconomic mess, over time.
amazing, watching him recede into the hive
Ah…the trusty ten percenter, servant of the one percenters. Yes, this is bourgeois solidarity, gated community types? I have friends who also aspire to oligarch-hood, I feel a bit sorry for them because the loyalty is not returned….at least in a true feudal society, the lord had responsibilities to his vassals (providing land and protection) and they to him (providing food rent and military manpower). The current oligarchy seems to consider their vassals to be subhuman and barely useful….and to owe them nothing but their wage for their last day worked….
we should eat them all.
just as a warning for future aspirants.
Tenderize them first. ;)
That’s how the Irish were successful in kicking out the Brits – they targeted not the Brits but rather the Irish who were collaborating with the Brits – Constables, e.g. Any occupier has to rely on collaborators to maintain control – take way the collaborators and expose the occupiers’ weakness.
“If you think you can intimidate me by murdering my bailiff, you are much mistaken”.
British absentee landlord
Umm, not really. They targeted the Brits who were actively employed in suppressing Irish nationalists (aka rebels and terrorists) more than the collaborators (aka informers), who of course were also targeted. Michael Collins remarked that handling the collaborators, who often were in a difficult position, was harder than handling the Brits.
I’d remembered, when the 9.9% in NYC skedaddled upstate or the Pocanos, to fetch ’em up $2M vacation cottages & discovered the locals were less than enchanted with being gentrified out of family homes, unable to afford sneeringly brainwashed maskless mouthbreathers kvetching SARS CoV2 directly into their faces. They’d ask me where we goyim hillbillies bought firearms & CCW reciprocity, Dyneema/ ceramic vests & X95 bullpups (I’d never seen anybody carry a RIFLE under a GoreTex shell or Vicuña blazer, reenact Deliverance or The Painted Bird up there). Most folks, used long guns to shoot dinner? I’m REALLY curious, if anybody is aware of PASC or TDS demented PMC or MSNBC addicted yuppies are totting ’em a firearm at brunch, on MTA or at maskless happy hour?
Alternative proposal. There should be a national Purge Day where anyone who kills an individual with a networth above $100 million dollars gets to keep it and will be immune from prosecution for that act. That individual must then spend or give away all money above $100 million before the next Purge Day. Any money held by controlled trusts or straw owners, domestic or abroad, gets attributed to the net worth of such individuals.
It will be a terrific stimulus to the economy. Really it would be crazy for governments not to do this!
Well, there is the “Purge” movie franchise which is what I think is really in its infancy as far as coming to a neighborhood near you. The Government (The New Founding Fathers), and rich generally remain unscathed but the poor underclass, well, you know.
I’m reminded of the Pullman Strikes in Chicago – bit of a precursor
“The U.S. was founded on class war”
True enough and surely closer to the mark than the current fad that the country is all about race and “white supremacy.” The racism was invented to justify the obsession with class.
And yet many of those eventual Gilded Age plutocrats came from nothing so surely Madison and the other founders weren’t only about protecting their entitled selves. Upwardly mobiie became a thing.
Democracy in our “shining city on a hill” waxes and wanes. Here’s suggesting the worm will turn…..eventually.
Just an observation. The bodyguards in those photos don’t seem able to afford properly tailored suits, are looking a little ratty. When was the last time they were given a raise, I wonder?
And when/if SHTF is their pay, in their own estimation, going to be worth sacrificing their own lives for those of their various bosses? How stong is their belief in the principle of whatever they are protecting?
Elon Musk’s total wealth is greater than Finland’s GDP. He should be protected by a security force at least as large as the Finnish army.
Finnish army would lose a war against Elon Musk.
Not so fast. Check out the movie “Sisu” and don’t discount those Finns.
From what I’ve seen on the trailer, a civilian guy is fighting the whole Finnish army.
