The most famous newspaper in America is uncritically promoting an extremist’s attempted moral justifications for domestic terrorism. I know: That sounds like a bad-faith caricature or a scene from an intentionally exaggerated parody.
Nope. It’s just a Wednesday in 2026.
New York Times “culture editor” Nadja Spiegelman just did a softball interview with the leftist streaming and internet star Hasan Piker, who is famous for arguing that America “deserved 9/11” and saying a Republican senator should be murdered.
In the most damning moment of the interview — which is saying something, given the other candidates — Spiegelman brought up the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare, a health insurance company, and the fact that huge swaths of young Americans think this murder is justified.
In Piker’s initial response, he never once suggests that it’s wrong to assassinate people or acknowledges the immorality of engaging in this kind of extrajudicial murder. Instead, he immediately justifies vigilante murderer morality.
“Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder,” Piker says. “And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit, paywalled system of healthcare in this country — and the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths … and that is the reason why, I think, the reaction to Luigi Mangione, especially by younger generations, was not so negative.”
Essentially, Piker suggested that the murder is justified because the victim’s company engaged in legal actions he objects to that may have cost human lives. Then they moved on.
Seriously. No follow-up questions. No critical analysis of Piker’s justifications for ideologically motivated civilian assassinations — aka, terrorism. While Piker is an influential liberal commentator who is certainly worth “platforming,” it is journalistic malpractice and downright dangerous to broadcast terrorism apologia to millions of people with the imprimatur of the New York Times and zero pushback. (At the very end of the interview, they come back to this topic in a rapid-fire segment, and Piker says “no” when asked to “smash or pass” murdering a healthcare CEO.)
Here are a few lines of questioning that the New York Times’s “culture editor,” who apparently also conducts softball interviews about political and social theory, left unpursued.
Even if one accepts Piker’s premise, which is extremely debatable, that health insurance CEOs are responsible for people’s deaths by denying coverage, does that really justify vigilantes murdering someone without charges or trial? Are politicians like Barack Obama, who set our current healthcare system up, also valid targets for assassination? What about the government officials who oversee Medicaid and Medicare, which also deny coverage claims? Is it morally justified to murder those people in cold blood, too?
And where is the limiting principle for this moral “justification” of vigilante murder? After all, there are plenty of other members of society who engage in businesses or practices that aren’t illegal but arguably cost human lives. Doctors who conduct abortions are an obvious example.
Does Piker realize that he’s employing the same twisted moral logic of extremists who, rather than advocate pro-life legislation and change, bomb abortion clinics instead?
Alternatively, one could even argue that under his logic, Piker is guilty of the same “social murder” that he believes justifies assassination. He is worth millions of dollars, owns a nearly $3 million home, wears expensive clothing and jewelry, and otherwise lives far beyond what he needs to survive. Meanwhile, according to GiveWell, it costs roughly $3,000 to $5,500 to save a human life via charitable giving. This means that Piker is actively choosing to engage in “social murder” and let hundreds, if not thousands, of people die by hoarding his wealth and denying other human beings life-saving resources. According to his own twisted logic, that would make him a legitimate target for assassination.
Watch your back, I guess!
THE SPLC INDICTMENT REWRITES THE HISTORY OF THE TRUMP ERA
At the end of the day, Piker is just one example, and as influential as the New York Times is, this is just one horrifyingly conducted interview. But the rise of “assassination culture” and vigilante violence is a far, far wider problem. And if it continues to spread unchallenged, that puts us on a path that ends with bloodshed in the streets — and possibly even civil war.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.