The UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death could be part of the "next wave" of the Occupy Wall Street generation, according to a veteran law enforcement trainer.
QUX Technologies CEO Keith Hanson spoke to Fox News Digital about his thoughts following the deadly shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. After details emerged that the alleged suspect was 26-year-old Ivy League graduate Luigi Mangione, Hanson suggested it could be part of a bigger trend.
"It's the Occupy Wall Street 2.0 at this point where you have the original wave of the ‘everybody gets a trophy’ generation was hitting the real world and suddenly realizing that everybody from their teachers to their professors at college had pretty much lied to them about the way that the real world works," Hanson said.
He continued, "And now I'm starting to see an uptick in the resentment and the vitriol towards corporations and to corporate CEOs. And I guess it would make sense that this is kind of the next wave. I mean, this is basically the proletariat rising against the bourgeois class and taking what's theirs. And it's concerning."
UNITEDHEALTHCARE CEO MURDER SUSPECT LUIGI MANGIONE CHARGED, FAMILY BREAKS SILENCE
Hanson was particularly concerned about how Mangione’s actions appeared to be not only accepted but celebrated on social media.
"Here's the situation where you had t-shirts that were being made up to celebrate this guy. You had amateur Internet sleuths who are refusing to do whatever amateur Internet celebs do because they were cheering this guy on. This guy had become somewhat of a folk hero, if you will. I heard one reference the other day of the guy who did this as a kind of Robin Hood. You know, he's out there righting the wrongs that these big insurance companies perpetrate against other people," Hanson said.
He pointed out the irony that Mangione himself is "certainly not somebody who would consider themselves the 99% up against the 1%" being from an upper-class family. Nevertheless, Hanson described the killing as "targeted" and "motivated" despite Thompson’s relatively unknown status.
"He may be benign. He may be unknown, but certainly the company itself is," Hanson said.
Since the shooting, executives have reportedly been contacting and hiring security experts to evaluate their risks and whether they need to invest more in protection. Hanson revealed his security contacts have also been swamped with business calls over the past week.
"The phones [are] going nuts down there because, everybody is now contacting companies…saying, ‘hey, listen, we at least want to do a preliminary threat assessment. We may not need to budget money towards security services for our sea level management, but we want to know where we stand.’ Because I think a lot of times people [go] 'if I don't see it and there isn't anything that happens, there isn't an articulable threat.' People don't think about safety and security," Hanson said.
Mangione was taken into custody on Monday and has been charged with several crimes, including second-degree murder. In the meantime, Mangione continued to be hailed online by social media users.
"The anger is always directed at corporate America because that's the tenets of Marxism, that these people somehow are controlling the wealth and controlling the means of creating additional wealth. It's straight out of Marx and Engels," Hanson said.
Hanson remarked, "I just find it interesting that the rage and the wrath and the angst and the anger is always directed towards corporate America, which these people avail themselves of the products and services that corporate America is producing and manufacturing and making available for these people."