Great article, but have to dispute the drastic looking rising crime rate. I went to the NYC.gov for a yearly look. Also I compared rates from 2001 to 2023…. 30 to 50% drop on most violent crimes. And this after a near 2 million increase in population those twenty years. …also would add, if there is a rise, it should never be cited without ‘per capita’ numbers for obvious reasons.
That’s put well. Objectively, that is.
A very nice article – any chance for a link for the corrected wage plot – It seems really important, but the axes are unreadable to my eyes (and it doesn’t connect a higher resolution version)..
I have to object to Mr. Chowdry’s graph. While technically accurate, it is deceptive. Link to original data here)
The increase from the low in 2018-2020 period is magnified from use of a scale that starts from that minimum.
What looks like a 3 or 4 fold increase in violent crime is actually about 32%.
Note also that the recent increase follows the initial phase of the Covid Pandemic, which hit NYC hard, and as anyone reading NC knows, Covid infections are associated with neurological issues, particularly impulse control.
The best thing I saw this week (probably here on NC) was a cartoon of a child speaking to a briefcase-toting man in a suit. The caption:
“If third-graders can get used to the threat of being murdered every day, CEO’s can, too!”
I’ll bet Tom Neuberger liked that one as well.
Kirillov’s reports on the biolabs, particularly their woven hhs/military bureaucratic funding and corporate pharma structure, were quite concise and informative, particularly regarding cover, political benefactors and how the handoffs work. Scrubbed from YT when our next SoS had a very scripted public exchange with Tory Nudelman, but the slides and presentations might still be available or reappear elsewhere for those inclined to avoid total epistemic closure.
“It Really Is Class War”
Maybe not. Richard Seymour has a different interpretation:
“Mangione appears to be a strangely modern specimen of the type described by Eric Hobsbam as the social bandit that often emerged in traditional peasant societies.
“Mangione does not appear to be especially radical or even particularly political. He is an educated man from an affluent family whose readings and postings lean vaguely to the center-right, who is also a victim of the American health care system.”
“The society that calls the social bandit into existence is one that has problems it does not yet know how to solve.”
We are *all* victims of the American health care system, some of us just don’t know it yet.
Next time you test positive, if you’re pre or post symptomatic & feeling up to it; properly mask, go to the Financial District & look for smoking chauffeurs alongside idling Bentley & Maybachs. Remain masked while asking where their bosses are getting hammered on Belgian ale & TRY not to avoid infecting the wait-staff! Complain, VEHEMENTLY directly into everybody’s face about protestors, the HELP & commies. Remember to mask, properly on the #1 Local!
I think if a random CEO (say from a car company or even a techbro) had been shot, there would not have been such a wave of public support for the shooter. The response to the insurance CEO getting shot reminded me of when Osama bin Laden was killed (probably also murdered). Obama actually campaigned on “we will kill bin Laden, we will crush al Qaeda” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKHsjRzUTLQ).
If we accept the concept of murder by spreadsheet, we can reasonably conclude that the insurance guy killed more people than the 911 attack did. I’m anti-murder myself (bin Laden could and should have been captured, and the UFC CEO probably belonged in prison too) but the public response to both murders seems about the same. Having been conditioned by bin Laden, they reacted similarly about the UFC guy.
Osama Is Dead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCY61imp1o0
I was struck by the chyron on what seems most of networks, regarding some “Health Care CEO”.
A subtle impact, but statistically it must’ve been far more than significant at shaping initial impressions of the peasants. That is, what if it’d said “Health Insurance CEO” or “UnitedHeathCare ® CEO”? The response to a villain as specifically recognizable as that would have really been dramatic.
The irony of wealth and power leveraging ever more wealth and power is that it is eventually self destructive, aka, stupid. The feedback loops need circuit breakers, or they switch from positive to negative.
What we are in the process of discovering is the mother of all reality checks is in the mail.
The bull is power. The matador is art.
The CEO and the very rich can pay for their own security. There is not one of them that is not replaceable. There are lots of candidates waiting to replace them. The CEOs are protected by the veil of the corporation. Name one CEO that has been punished for products or actions that have caused death or injury. Look at Boeing, 346 dead form the company lying and falsifying information. Someone should go to jail. Monsanto, the same. They don’t care if your dead. Politicians, can order the killing of innocent women and children. All these are protected by legal system. The CEO and elites, should understand “you reap what you sow”. Note the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. I detest violence. But at some point you will pay the price, history proves it.
Obviously, the worse it is for the CEOs, the better.
But the way things are going, the future will be nightmarish for everyone, and less so for the CEOs, who will be able to afford the latest and greatest technological protection.
Everyone else will be living with killer drones buzzing around everywhere, mostly autonomous and not even human controlled, and there will be a dramatic decrease in security for everyone. The Wild West, Sierra Leone, eastern Congo and other such places during the worst of the civil wars there, etc. infamously bad places will look like Sunday school in comparison…
Here is a little item from the antiwork subreddit titled: ” A reminder that the oligarchs are perfectly fine with us plebs killing each other. Just a reminder.” It shows a pro-violence Musk tweet from “then” as against an anti-violence Musk tweet from “now”. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1hgox2h/a_reminder_that_the_oligarchs_are_perfectly_fine/
Our opulent minority has been very busy these past 10 to 15 years, really following from the aftermath and varied outcomes of the Great Recession and GFC. Commonly cited equity index markets hit near record low territory about March to May 2009. Only to climb higher but not always in a straight mode in the years since.
A comment to add, as for the opulence of the Musk manor, as shown in the clip above from a highly desirable Bel Air location; the acquiring of land, of real estate in highly sought zip codes is nothing unique after all. Jeff Bezos owns mansions and a highly pleasing yacht, I believe the latter had attracted headline attention in recent years. Mark Zuckerberg was known to be constructing a massive hillside mansion with a “prepped” bunker underneath. These are not everyday CEO walking amongst us, not anymore. Hell, 30 years back the Apple corporation was going very broke and nearly on the brink of disaster! It’s hard to fathom…that was then, circa middle 1990s…
I’m reminded of a simpsons meme where skinner asks himself is he wrong or are the children wrong. He decides it’s the children.
The analogy is will the CEOs consider whether it’s the system they lead that led to this situation or if it’s the people that are the problem.
Given the response outlined in this post, we have our answer.
The fact that the health insurance industry allegedly makes a large chunk of its money off bad faith denial of claims, which is essentially fraud, makes it in the eyes of the public an organized criminal enterprise. The fact that Congress or the regulatory agencies are not willing to do anything to rein the industry in simply adds to public frustration and anger. Well, what happens in a complex society when someone behaves openly as a brazen criminal without any official attempts to restrict that conduct? You get vigilantes, this is a corporate criminal version of the Bernie Getz case. It sounds like they are already trying to overcharge him, probably in an effort to cop a plea, because there is a real risk of jury nullification if this case goes to trial, even if the Judge tries his/her hardest to keep any sympathetic evidence from the jury.
On the other hand, the public reaction to this case is not really about capitalism or oligarchs in general, its about the health insurance industry. Voters have put in place supermajorities of Democrats in power in multiple venues on the promise to reform the health care system, only to have said Democrats just increase the payola to the health insurance industry. Voters understand that the GOP is not going to do anything to help them with healthcare, and the Democrats are just going to run a bait and switch. So, what happens when a supermajority of voters hate the healthcare system, and decision-makers don’t care? I don’t think CEO’s getting security guards is going to solve the problem. There is a risk that this spirals into something broader, probably because the response will be mishandled and draconian, when the smart play is probably draconian but with significant reforms quietly put in place in the background. . . but American elites are probably too stupid, too greedy, and too short-sighted to do anything except follow the Louis the XVIth and Nicholas the 2nd playbook. Can’t wait for health care activists to be on the next FBI domestic terrorist list.
“Can’t wait for health care activists to be on the next FBI domestic terrorist list.”
They already are and are being processed as we speak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrPmrMjgiLg&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow
“They’re just inventing ways to make you a terrorist now….”
-Jimmy Dore
Why is it that the most whiny, spoiled, crying foul and unfairness ..are those coming from the predatory wealth side of the spectrum. They even now proclaim, after giving us the many various crises due to repeals and de-regulation – -it is so hard to make a buck, gosh it’s so hard to make ends meet. everybody is picking on us and we need more deregulation and more safety to meet our burdens.—
Name any predatory institution and you will hear the complaints, whinging and unfairness they are always on about — they are also the first in line, kicking and beating anybody else who dare get in line for the hand-outs and largess they have invested money for their ample return.
These (wall street and PE) financialized corporations have captured the legislative at every level. Enhanced and further implemented through the extensive lobbying power of corporations. Abraham Lincoln’s warning about “corporations enthroned” and Dwight Eisenhower’s about the “unwarranted influence by the military/industrial complex” is as true today as then..more so.
Lets not forget Citizens United, repeal of Glass-Steagal, no corporate accountability or jailtime for the financial crisis, second Iraq War what was it good for…..
So these CEO’s and corporate titans, with their legally bribed workers, are looking for extra protection from the legislators they own, extra considerations that amount to different treatment for a small group than the majority get….so much for equal justice.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg.
There is the biggest income inequality in the USA since forever. It got this way due to legislation…the laws that were enacted…. ain’t nothing to do with the non-existant ‘Free Market’ ….never was a ‘Free Market’ in the history of man.
So I would imagine, all this pearl clutching, lopsided reporting over this one murder – one of many I would assume occurred that day– and the call for more protection and more security (despite the oversized and fear-mongering proportion that most local and federal budgets are saddled at the expense of my tax dollars – and the lack of tax dollars coming from the abuse of off-shore havens) — I imagine, IMHO, that it is a convenient red-herring and foil for the lackeys on the hill.
I am against violence and murders of all motivated types except, sadly, in the rare instance of self defense – I am saddened for the family and their loss.
So inevitable that the only thing that stands between the rich and the unwashed is their guards. Now what happens when the guards decide they want what their employer has?
Simple thought experiment. You and your pals have the guns. You work for demanding people who let their kids tell you what to do. That cute rich girl. What do you do?
The rich are the most dependent on other people.
reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7dfPL7Kho
“Save the Rich” – by Garfunkel and Oates
“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.” Will Rogers
The top 10% who own 80% plus of all the wealth of the US could tithe the bottom 90% and this formula would work and the the top 10% would never know the difference of what they were missinng.
The key problem with Neuburger’s analysis is, as the Australian journalist Caitlin Johnson points out here,……
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/12/19/where-does-the-aggression-really-begin/
….that The Official Narrative (TON) does not recognise the concept of Social Murder.
“Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you control the narrative you can control not only when the historical record of violence begins but what kinds of violence qualify as violence. Killing people by depriving them of healthcare because denying healthcare services is how your company increases its profit margins? That’s not violence. Inflicting tyranny and abuse upon a deliberately marginalized ethnic group in an apartheid state? That’s not violence. Violence is when you respond to those forceful aggressions with forceful aggressions of your own.”
As BTL observers here have pointed out on the same topic, “The rule of law has been publicly abrogated in the Ukraine, in Gaza, in Romania and now in Syria…..It is open season on the proles all around the year, all around the world.”
At the present rate it cannot be too long before we are all, like the civilians in Gaza, Luigi Mangione, Briana Boston, Tony Greenstein, Sarah Wilkinnson, Asa Winstanley and others, labelled as “terrorists” by the Empire and subject to being outlawed and cancelled in one way or another.
Delay, Deny, Dispose.
Works both ways.